I’m rubbing and rubbing and rubbing in circular motions into my cheeks until the sunscreen feels stiff against my skin. It's absorbed into my pores as much as it possibly can, but the ghostly greyness won’t budge. I grab my laptop and reread the marketing material the brand pinged me on email—a new tinted mineral SPF... "for all skin tones."
This is my job. As Cosmopolitan UK’s beauty director, packages containing new product launches arrive for me every day, and I slap them on to my skin, hair, and body to see if they live up to the claims they come with.
"Can’t wait to hear what you think!" the PR signs off via email. She’s also followed up to see how I’m getting on with the product. I double-check the press release that’s attached. A trio of women from different ethnicities smile back at me through the screen—one with a deeper complexion than mine. What movie magic has occurred here to make the SPF disappear into her skin, while mine still looks as grey as the full moon emoji?
All skin types may have been thought of when creating this "innovative" new product, apparently, but the reality of its effect on my melanated skin? Not as advertised. But the truth is: There are no industry rules or regulations ensuring product testing is inclusive or that the product is actually tested on the skin types it promises to cater for.
I was so hopeful. Things really seemed like they had changed. More Black models in campaigns, more Black influencers invited on brand trips. And every time I opened my phone, I saw women like Melissa’s Wardrobe, Jackie Aina, and Uche Natori either living it up in far-flung destinations (on the beauty brand’s budget) or repping brands as ambassadors. Thanks to the fever dream that was 2020 and "Black Square Summer," where no brand was safe from being called out for lack of diversity and inclusion, everyone from founders to influencers was "listening and learning." There was a seismic shift in the way that many beauty brands presented their products. Or, at least, it felt like it.
But inside the beauty world, the status quo has far from changed. Yes, the perception of inclusion is being perpetrated through brand marketing and other outward-facing performative promotions that consumers can see. But it's a smokescreen, a quick fix for brands that don't want to appear racist. Scratch beneath the surface, and the infrastructure of product creation is a far cry from being truly inclusive.
Progress on Pause
Fast-forward five years from the "Pull Up for Change" movement, and it feels like things have stagnated. Progress is on pause. I’ve seen firsthand how non-white consumers remain an afterthought when it comes to the behind-the-scenes stages. They’ll be considered when choosing who to be the "face" of the product, but in terms of ingredients, people who don’t have white skin are barely considered when bringing skincare to market. Ingredients continue to be tested on a homogeneous group of people, comprised, the majority of the time, of those with Caucasian skin.
A 2022 report by McKinsey & Company highlighted the nonchalance towards diversity in product testing. "The testing done for the performance of an active ingredient is done on someone who is caucasian or Asian 99 percent of the time," one chemist says. "There’s rarely data validating the efficacy on melanated skin. But we’ll put that in a product targeting melanated skin anyway." This then leaves Black consumers frustrated when they part with their cash for yet another product that fails to work for them.
While it’s obvious that makeup brands need to offer a diverse range of skin tones in their collections, what might not be immediately obvious to the consumer is that our skin differs in more than just a visual way. At the core of the issue is the fact that skin is a living organ—it reacts and has to be nurtured. And skin characteristics and reactiveness really do change when you look at different ethnicities.
The Fitzpatrick scale is a medical system to classify skin based on how it reacts to UV–it divides skin into six types, from very pale (type 1) to very dark (type 6). But it’s been co-opted by skin experts to attribute other characteristics to different ethnicities as they share commonalities. "Skin of color, particularly darker skin tones, have some distinct characteristics that can influence how it responds to products," explains consultant dermatologist Derrick Phillips, MD, who notes that skin of color tends to be drier, for example. The way that skin of color reacts to potent ingredients is also different to light skin.
And the founders of the latest influx of amazing Black-owned brands in the skincare world—like 4.5.6. Skin and S’Able Labs—recognize this. They know our skin shouldn’t be an afterthought, so they take ideating, creating, and testing into their own hands. But while we love to see Black-owned brands thriving, why is it so difficult for huge beauty brands to be accountable? "The problem isn’t Black-owned brands or white-owned brands," Tumi Siwoku, principal chemist at Beauty Science Labs, tells me. "The problem is rewriting the rule books. Addressing the protocols and the standards to which they’re making things."
Siwoku is one of just a few Black formulators in the UK, working with big conglomerates to create the products that line our bathroom cabinets. According to her, the blame shouldn’t just fall on the brands but on the testing houses they work with. These testing houses are tasked with pulling together the panels of people that will prove if a product works as the brand says it does. This is where all the big marketing claims come from, like "89 percent of people said wrinkles were reduced" or "skin looks smoother"—the stuff that makes us go, ooh, I want to try that.
The biggest testing house Siwoku knows of is in an area of England with an overwhelmingly caucasian population—"and they recruit locally," she says. So why could this be an issue? "This means the likelihood of the testing panels being diverse is a lot slimmer," she explains. Then, Siwoku lists off some of the brands she knows that utilise this particular testing house, and I think of the products that have lined my own shelf. I’ve re-homed so many skincare products from the brands she mentions because they didn’t work for me. It actually makes me feel silly. Of course, they didn’t. And worse, no one thought or cared whether they would or not to begin with.
As a beauty director, I’ve worked with incredible experts who’ve been able to guide my personal skincare journey and inform the advice that I’m able to give other Black women in my writing. It’s through this that I learned that years of unguided, powerful exfoliation via acidic skincare use were actually creating my hyperpigmentation, not helping it. I went through my 20s sloughing away my dead skin cells, thinking it would eventually see me through to the most even skin tone I’d ever had. Instead, my skin felt painfully stingy, and every day, I would dread taking my makeup off as I knew I’d be met with the skin-prickling sensation that kept occurring. And I had no idea why. My skin felt hot to the touch, and I had little raised bumps, and the hyperpigmentation that I’d been trying to treat for the past month with a potent concoction of chemical exfoliants hadn’t gone anywhere. In fact, had gotten worse. I felt helpless.
"Inflammation tends to leave more visible marks in Fitzpatrick 5 and 6, therefore harsh ingredients (such as retinol or exfoliating acids) should not be used too aggressively as irritation can lead to unwanted pigmentation," advises Dr Phillips. It’s frightening that there are products that Black beauty lovers are using day-to-day that have not been tested on skin like theirs before hitting stores. Thanks to stringent regulations via the EU, no truly harmful skincare will make it through to our baskets; however, some products simply aren’t going to work for Black skin in the same way as they do for white skin.
Now more than ever, there are increasingly potent over-the-counter acids that are marketed as to fix things like noticeable hyperpigmentation but can actually exacerbate it on dark skin tones. Trying something that’s not meant for you because it’s advertised with people that look like you is, at best, making us part with money that we shouldn’t be. At worst, it’s detrimental to our skin health.
Asking for Accountability
When I contacted the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), it said there aren’t any specific rules about this issue, and there haven't been any formal rulings on it. I found that incredibly depressing.
After some digging, I found the ASA has advertising guidance on health, beauty, and "slimming" claims made by brands. But it’s not exactly watertight. "Objective claims must be backed by evidence, if relevant, consisting of trials conducted on people," it says, without stipulating who those "people" should be. Elsewhere, the guidance adds that "at least one adequately controlled experimental human study" is preferred, but "an adequately controlled observational human study" might also be sufficient. In short: Unless someone makes a claim, it seems nothing is in place to ensure that products advertised "for all skin" have been tested on all skin. While the ASA says it expects brands to have suitable evidence to support their claims, ultimately the buck lies with the consumer to call things out.
But it’s tricky. Sometimes a product simply doesn’t work for us as an individual, but this doesn’t mean it won’t work for someone else with a similar skin type. So how are we meant to know if a product doesn’t work for us versus, say, it not having enough ceramides to actually hydrate Black skin in general? Or if the AHA potency is too high for most Black skin to handle daily? Surely, this is the job of the brands we’re trusting with our beauty routines, right?
As an aesthetician and head of new product development and education at Supernova Body, Alicia Lartey knows what makes a brand fail. "Working in product development means I help to create products that you’re able to use on as many people as possible," she says. "This is not only good business practice, but also stems from ethics. We see brands release products all the time that are, quite frankly, flops, simply because they didn’t test it on the whole Fitzpatrick scale."
"If you intend to sell to it everyone, you test it on everyone—it’s common sense," she adds. "There may be nuances that you encounter across different skin tones, or there might not be anything significant to note, but how will you know if you don’t do the test? If we want to see true representation in the beauty space, it starts in the lab. Testing across the scale should be mandatory."
And what happens when it’s not? Well, a lot of frustrated non-white consumers. It feels like the cautiousness of brands appearing not diverse and not inclusive could be their biggest downfall when it comes to building loyalty with their non-white customers. Thankfully, in this era of social media, brands are being rightfully called out. Take the hundreds of videos of Black skinfluencers testing mineral sunscreens that claim to "leave no white cast" yet show skin left with a grey/purple hue that may be imperceivable on light skin but is impossible to miss on dark. It’s just one example of an obvious gap between testing, claims, and advertising.
"It’s what happens when you do not test products on a wide range of skin tones," states Lartey. "And it’s not enough to test on one person with a deep skin tone. The results have to be reproducible and repeatable on multiple people." But it’s also products that don’t leave glaringly obvious cosmetic results that are using diverse advertising imagery and messaging without proper testing for deeper skin tones.
When I press Dr. Phillips for some examples of ingredients that can be more volatile on Black skin, his answer shocks me. "The ingredients that people with Fitzpatrick type 4 to 6 skin should use with caution include retinol, alpha hydroxy acids, benzoyl peroxide, high-strength vitamin C (15 to 20 percent), and artificial fragrances." Essentially, my entire skincare routine. And I work in the industry. What chance does the average consumer have when it comes to decoding what they should and should not be using?
Powerful Pockets
It’s very easy to point fingers and call people out, but while this can work in some instances, ultimately, I don’t think it’s going to lead to systemic change. Unless diversity and inclusion are reviewed on a wider scale, with better advocacy in every aspect of product creation, regulation on this feels a long way off.
And whether you look to the testing labs to widen their pools, the brands to insist on it, or the marketing team internally to represent who the product works for truthfully, at the heart of this is us, the consumers. At Cosmopolitan, we’ll do everything in our power to continue to uncover the truth about the brands and products that work for different skin tones. But we all have to be bolder with our collective buying power.
"Ask brands point blank if they test products on all skin tones, try to find out more about the team, and speak to professionals who are also People of Color," suggests Lartey. Dr. Phillips echoes this. "Speaking with a qualified dermatologist is an invaluable way to receive bespoke advice tailored to your specific skin concerns, as no two people are the same," he says. "By learning more about the specific ingredients that work for your skin from a qualified practitioner, you’re more likely to achieve optimal results and avoid unnecessary irritation and potential damage."
In a world of mind-swaying ads and distracting social media pop-ups, it’s easy to forget that our money is what keeps brands thriving. Our pocket is so much more powerful than we think.
Keeks Reid is the Beauty Director at Cosmopolitan UK. While she loves all things beauty, Keeks is a hair fanatic through and through. She started her career in beauty journalism in 2013 as editorial assistant at Blackhair and Hair magazines working her way to Acting Editor of Blackhair magazine at 23 years old. She spent much of her career working in trade hairdressing media at Hairdressers Journal, Salon International and the British Hairdressing Awards. Which is why she is a regular contributor to Cosmo's Curl Up franchise. Now, alongside her Cosmo work, she presents, creates content on social media and works with a range of beauty companies; from magazines and websites to beauty brands and salons.
