Beauty — Articles — Centric Magazine

By Pauline Lewis

When we scour the shopping centres today, we are spoilt for choice with the array of make-up brands available. Brands are wide and various, offering us so many choices of sizes, colours, and quality that we can often become overwhelmed by what is on offer.

However, this can sometimes not quite be the case when it comes to BAME makeup. Make-up has evolved generally and really has grown up, but make-up for women of colour is sometimes found to be a few shades behind.

The reason might lie in the history. The first time Immigration into the UK began in any significant numbers was during the 1950’s and 60’s. At that time the world was a very different place. The UK was the head of a much larger Commonwealth than today. Many countries who were former colonies had not yet claimed independence from the UK, whilst countries such as Ghana, India, Jamaica, Mauritius, Nigeria, Zambia, and many more gained their independence around that time. The make-up industry had been designed to serve a market which did not include women of colour. ‘Barbie’ and ‘Cindy’ dolls were white skinned and blonde or brunette. All of these factors led to there being a status quo and stereotype of what “beauty” was defined as. That definition did not include women of colour and this was reflected in the make-up counters around the UK.

The good news was that brands started to come through that catered for darker skins. One of the earliest brands available in the UK was Flori Roberts, an early US brand. This was swiftly followed by US brand Fashion Fair. For the first time there was a mainstream brand taking space in concessions around the UK alongside the more established mainstream brands such as Chanel, Revlon, Estee Lauder, Max Factor, and Rimmel. This was an exciting time for women of colour, and many other beauty industry benefits began to follow. In keeping with economic trends, competition ensued in the form of other mainstream companies bringing out makeup ranges aimed at diverse women.

Revlon launched a range for women of colour, expanding their range of foundation colours to suit darker skins for the first time, which led to a steady climb in women of colour “firsts”. According to research, in 1970, Revlon became the first cosmetics company to feature a woman of colour, Naomi Sims, whilst Beverly Johnson became the first Black woman to feature on the cover of Vogue magazine. These ‘firsts’ opened the door for models such as Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell to become leaders in the fashion and beauty industry. We have also seen other industries benefitting. The actress Lopita Nyongo became the first woman of colour to feature for beauty brand Lancome in 2014, and former Miss World Pryantha Chopra endorsed beauty brand, Obagi in 2019.

The result of these milestones was that the cosmetics counter changed. In the old days only cosmetics that supported the stereotype image of beauty were to be found. Barbie was the archetypal stereotype and everyone, regardless of their own colour, was expected to use her colours. Light Brown to Dark skinned women were wearing pale pink lipsticks and American Tan tights. When the former US First Lady Michelle Obama asked for a gown to wear to meet the Indian Prime Minister in 2010, she was offered a gown described as the colour ‘nude’. This sparked a controversy about what ‘nude’ or ‘flesh coloured’ really meant. Little girls from immigrant communities across the UK were introduced to Barbie with the message that she was the ideal to aim for. The message was universally reinforced with school paint palettes referring to the beige paint as ‘flesh’ coloured, and almost all leading ladies on TV being blonde including children’s cartoons.

Today, we have brands who cater exclusively for women of colour, the leading ones being Fenty, Bobbi Brown, Mac and Nars. We also have brands who cater for all skin colour including Revlon, Rimmel, Dior, Covergirl, Lush Makeup, Estee Lauder and Yves Saint Laurent. The landscape looks much better than it was. Despite our great progress, obtained at great cost to those who have been the change makers, we still need to aspire to equal consideration for the needs of all. This must include women of colour to the same extent as everyone else. We all need to aim to reach a goal where not just women of colour are the ones who complain about finding the right shade or colours. We all need to be in the same place, with everyone catering for everyone.

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By Pauline Lewis

In 2018, the British Beauty Industry employed over 370,000 employees and generated consumer spending of over £27 billion. Despite this, we were still confronted with scenes in the House of Commons in July of male MPs making light of the need to attend beauty salons. Opening pubs so people could drink beer was seen as a serious issue, but women needing to dress their hair and deal with facial problems was treated as a non-essential luxury. In one sphere of the economy, beer drinking was seen as an economic imperative, whilst in the other, the huge value of female lead industries was not even noticed. With over 10 million women in the UK and Europe saying they have different textured hair from the average women, the ignorance shown to women from different cultural backgrounds was apparent.

It is common knowledge that the beauty industry is heavily dominated by females. Up to 80% of all employees are female. The majority of users are also female. It is also common knowledge that women, and particularly BAME women, are under-represented amongst MPs. It is this imbalance that is playing out across the political spectrum today. There are many difficult situations when beauty services can help women manage after trauma, these include products and services for women who are victims of domestic violence, for women who are homeless, as well as for those already vulnerable in a society that judges by appearance. Despite this there have been so many inconsistencies in deciding which beauty services were allowed to open and which were not.

Guidance currently means that beauty salons cannot offer facials or massage services, even though these treatments form an incremental part of beauty services. The impact of this is seriously affecting salon owners, self-employed beauticians, employees, especially those on furlough, and most importantly of all, clients, the vast majority of whom, are women. Apart from the British Beauty Council there is little government encouragement to set up more professional bodies within the beauty economy who can lobby and inform the government. Women’s business and women’s spending has gone unnoticed, despite the fact that HMRC benefits from over £7 billion in annual tax revenue. However, the importance of beauty treatments goes far beyond the financial cost, the mental health of women is a key factor as society judges so much on appearance.

BAME women spend up to six times as much as white women on beauty because the market acts in marginalised way. There is a personal disadvantage in that accessing products and services is harder because the required services are not local. There is an economic disadvantage because products are less widely available and this makes them more expensive. Products for BAME women often have to be designed uniquely for darker shades and differing hair textures. This causes the research and the development of those products and services to be less accessible than for their counterpart white women. The result is that the full variety of choice is not available to the BAME consumer. In normal times this helps to create a parallel running market – a mainstream beauty market and a BAME beauty market rather than an integrated one.

The British Beauty Council have stated that they are going to commission an independent study on diversity and inclusion in the beauty industry in order to assess issues and challenges as well as celebrating successes and creating future vision. To address this, there is currently a petition being signed, which is supported by the British Beauty Council, to make education about Black and Asian Hair and Beauty mandatory in all beauty training. But the government must now accept it’s ignorance and help this industry to grow and thrive and be counted as a vital economic engine..

It is clear that the beauty industry which is largely dominated by women is a major economic contributor to the economy and the figures alone show that it is an industry that should be taken seriously. It is also of great personal value to many women and has a social impact which carries a value far higher than pounds and pence. It is hoped, therefore, that the interests of women in and affected by the beauty industry can now be taken up, not only by women, but also the men who have been voted in to represent them in Parliament.

“I am continuing to press the case to ministers – make-up artists can work in the film industry, but they cannot work for weddings – it just seems wrong! This is about getting our message across – there are women going through chemotherapy, or reconstructive surgery for nipples, and alopecia patients who need their eyebrows to be done. All of this is needed to give people more confidence letting them feel better about themselves. The beauty industry is huge and diverse.”

— Rt. Hon. Caroline Nokes MP, Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee