Beyond skin deep
The beauty industry has reached a point of reckoning: just how far has it really has come in terms of representation and diversity? Here, multidisciplinary artist Rosie Kalina, MTV presenter and DJ FlexMami, self-taught make-up artist Kylee Fleek and beau
ROSIE KALINA
A proud Wemba Wemba and Gunditjmara artist, with a focus on make-up artistry.
FLEXMAMI
AKA Lillian Ahenkan, an Australian-Ghanaian MTV presenter, DJ and podcaster.
REMY RIPPON: Welcome everyone, thank you for joining us for a virtual roundtable today. You’ve all been involved in the beauty industry in some capacity. Let’s start by sharing your experiences. ROSIE KALINA:
“One of my first experiences [in beauty] was an Indigenous attachment program on a production. It wasn’t a great experience. It was my first job right out of make-up school and it just felt kind of tokenistic straightaway and I didn’t feel like I was welcomed very warmly. After that, I thought I had to be resilient and push forward so one of my really good girlfriends and I started a social enterprise called Makeup For Mob. It’s at the beginning stages of being a support network for First Nations people wanting to get into the industry, to empower Aboriginal women to take up space and make sure that my experience wasn’t happening over and over again.”
“I started experimenting with make-up when I was 11 to 12 years old, and I’m almost 18 now so it has been a major part of my life. It has given me self-confidence and it has allowed me to express myself in ways that I couldn’t in the everyday world. My favourite thing is that it lets me be a role model for others and an LGBTQI+ representative, especially for young Māori kids from small towns like Gisborne in the North Island of New Zealand where I live. Gisborne is quite a hard place to live in if you’re LGBTQI+, a person of colour, very transformative like me and don’t fit the social norm. I like to be like a beam of light for the younger kids who look up to me.”
KYLEE FLEEK: KYLEE FLEEK
A self-taught Māori make-up artist and influencer known for his creative artistry.
MAEVA HEIM
The founder of Bread Beauty Supply who previously worked in marketing in the beauty industry.
RR: Kylee, you were also a participant of the #VogueChallenge [see page 30]. Why did you decide to take part?
KF:
“The #VogueChallenge was another way for me to project my voice out there and that’s why I put ‘12 ways to love yourself’ in the Instagram caption when I posted it. It’s not just about looking pretty on the Vogue cover but a way to show everyone it’s alright to be yourself, especially in these times. If you’re a person of colour it can obviously be a lot harder, which I’ve struggled with in my life as well being a young Māori boy that is into these kind of things.”
“Because I’m in the entertainment industry, my relationship with the beauty industry goes hand in hand. It’s expected that you look good so you can present as best as possible. Knowing that I’d be in positions where I’d need to get my hair and make-up done unfortunately brought on some discomfort, because I knew that in Australia there are very few people well-versed in styling African hair and applying make-up to Black people with dark skin tones.
When asked about my experience with racism or a lack of diversity in the beauty industry, I rarely think of overtly abusive behaviour, however, as a whole, I find it to be covert and exclusionary. Very often I would express my concerns and would be met with guarantees that there would be someone with extensive experience with Black hair and skin to work with me, and unfortunately there was not. ‘Of course, I can do your hair. Absolutely, I can do your skin tone, we do this all the time.’ What may be seen as a gesture of good
FLEXMAMI:
faith can often feel like gaslighting, because when I get to the shoot people often ask me if I’ve brought products or extensions specific for my hair type and make-up products as their kit was lacking. They’re often scrambling trying to do science experiments on my face, or worse, leaving me unfinished.
In the earlier stages of my career, I was ecstatic to be invited, to have a seat at the table, so I didn’t want to kick up a stink. Aside from that, there were very few dark-skinned people of colour in the Australian media landscape I could compare my experiences to, but the more I come across, the sentiment remains.
Eventually I learned to express concern, provide context for my experience and set boundaries well before shoot days. I decided to do my own hair and make-up to avoid the inevitable. This discussion often happens through me – or through my agent – and initially I felt as though there was discomfort, but eventually it’s become the expectation: ‘Don’t worry, Flex will do her own thing’. And I will, but I shouldn’t have to. What should be happening is that an understanding of Black hair or skin should be mandatory. Kits should be stocked, portfolios should be diverse.
Secondly, when I decided to be a beauty influencer it was only because I was DJ’ing for a lot of amazing global brands, and was often asked questions about where I learned to do my make-up. So I entered knowing that there was a quote-unquote ‘gap in the market’ of people with my complexion. Unfortunately, after a few years in the industry you realise that a gap doesn’t mean there’s infrastructure or supply to support this demand. A gap doesn’t mean product accessibility. A gap doesn’t mean an inclusive range of all cosmetics, not just foundation. It just means there’s a gap. Though I get sent these beautiful PR product packages, they are often made for fairer complexions. Though I might be able to contact a PR person to get my exact shade, people who are the same skin tone as me still have to go online and do guesswork, but their fair-skin counterparts can happily go in-store. I often thought that as an influencer, if my face is being used as a symbol of progression and inclusion but progression and inclusion aren’t actually happening on a retail, marketing, social media or corporate level, then I need to reassess my involvement.
How are we in 2020 and I still have to use eyeshadow for bronzer? I don’t regard most of this lack of understanding as malicious, or people are in boardrooms being like: ‘How are we going to make dark people’s lives difficult?’ But they’re just not thinking about how the experience differs and how to cater to it more effectively.”
RR: Maeva, you’ve created a brand called Bread Beauty Supply. Would you mind telling us your backstory? MAEVA HEIM:
“My experience in beauty has been from the back end. I worked in the beauty industry and I’ve been in those boardrooms where discussions are had about shade ranges, what’s going to be launched and what models they’re going to feature. My experience there was like being behind the curtain, but also [I’ve had that] experience as a consumer and just being fed up with the industry and what was available. So the impetus to leave the beauty company [I worked for] and start my own brand was exactly that. This was three or four years ago, so we’ve been trying to have these discussions for so long when I was the only Black person on a marketing team in that entire company. So it’s pretty evident where the issue stems from – it’s not just from teams providing more shades of products, it’s also [about] who is in charge, and more often than not, it’s not people of colour, so that trickles down and it’s very evident. Nothing will change unless the people in charge and whoever is at the top is actually a person of colour and actually has that say. I think I went into the beauty industry thinking it would be possible to go behind the curtain and infiltrate and make change from within, but I just couldn’t see that happening. There were just too many barriers.”
RR: Also the onus shouldn’t be on you as the only person of colour in the room to educate everyone around you.
MH:
“100 per cent. To Flex’s point regarding shade ranges, there was a company that launched a new make-up range and yes, they launched the entire shade range, but on the launch date they didn’t have stock of the darker shades. Yes it was up on the website, and yes they had a tester, but when I went in-store or online it was sold out … on launch day. Which to me says you have bought two units of stock for the entire country and that’s kind of like checking a box.
I wanted to change that and recognised the best way I could have that impact, with the skills I had, was to start a brand myself. That took a few years, but we’re now really close to launch. It has been a long time coming and it has been part of the conversation of our brand, this issue of diversity in the beauty space, for years. Honestly, it’s a little jarring [to be in a position] at this time all of sudden to have everybody talking about it. It’s wonderful that people are listening, but it also feels a little bit redundant at the same time because we’ve been talking about it for so long. Honestly, the only answer I have is that the person who is in charge has to genuinely care and if you do, the output will be vastly different from someone who’s just tried to tick a box.”
RR: In 2017, Rihanna launched Fenty Beauty with 40 shades of foundation, setting a new benchmark for brands in regards to diversity. Has there been actual change since then?
FM:
“We millennials are really good at looking at symbols of progress, but not actual progress. Yes, what Fenty did shook up the landscape, because it showed consumers and brands what ‘inclusivity in the beauty industry’ looks like in practice. It was the beginning of what should’ve been standard for every brand, but things are moving at a slow pace. While a lot of brands have ticked the box of offering foundations, there’s still a long way to go for concealers, bronzers, blushes, highlighters and contour products for darker complexions. The undertones need variation. The price points need variation.”
RR: What should representation in the beauty industry mean going forward then?
RK:
“When brands hire people of colour and have people of colour in their campaigns, was this for inclusivity or was this a genuine choice? … If it was genuine diversity it would be a true mix”
”I always think about the lack of First Nations representation everywhere, not just in the beauty industry. Growing up,
I never saw anyone with the same story as me. There’s barely any representation, and when there is representation it’s almost always the same kind of rhetoric. It’s always the story of someone having a really difficult childhood or difficult life and always talking about Aboriginal identity in a deficit, as opposed to actually talking about the beauty of us. We go back 80,000-plus years on this continent, but there’s barely any talk about that. We’re kind of called upon to talk about Aboriginal issues whereas I think we should be the ones [who are] involved in conversations about everything. We’re the first astronomers, we’re the first bakers, we’re the first everything right here. Because of colonisation, a lot of us look different to what people perceive and we come in many different shades and there needs to be understanding and representation of that. It always comes back to real change and not just acknowledging the Country we’re on. Not just [being] tokenistic, actually continuously putting us at the forefront and ensuring that it’s not just one voice either.”
RR: The term inclusivity can be problematic as it implies ‘othering’ and the sense that a core group is inviting another into it …
KF:
“Imagine being hired for a job and being so proud of yourself and thinking that you got the job because of your credentials and experience only to find out that you were hired solely because of your race. This has happened to me before as a Māori individual. It still doesn’t feel equal, like you were saying. It feels like you are being welcomed into this larger group and you’re just being put there for the point of inclusivity. When brands hire people of colour and have people of colour in their campaigns, was this for inclusivity or was this a genuine choice? I’ve been hired for fashion shows before where the models are literally all white females and I’m the only male and Māori who wears make-up as well. I’m obviously not a straight male – sexuality is a difference of mine – and when I asked about it, it’s [the response] again: ‘We needed something different, we needed diversity.’ If it was genuine diversity it would be a true mix of not only race, but body type, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, everything – I think that is true representation in the beauty and fashion industry.”
RR: Change needs to happen at a decision-making level, I think we all agree on that. Maeva, what message is important for leaders in the beauty industry to hear?
MH:
“It’s a really tricky one because it’s been a conversation that’s been had and it’s been something that we’ve been speaking about for so long that there’s almost nothing left to say. If what’s happening now is not a catalyst for actual reflection and the decisions that you
“It’s counterintuitive to ask for inclusivity and diversity because it implies it’s not been thought of”
“What needs to be done has been said in a 1,000 different ways for years. Offer products for everyone. Stop using diverse faces as a line item on the marketing checklist, and leaving them off the priorities when it comes time to manufacture products. Also, fundamentally, the onus isn’t on the people who are getting the shit end of the stick to keep having conversations like these if it’s not going to result in change. I’m hesitant to ask the industry for anything because the thinking is again on the people who aren’t being considered. Why do we keep needing to grovel and educate corporations on what to do as if they haven’t already been doing it for decades for fairer skin? Having a range that accommodates more skin tones isn’t beyond the realm of comprehension. Asking consumers what to do seems like a stalling tactic. Just do what you’ve been doing so easily.”
“These conversations are so important, but for us to get to the next stage, the next iteration is really about people of colour being presented in a way where it’s not about the fact that they’re people of colour. I look back at the conversations I’ve been invited to be a part of and often it’s under a lens of ‘What is your experience as an entrepreneur as a Black woman?’, and we need to get to a place where that’s just normalised. The business and female founders in Australia who are put up on a pedestal are generally white so that sets a standard of what the expectation is, what we view as success, and what it means to be a female founder, especially in the beauty space. If we’re not at a place where the same type of coverage and the same type of treatment is given to everybody and more people of colour, [then] we’re never going to get anywhere. If we’re constantly having a conversation about diversity versus business or whatever kind of career you’re in, we’re never going to move forward. I think that’s a huge part of moving the needle forward and getting to that place where we’re normalising representations that are not one-dimensional.”
MH:
make – not just in a business capacity but a personal capacity as well – then almost nothing that I can say will have any effect. The people who have been here, and who have been doing the work and taking steps towards changing the industry can reap the benefits of it. It’s obviously not just from a goodwill perspective, but there is a business case for providing products to groups of people who have traditionally been left out of beauty conversations.”
RR: So how do we ensure this conversation doesn’t just stay in this moment? And that once the news cycle moves on, change is embedded?
FM: