Menu Menu

Beauty brands are advocating for the redefinition of Black

MAC Cosmetics, e.l.f, and Morphe are just some of those involved with a campaign that’s seeking to shift perceptions about what it means to be Black.

In 2020, the pressing question of ‘how can I help’ was one that dominated social media well into the following year.

It came on the back of protests across the globe which not only called for an end to police brutality and justice for George Floyd’s murder, but for improved allyship from major brands long at fault of profiting off the exploitation of Black people.

With BLM now the largest civil movement in US history, it’s become increasingly difficult for companies to attract consumers with empty promises of their solidarity towards the community and in 2022, support fuelled by underlying performative motives will be sniffed out in an instant.

Unfortunately, throughout recent months most black-square posting brands have fallen short in their responsibility to keep momentum going and the brunt of substantive action has fallen back into the hands of those with far less influence.

Beauty industry joins wave of corporate support for Black Lives Matter

It appears with the exception of some key players in the beauty world, however, thanks to Sharon Chuter, a powerful advocate for Black voices throughout the industry and founder of Pull Up For Change, an organisation working to usher in a future of fair Black representation at corporations and hold them accountable for their self-proclaimed ‘wokeness’ when the push for equality was impossible to ignore.

On a mission to change the way people think about the word ‘Black,’ her latest campaign aims to shift perceptions around what it means to be Black, reject negative connotations, and celebrate the beauty of Blackness.

How? By partnering with the likes of MAC Cosmetics, e.l.f, and Morphe (among a slew of others) on limited edition, all-black packaging for their best-known products to raise awareness and provoke meaningful conversations. All profits – last February’s first incarnation was hugely successful raising a whopping $400,000 – go to the Pull Up For Change Impact Fund, which provides funding to emerging Black business owners.

‘A lot of the issues that Black people face at work are not a result of conscious bias but are a result of unconscious bias, and unconscious bias is driven by systemic racism,’ she explains, having witnessed first-hand this lack of diversity during her time at the helm of Benefit, a subsidiary of LVMH. ‘And the only way to offset unconscious bias is to do the opposite and to make a conscious effort to counter it.’

Alongside Make It Black, she’s separately penned an open letter to the Merriam-Webster and Oxford English dictionaries urging them to update their definitions of ‘Black’ to remove derogatory, menacing, or unclean associations (the former defines it as ‘dirty, soiled’) in favour of positive, modern takes.

Her ultimate goal is to have ‘Black’ recognised as synonymous with luxury, timelessness, and class – as it should be.

‘A lot of people just felt these were always the connotations of ‘Black’: that it’s always been bad, it’s always been evil,’ Chuter continues, adding that the initiative has shown her just how many Black employees don’t want to be identified as Black because of the word’s implications alone.

‘It impacts every Black person on a personal level. It’s not a new conversation. Why I’m being so public about this is because I want to keep putting this case forward, so that, over time, the whole world can turn around and ask the dictionaries, ‘why aren’t you changing the definition?’ I want them to come out and publicly tell us the reason why they feel like wrong and vial is more accurate than luxury and formality.’

Accessibility