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INCLUSIVITY: EXPIRED

Do you guys remember the inclusivity wave that occurred after the global #BlackLivesMatter protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, in 2020? Have you noticed that all the beauty brands have gone back to only providing 3 shades for dark skinned consumers? Yeah, so did I. 😒


Tarte Shape Tape Foundation shade range
Shades for Tarte Shape Tape Foundation 🙃 (Photo credit: Temptalia)

If I'm going to be completely honest, I knew all those brands were just virtue signalling. I knew, that after the world opened back up and everyone was too busy to drag these companies online, they would slowly but surely, go back to their racist ways. If anything, the return to racist-business-as-usual proved something that people once denied - brands CAN be inclusive, they jut don't WANT Black people using their products!


For a long time, these beauty brands maintained that the reason they didn't cater to Black people was because Black people didn't buy beauty products; this is despite the widely known statistic of Black Americans spending 9 times more on beauty per year than their non-Black counterparts. To further disprove that agenda, Fenty Beauty released 50 shades of their foundation when they launched in 2017, and it sold out after every restock for the best part of a year.


Fenty Beauty Pro Filt'r Soft Matte Foundation shades
Fenty Beauty Pro Filt'r Soft Matte Foundation

According to NIQ, Black consumers in the US spent an estimated $9.4 billion on beauty in 2023, making up 12.5% of Total US Beauty dollars, depite only being 14.4% of the total US population! I won't go into the racist beauty standards or the violent colonisation and segregation history that has lead to this behaviour by Black consumers, but the fact remains that this market is a lucrative one, and should be respected by corporations who depend on said market to thrive.



I have always maintained that the only way to make significant change to any structure is to boycott said structure financially; race isn't as important to decision makers as currency is - always attack the money. The people of Montgomery, Alabama, which included Martin Luther King Jr., understood this, which is why the Mongomery Bus Boycott was so successful. The Women's Political Council (WPC) understood that the money Black people paid to use the bus system in Alabama, which had a ~75% Black ridership, was sustaining the system, and that a boycott would hurt the city's economy. For 381 days (1 year and 16 days!) they inconvenienced themselves and withheld their money from a system that didn't respect them. These days Black people won't even boycott Tarte Shape Tape, despite the company's continuous discriminations! 😒 (a quick Google will fill you in.)


Women's Political Council (WPC) - Montgomery Bus Boycott
The women behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott and positive change, the Women's Political Council (WPC)

With that mini history lesson in mind, I truly believe that the solution to the underrepresentation of Black people in beauty is a true, uncompromising, boycott. If the brand doesn't cater to Black people at large, then no Black people should participate in consuming said brand. We did this on a small scale in 2020, and it forced brands to pretend that they were inclusive for the whole of 2 seconds. We need to do better and demand more of organisations that benefit from our hard earned money.


Always attack the money. Not Rude, Honest

Shout out to the big 3 who have included us even before it became cool to do so - NARS, MAC and Lancôme. Shout out to Robyn Rihanna Fenty who came into the market and showed other brands exactly what a complexion product launch should look like with Fenty Beauty, and continues to do so with every new product. A final shout out to the brands who took Fenty Beauty's example and have run with it since e.g. Huda Beauty and NYX Cosmetics.


Inclusivity is not a faze or an era, it should never expire.



Not Rude, Honest
xxx

 

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