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Beauty, Inclusion & Social Mobility: How Black British Femme Influencers Created Space For Survival

It’s no secret that black femmes have been and still are excluded from mainstream beauty spaces.

According to Molly Flemming from Marketing Week, “black women and those with darker skin tones [have been] systematically left out of beauty in advertising, product innovation and recruitment for decades.” I knew this growing up, when I would walk through Boots or Superdrug, and be disheartened because the bronzer was too ashy or the concealer for my skin tone simply didn’t exist. DIYs and magazine articles with ‘helpful tricks’ were useless to me, since every ‘hack’ wasn’t applicable to a dark-skinned person with coily hair. 

This isn’t a standalone experience. Many black femmes across the UK have had experiences of being excluded from beauty spaces and practices that others have the liberty to enjoy.