Beauty Talk: Iman Says Black Woman Want To Be ‘Told They Are Beautiful’
I doubt that there is a sane person on Earth that would look at the statuesque Somalian frame of international supermodel Iman and see anything other than a woman that is simply gorgeous, but according to Iman that’s what she and many other models experienced over years in the modeling industry. Despite being hailed Yves Saint-Laurent’s “dream woman” Iman remembers vividly her anger and frustration from the blatant lack of diversity within the beauty industry.
In an article penned for Women’s Wear Daily Iman recounts showing up to photoshoots and being asked if she, a supermodel whose face graced countless runways and magazines, brought her own makeup. The lack of diversity and consideration became too much to bear for the stunning model so in 1994 she jumped into the business side of beauty by creating her own line of products called Iman Cosmetics specially targeted for woman of color. Iman writes:
“It was more than foundations and powders; it was appealing to a deep psychological need that I think all black women needed at that time: to be told that they were beautiful, invited to sit at the cool table and courted in high style.”
Today, nearly 20 years after the launch of Iman Cosmetics Iman feels that major cosmetics brands are still not embracing diversity and fully tapping into multicultural buying power, an unwise business move that she calls “foolish.”
Personally, I’m a makeup virgin, but simply browsing the rows of product at Sephora, M.A.C and department store beauty counters have shown me that Iman is right in saying that major cosmetics brands are not currently in the business of creating products that fully represent the spectrum of shades women of color come in. Beauty is more than just fair, medium and dark and it’s time that brands opened their eyes and embraced the rainbow.
Um…Raises hand. I’m a woman who grew up with a father in the home who wonders why men with lives, hobbies, or common sense hang out on women’s sites dispensing outdated and dubious advice that seems to be based on personal bias, uninformed opinion, and poor life choices. AND expect a receptive and grateful audience for said advice. (I’m not looking to be “adopted” by a stranger on the innanet)
Back to Iman and beauty.
Women are free and empowered to accentuate their beauty and femininity in whatever way they feel fit. Too often women of deeper pigmentation don’t have many drugstore options or high end makeup options to play with. Yes, its gotten much better now but 15 years ago, there weren’t a lot of MACs there was fashion fair, which for a teen me was too pink and too expensive and Posner the sole drugstore brand I remember. I love having options, especially options with great pigmentation and intensity of the color. And her BB cream is amazing. You wanna see luminous? Try that!
And Black female entrepreneurship should always be celebrated and really should be on a site geared for Black women.
THANK YOU!!!
I’m not looking to be adopted, I have a family (with MEN in it!). And no, they ain’t on Clutch either. This ish ain’t NORMAL, it really isn’t and it shocks me how many women think that this is.
They think it’s cute until they find their men on these sites!
Neither of us personally know Iman or her reasonings, so no one should be speaking as if she can’t tell black woman they are beautiful & deserve to be told that they are beautiful.
If she is guilty of what you are saying, then that only means that at one point in her life she was made to feel as if she wasn’t beautiful.
When do we ever stop learning? Never. She can use her experiences to boost the self esteem of little black girls and black woman because she knows what it feels like to not be told & considered as a beautiful black woman. Especially because she was a model, that whole business is about beauty & obviously black beauty at her time wasn’t really embraced in the fashion industry. I’m sure she has been rejected many times & insulted many times as a model, which could have taken a jab at her self esteem.
It gets under my skin when people say ”white features.” This is so stupid, if you look at any part of the world, specifically Africa, black people don’t all have the same hair textures, noses, lips, face shapes, body types, eyes etc. Who came first? Exactly. So stop making other black woman feel bad because of their skin color or features. If Caucasians feel the need to put light skinned woman on a pedal stool, that is not the fault of light skinned black woman. This post is about reinforcing what is true, that black woman are beautiful and want to be told they are beautiful. Everything from black dark skin to black light skin is all beautiful, from full black noses to thin black noses and so on… it is all beautiful because it is us.