Beauty brands pledge to be more inclusive, but there’s still a long way to go

First, the primer... The BLM movement put a renewed spotlight on racial discrimination in many areas of society, including the beauty industry. Beauty companies have a history of marginalizing communities of color through non-inclusive marketing and products. In the past year, companies like Estee Lauder, L’Oreal, and Unilever have been criticized for marketing “skin-lightening” products. LVMH-owned Sephora has been accused of racial bias in stores — including instances of associates not being able to do “dark makeup” for women of color. Recently, beauty retailers have started taking steps to improve inclusivity:

• Ulta pledged to double its assortment of Black-owned brands in 2021. Sephora pledged to increase its Black-owned brands from eight to 16 this year (out of its total ~300). And both are expanding employee training to fight unconscious bias.
• Sephora also signed the 15% Pledge, which calls on retailers to work toward committing at least a population-proportional 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned brands.

Building a foundation... In 2017, Rihanna’s makeup brand Fenty Beauty was hailed as groundbreaking for releasing 40 foundation shades. Many of its darker shades sold out in days. That success led to the “Fenty Effect”: Big brands like Dior and CoverGirl followed, launching 40 foundation shades each. But a December 2020 study from Sephora shows there’s still much left to be done:

• 3 in 4 retail shoppers feel that marketing fails to showcase a diverse range of skin tones, body types, and hair textures.
• 2 in 3 shoppers think stores fail to deliver an equally-distributed assortment of products for different tastes and preferences.
• 2 in 5 US shoppers have experienced unfair treatment on the basis of their race or skin tone.