What systemic racism in the British beauty industry looks like

Remember when Black Lives Matter content filled up the feeds of your preferred social platform? While the message still burdens many within the black community — as well as some allies — on a daily basis, for many it is business as usual; even one of my regular online beauty go-to’s has that in their homepage banner. I’m sure it’s more about things being back to ‘some kind’ of normal post-Covid, but who knows? To me, it seems like everyone is tired and weary of the triggering message of BLM and I believe that’s a sign that, if systems are not changed, things are likely to return to what they used to be, the word diversitybecoming one of those words people say out loud while using air quotes. I’ve already written about my own personal experience as a mixed/black woman in the beauty world, but I wanted to try and tackle the systems within the beauty industry. If I’ve missed anything, let me know!

systemic racism in british beauty

Brands/Agencies
Throughout the early days of BLM, brands and agencies around the globe paid close attention to where their ads were appearing. It wasn’t a moral stance however; brands had learned that ads placed near George Floyd or protest-related content, monetized at 57%* lower than other news content. The investment simply wasn’t worth it and words/phrases such as Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, Minneapolis and Black people were put on industry blocklists. While blocklists surely began as a way for the industry to ensure it wasn’t placing insensitive ads, in 2020 brands are using them purely because of the bottom line; revenue.

For me, the brands that have stood out during BLM are the ones that are more thoughtful in how they can help, long-term. Praise was given to Emily Weiss of Glossier for starting a grant for black-owned beauty businesses. Another stand-out show of support came from Caroline Hirons, a brand in her own right.

Hirons is known as the queen of skincare amongst the UK press — and she knows that is a very white press. She took a few days to get her ‘ducks in a row’, early on when BLM was being heavily supported, ensuring her donations were able to have Gift Aid applied (more of the cash actually going to the organisation), before announcing that she would be giving 100 percent of the 2020 proceeds from her best-selling Double Cleanse with Pixi to Black Lives Matter. Pixi duly matched her donation.

But for every positive there were several embarrassing examples of how notto do it. I don’t have the time or energy to give a comprehensive list of just how many brands got it so wrong during the days that followed #blackouttuesday for instance.

I’m not about forcing anyone to do anything, because if you don’t care, why would I want your help? For me the blame lays with brands who have the means to send out the right messages on the daily via social and in the media. It wasn’t just about calling out RMS Beauty on their Instagram for hiring such an insensitive social media manager. It was more about checking out the feeds of Maybelline, Chanel Beauty, etc, etc, and seeing if they had ever shown diversity in their campaigns. The results were lacklustre to say the least, but, if there was one truly classic example of what not to do, the medal would go to Marcia Kilgore (founder of Beauty Pie, Fit Flop, Bliss). I’ve been a diehard fan of Kilgore and her work ethic for years and I’ve lost count of how many interviews I’ve listened to of Kilgore sharing her business journey.

But throughout BLM I’ve seen some shockers coming from (seemingly) Kilgore’s own hand. I’ve been sent screenshots of comments on Instagram (later deleted) including one that shows Kilgore using the shrugs emoji. One of Beauty Pie’s diehard (white) fans just didn’t get why Beauty Pie was receiving negative feedback after not standing up soon enough or strongly enough for BLM. Kilgore replied to her fan with the shrug — she might as well have said: ‘gee, we just can’t seem to please these people.’

The Influencer
Whether you love influencer culture or not, it’s clear that, for now, it’s here to stay. Mostly dominated by (white) women, with some being worth over £4million here in the UK, whatever their chosen area of specialisation, there seems to be a very cookie-cutter approach as to what and who’s adored and accepted. Look at wellness, look at fashion, and of course, beauty, and you’ll find that the popular accounts are usually owned by very blonde, very slim women. Life is just one long Instagram Story compiled of working out in Lululemon, wearing makeup from an expensive brand that’s never looked past 10 shades, sipping an iced green tea and getting your wedding paid for by your clever agency rep who’s reached out to countless companies that are guaranteed to find you so palatable and on-brand.

Now, I am not coming for these women; these women can exist alongside the women that I choose to follow — the women that can and do in fact influence me and how I purchase, whether they get paid or not. And there’s the rub. Brands have been making tons of excess profits from women of colour who just love that brand — essentially unpaid micro influencers.

As a self-confessed beauty addict, I know the allure of the ‘next big thing’. I know how it is when you feel, or felt, that that brand actually understood you. When that new shiny purchase arrives from the likes of Glossier, you’re like, ‘hey friend’, and off you go, sharing your unboxing for your fellow beauty enthusiasts to swoon over in the comments.

Like I said, many true beauty influencers are micro influencers, doing their thing purely for the love, and not a pay check, but that’s in sharp contrast to those who are actually paid to do so. These paid influencers put in the work, styling their stories to appeal to their audience and also the audience of the brand that’s paying them.

One such influencer, someone I’ve been following a while as I enjoyed her fresh aesthetic, is also a PR. To be fair to her, I’d become so used to seeing her bounce across fields of tulips and daisies, that I wasn’t expecting anything from her when it came to ‘real life’. However, I did happen to see her Instagram Stories late one night, where she ‘appeared’ to be crying about BLM. I say appeared because honestly, I’ve seen better performances at my nephew’s nativity play. I even recorded the crying just to check I wasn’t being too dismissive.

The next day I saw that she’d finally posted an image she’d found elsewhere (i.e. not spent time creating) and given information on how to donate and research. It all seemed very rushed and frankly, I imagine that zero attention was given to the words. I wondered if she’d been pressured to post, and apparently she had been, after being tagged in a post that prompted people to call out influencers and brands who weren’t stepping up.

She dutifully posted a black square when it was ‘expected’ of her on #blackouttuesday — which she has since deleted.

On top of that, behind the scenes she was contacting various bloggers — I can’t confirm race ratios. She sent DMs that did not address the individual, did not ask the person how they were doing at this truly tiring and stressful time. Instead she asked if they were supporting black-owned brands (she asked this of a mixed-race woman who identified as black and had been posting tons of information on her Stories…) Clueless, lazy — or worse?

She mentions in the DM that one of her clients is a black-owned business and asks if the blogger might be interested in talking about it. The following day I kept wondering, ‘okay, if you’re so supportive, why not post about this black-owned brand on your own feed?’ Or, how about you offer your services to black-owned businesses at a reduced rate? Not because you should, but because, after all, you are performing as if you care.

**Dominique, a black, London-based PR shared her thoughts on how her frequent social media support of a beauty brand (self-created and not paid for, purely because she wanted to), soon started to feel as if she was being treated as a token when she was shown as the only black face in the company’s newsletter. She also tells me of a black influencer in the UK who had been promised payment for several pieces of promo work and yet had gone unpaid and ignored. It wasn’t until her loyal followers bombarded the brand’s social media platforms that the brand paid her, in full, with no argument, or apology.

“It’s so intrinsic, and so embedded,” says Dominique. “Whether it’s content creation or Instagram — which is the first port of call for every business — it’s also the tech, it’s the algorithms used. It’s the influencers, it’s the appropriation, it’s the fact that black influencers aren’t on PR lists, and aren’t being paid the same rates.”

Dominique also talks of the pressure of ‘black guilt’ that black influencers and creators can feel: “You kind of hope and root for the brands that you spend your money on, that you will see a change. And then also, you kind of assimilate in your feed to try and see if that’s gonna help you build a following. I’ve done it. Black people have learned to compartmentalise to survive and it comes down to assimilating and trying not to broadcast your blackness.”

The PR
I think, in some ways, the power of the beauty industry PRs often goes unnoticed. These are people who are in the business of carving out a niche for a brand, making it the ‘next big thing’; they advise clients on everything, from tone of voice to the right faces to use in an ad campaign to which influencers to send product to, and which influencers to offer lucrative ambassadorships to.

As most UK PR firms are owned by white men and women, it’s easy to see why inclusivity might not even enter their heads. Why would it? Let’s not forget, for decades the ideal beauty has been that of a very Eurocentric look. PR firms, alongside the rest of the industry, play their part in affirming this beauty standard — it isn’t their job to actually change it. But with more and more voices calling for change, and in the era of cancel culture, PRs are likely to be forced into taking a more active role.

For example, the labeling of BLM being a political rather than human issue by the head of CrossFit was clearly a PR nightmare of huge proportions, and no-one in the multi-billion dollar beauty industry wants that to happen to them. As a recent article on the Business of Fashion stated; too often public relations execs go along with what their client wants, and if ever they do try to steer the client in another direction they are often left unsupported or removed from the account completely.

The Magazines
As someone who’s been a hair and beauty editor and writer for 15 years, I’ve seen a lot of trends come and go. But one trend that remains the same is that of the ‘spot the black journo in the room’. While things may be slightly more progressive in the US, here in the UK I can say that I have never seen more than three black or non-white journalists at a press event at the same time. And don’t get me started on the staff within the publications themselves.

I remember when former British Vogue editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman shared an image of her team in celebration of her last issue in 2017 — with not one black or brown face. I had long stopped my subscription to British Vogue, but when her replacement, Edward Enninful arrived, the man who had inspired me for years during his time at i-D magazine, I bought each issue with renewed excitement; oh how things would change!

But Enninful is one black man. And when Enninful himself is racially profiled while entering the doors of Conde Nast, you know that the problem goes way deeper. Add to that the fact that Vogue is still going to have to bow to its advertisers — the brands that keep it in print. It’s not us with our £2 ‘special price’ purchases that are keeping Vogue and others like it alive.

Elsewhere on Instagram, former Glamour editor Jo Elvin was bemoaning the fact that it wasn’t always the editor’s fault that there were no black models on the cover. Elvin said that black models often declined being on the cover (am guessing maybe it was because it was a pretty crap magazine back then?) because they ‘thought it would hurt their chances of getting covers with the high-end mags’.

And what is wrong with that? It’s far tougher for a black woman to get a Vogue cover, so if that’s that model’s goal, what’s it to Elvin and her crew? Perhaps they could seek out an unknown, rather than relying on the top three black faces over and over? Thankfully, Elvin was prompted to elaborate on her flippant comments, by none other than the aforementioned Caroline Hirons. Hirons ended by telling Elvin that the numbers don’t add up, and that bias is ‘systemic in Conde.’

I remember once going for a meeting with an online brand I avidly read. Naturally I was excited and flattered to be told: ‘you look so [insert brand name here]!’ as if I had just earned a special badge. Aside from the flattery, it really meant a lot to me and I was genuinely excited at the opportunity to write and shoot for them. I left the building buzzing, but over the coming weeks, my numerous pitches seemed to fall on deaf ears. ‘Hmm, she’s probably really, really, busy,’ I told myself.

Weeks later I noticed a new name on their writer roster and wondered if the fact that she was also mixed race was something to do with it; perhaps two was one too many? I think this is something we see and fear in many industries, but especially within fashion and beauty. While a non-black editor might enjoy being seen as the progressive one, he or she might also be nervous of ‘opening the gates’ and only employing non-white people! I’ve heard this from several black and brown people in the industry also. Once you get that role, you want to keep it both for career and financial reasons.

It’s clear that, across the board, work needs to be done, and we also need the work that is supposedly being done, to continue. It makes me nervous to see brands jumping on the Diversity Officer job role, while only offering six-month contracts. Does this mean that they hope BLM will just go away and people will just stop expecting their voices to be heard and their rights acknowledged? Are we all just so nostalgic over what normal used to be that we’d rather enter another year with blinders on?

It’s okay to admit that you’re completely unprepared for this fight. If you’ve never had to care about this fight, I get that. But whether you chose to use #blackouttuesday to gain some new fans, or you actually wanted to begin making lasting change, it’s clear, it’s going to take a lot more than a black square followed by vague epithets. Show the work; talk to your audience. Literally no-one can claim to be perfect right now, but if you want to build an anti-racist brand, take the steps, because we are all watching.

Charisse KenionComment