You don’t have to look a certain way to wear sunscreen or try a pink lipstick. So why are today’s ad campaigns not reflecting a wider beauty audience?
When I was starting my career, it was pretty hard to tell people that I was a model. It was a given that you had to be skinny—and look a certain way—to do that job. I was freelancing in the industry three years ago, and upon landing my first job, the designer told me I was ugly as I didn’t fit her conventional body-type requirement. I was also deemed as being unprofessional because I couldn’t fit into a size medium. The industry likes to categorise women who have fuller bodies in one type of way—a placeholder for “inclusivity” when they have to—while thin, tall, skinny women are, well, models that represent their clothing better.
Beauty products, however, have never cared what my size was. Your eyeshadow, lipstick or moisturiser don’t care if you’re short or have hip dips or have a flat stomach. You don’t have to be a certain size to try a new nail polish or play with neon eyeliner—it is a level-playing field. Or so it should be.
Last year, I was part of the shoot for Kay Beauty by Katrina Kaif, and it was both surreal and overwhelming. I felt so confident: a red lipstick or great blowout makes me feel sexy and sure of myself, so it should make sense that the advertisements and television commercials for beauty products represent the people that they cater to, and that includes everybody. As humans, we want to look good and feel our best, and inclusive beauty opens the door for anyone wanting to come in. Beauty is not about meeting a standard—it is about feeling good in your own skin.
However, in most advertisements for beauty products, the women are still tall, skinny, have chiselled cheekbones and perfect bone structure, which I don’t think always represents the consumer. We know this is true: an advertiser wants to put a girl on the cover if they think it’ll get people to buy the product. But in 2022, it is important for women to feel seen and represented. There has been a lot of chatter and demand from consumers, so brands don’t have a choice but to be inclusive. You have to think in terms of skin tone, colour, size and sexuality. It’s bad for business if you don’t, because it’s not always a white, thin, cis person buying it.
When it comes to fashion, the “excuse” for not including models of different sizes and shapes is because it can be difficult to create clothing made to order. But beauty brands cannot even have this argument. Anyone can use lipstick, so why should there be any difference? But ironically, because there is a focus mostly on the model’s face (and not the rest of their body), perhaps there isn’t a push for inclusivity yet, and that needs to change. A lot of people have been left out of the beauty conversation for far too long, and in today’s day and age, there shouldn’t be a place for that anymore.
However, this shouldn’t undercut the strides of progress that have, in fact, taken place. It makes me feel thankful for younger girls that they’re seeing people like me in a big, mainstream beauty campaign because it’s telling them this message: you’re beautiful the way you are.