Match your customers’ skin tones. Directly from your website. Without downloading any apps.
All by Skyler Murry
The toxic way makeup has been marketed -- reinforcing strict and impossible standards that make an individual feel like they have to wear makeup to feel good about themselves -- makes it impossible for many people to ever achieve “being beautiful.”
For a lot of brands, Pride Month has become a prime opportunity to pander to LGBTQ+ consumers. When these brands simply throw a rainbow on their products, declare an undetermined percentage of their proceeds from said profits will be donated to LGBTQ+ organizations, and only do this in June, consumers are wary of the brand’s true intentions. Rather than a rainbow body count for brownie points, brands like JECCA Makeup, Fluide, and SPKTRM Beauty integrate an inclusive culture into their company images all year around.
With the launch of her inclusive beauty brand SPKTRM Beauty and its partnership with NUDEST, Jasmine Glass hopes that people can foster more positive relationships with makeup in spite of the beauty industry’s fear-based marketing and outdated beauty standards.
Our founder and CEO, Atima Lui, sat down with CosmoSafe’s CEO, Angela Ivana and talked about her journey in beauty (that eventually lead her to starting NUDEST) on episode four of their “Beauty Vault” podcast. In the podcast, Ivana invites Lui to guide listeners through her entrepreneurial journey in hopes of educating and inspiring them to also achieve their own goals of mastery in the beauty industry.
It is taking the beauty industry an achingly long time to fully come to terms with what its consumers already know: representation matters. More and more people of color are using social media to lobby for more diversity and inclusion from beauty brands. Check out these brands that have been making a name for themselves by being cool, colorful, and inclusive.
The age old saying goes “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” yet many women today feel pressured to conform to a certain set of beauty standards promoted by the media. We talked to three college students with roots across the globe to see how they understand and navigate the worldwide definitions of beauty and the pressures that come with them.
“We're different and we're magical and deserving of opportunities in the city that made us. We can be successful business owners, tackle challenges with grace and intelligence, and have the same opportunities as the next person. We have so much to offer!”
More, now than ever, does our media need to focus on the representation of marginalized groups. Representation makes people feel seen and understood and not alone and not strange. Queer characters as one-dimensional sidekicks without happy endings aren’t the move; it just won’t fly anymore.
