Black skins matter too

In case you’re a Martian, Rihanna, master fashion and style collaborator, singer, actress, philanthropist and earner of other monikers by end of this year alone, launched her well-thought out beauty range of products. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • He was sufficiently instructed on the basics of business school.
  • If you are Fenty, and make beauty products, and have a fanbase the size of two continents, you stock up - enough for a couple of years.
  • But what surprised the beauty world is that there were in fact, out of the 40 shades of Fenty, colours that sold out.

Two things happened this week that completely captured my attention. One was Fenty Beauty. In case you’re a Martian, Rihanna, master fashion and style collaborator, singer, actress, philanthropist and earner of other monikers by end of this year alone, launched her well-thought out beauty range of products.

Not only was it seriously gorgeously packed, it came out with the intent of speaking to not just women of colour, but women of all colours. One man dared challenge her fans, questioning why Riri’s products did not sell out like Kardashian-Jenner’s do within hours.

He was sufficiently instructed on the basics of business school. If you are Fenty, and make beauty products, and have a fanbase the size of two continents, you stock up - enough for a couple of years. But what surprised the beauty world is that there were in fact, out of the 40 shades of Fenty, colours that sold out.

Those were foundations catering to the darker-darkest end of the spectrum. The shades other beauty companies did not stock in the past because they said no one bought them. As it so happens, the imagined slow movers were exactly what the women of the world were waiting for.

Unless a product is specifically engineered for women of colour, such as black|Up and Black Opal, who have both reinvented themselves this year, it has been challenging to find products for #TeamDarkSkin

I should know, what with being a lifelong member. Even when a cosmetics brand has boasted the ability to customise shades, there is always that base, that talc, that shade that forgets the rich undertones found in women of colour from blue to red to yellow. The nuances are an art as much as they are a science.

The other thing was a tweet referencing one of the hottest TV series right now, Insecure. With its predominantly African American cast, there are shades of black from Sudan to Morocco.

The tweet discussed how the HBO series has “mastered the cinematographic art of lighting black faces.” It features a clip of an interview with the show’s director of photography, Ava Berkofsy. It starts with reflective makeup then giving that makeup something to reflect. She then uses a Polariser, a filter placed in front of the lens.

Which works with a reflective surface say skin, and has the double blessing of shaping the light. Whether outdoors, in club scenes or on set, Ava’s cameras pick up the gradations of African skin no matter how varied the cast members complexions.

In shoots photographers work the lighting around the lightest person in the shot. It explains further how Kodak used white women to calibrate their lighting. And when Kodak finally addressed the appearance of brown colour on film, it was because of wait for it - images of wooden furniture and complaints from vendors, not brown skin.

Do you see the connection yet? Well, just like with cosmetics, photography was for years dependent on a Caucasian standard.

Not until someone was willing to find creative ways to go around it. It is not purely coincidence, at least I choose not to think so, that colour on the screens and in real life would collide. If a woman can’t find cosmetics in her colour, something that makes her feel pretty, that enhances what she innately is, it alters her self-perception.

 The same thing goes when it comes to seeing lit people who look just like us. I know it can seem this is all everyone is talking about, and you must be asking yourself, but who cares? I invite you to investigate the subliminal message and overt ideas you have about beautiful people, and trace them back to their origins. Not only is the lighting on Insecure groundbreaking, it counts because there are more black people on TV now than there was just four years ago.

It is not only skin deep. When new ways of doing old things previously thought impossible become possible, it goes beyond colour and the definition of beauty.

It reflects opportunities in front of and behind the camera. It’s about character portrayal. Watching and learning about people who are complex, multifaceted, wounded and sometimes do bad, unattractive things is the human experience. Especially when that human is looking back at you every time you check yourself out in the mirror.