March • 2022
globalheroes.com
“Representation saves lives; it is as simple as that,” says Cheekbone Beauty founder Jenn Harper. MAKEUP BY MICHELLE WILLIS. IMAGE BY © CLAYTON UPSON
Breaking Barriers in the Beauty Industry More than makeup, Cheekbone also works to carve out a place in the cosmetics “When I was a young girl, I did not see anyone in the mainstream industry where Indigenous people can feel seen. True to media that looked like me, and her Anishinaabe roots, Jenn that contributed to me feeling ashamed of who I was and what aims to make a difference in the lives of Indigenous youth. I looked like,” says Cheekbone Each shade of Cheekbone’s Beauty founder and CEO Jenn Harper. “I do not want any other liquid lipstick is named after an Indigenous woman working to Indigenous youth to have to feel that way.” better their community and the world, from Ashley Callingbull, Based out of St. Catharines, Ontario, Cheekbone Beauty is the first Canadian and the first Indigenous woman to ever an Indigenous-owned beauty brand paving the way to true win the Mrs. Universe title; to sustainability, in line with the water activist and youth hero teachings in their Indigenous roots. Autumn Peltier. Known for creating high“When we tell you our quality, vegan, cruelty-free pigments are powerful, we are referring to their captivating beauty products designed for low environmental impact depth and colour, but also the hard work they help us do for and maximum wearability, Cheekbone Beauty’s vision has our community,” shares Jenn. been to build a perfect circular Giving back to their economy in the cosmetics community is the centrepiece of space—one that mirrors the Cheekbone’s mission, whether spirit of reuse and repurposing through product donations, that nature does so effortlessly. monetary donations, or project“We as Indigenous people focused donations. have an innate connection to To date, Cheekbone Beauty the land, earth, and water,” has donated more than $150,000 Jenn told InStyle last year. to a wide variety of causes, from “The importance of paying addressing the educational funding gap to supporting attention to brands that have experience in sustainability is organizations like Shannen’s going to be really important Dream, the FNCFCS, the for the world going forward.” Navajo Water Project, One Tree RAYE MOCIOIU
Planted, and many more nonprofits across North America. Cheekbone’s definition of success is not based on what you attain for yourself but on what you give back to your community. That mission drives Cheekbone to give back through donations and create a space in the beauty industry where Indigenous youth feel represented and seen. Although the beauty industry has made strides in showcasing diversity in marketing campaigns and beginning to cater to the needs of nonwhite makeup users, there is still work to be done—key audiences in the beauty space are still underrepresented. Indigenous people, for one, are still all too often left out of beauty marketing, a reality that drives Cheekbone Beauty’s mission to carve out a space where Indigenous people of all ages can see themselves represented in the products they use and, perhaps even more importantly, truly feel like the makeup they wear was made with them in mind. Women over 40 are another demographic commonly left out of beauty marketing. With beauty marketing campaigns mainly dominated by young
women, the beauty industry tells women over 40 to focus on anti-aging products that make them look more youthful—and even those campaigns often use models in their 20s. “I think that marketers created the narrative that you need to look young and white to be beautiful, and society has embraced it for far too long,” shares Jenn. “We also know that so much of what you see in the media is edited and not real, which contributes to this unattainable view of what is ‘beautiful.’ Now there are apps and filters that you can use to modify yourself, right at your fingertips.” It’s no secret that the beauty industry tends to prey on women’s insecurities, and the process of editing models to look ‘flawless’ only serves that insidious purpose. “At Cheekbone Beauty, we want everyone to feel comfortable just being themselves,” says Jenn. “No filters, no photoshop. Leave the lines, show the skin texture, and remind the world that this is what true self-love looks like.”
With this in mind, Cheekbone Beauty launched Warrior Wisdom, a campaign focused on empowering mature audiences to embrace their natural beauty and experiment with makeup they’ve been told is “for younger people.” With three models between the ages of 40 and 60 years old, Cheekbone Beauty wants women to know that age is beauty, and they should show theirs off with pride. “To us at Cheekbone Beauty, having warrior wisdom means you have experience and knowledge to pass down to younger generations,” Jenn continues. “You wear your lines proudly. We wanted to help highlight another area that the beauty industry leaves out when they are advertising cosmetics. It seems the only time those over 40 are included is when they are being told to look younger. We want everyone 40 and older to know that they hold the knowledge that only comes with experience, and they shouldn’t be afraid to show that off, especially with bold pops of colour! “Embracing all of you and exuding confidence is far more attractive than surface ‘beauty’ will ever be. Who decides what is beautiful, after all?”
Crisis in Vet Care—And Solutions
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B.C. vet hospital beats staff shortages, high costs and inflation with a not-for-profit model. There is a crisis in veterinary care. A shortage of trained professionals, an increase in demand, and the impacts of inflation on already costly procedures combine to put the lives of animals at risk. Every year, more veterinarians retire than graduate from Canada’s five vet colleges. As a result, by 2024, B.C. will have a shortage of 500 veterinarians. Already, clients in parts of the province are being asked to drive hours for care or wait weeks for an appointment. The critical shortage of veterinarians comes as demand is increasing. Well over half of Canadian households have pets—and that number only increased during the pandemic. The number of dogs visiting veterinarians, for example, increased 40 percent over the decade ending 2018. “With a majority of Canadian households just a few hundred dollars from insolvency, an unexpected vet bill can be devastating,” says Eyal Lichtmann,
RAPS, located in Metro Vancouver and one of Canada’s fastest-growing and most innovative no-kill animal-serving agencies, is developing a new model of community-owned, notfor-profit vet care to make animal healthcare more affordable. “Eliminating the profit motive…makes the community-owned hospital an enviable place to work, which means RAPS is able to attract the talent that other clinics struggle to recruit in a time of desperate staffing shortages.” SAMANTHA AND HER RESCUER, BREA ST. JAMES © RAPS
CEO of the Regional Animal Protection Society (RAPS). “More devastating still is the tragedy of ‘economic euthanasia,’ the situation where an animal with a treatable condition is put down because the family, or the rescue agency, cannot afford the medical bills.” All of these issues will only be aggravated by the sudden spike in inflation.
The RAPS Animal Hospital opened in 2018 with the goal of eliminating the profit motive from vet care. Since then, the hospital has provided more than $3 million in partially or fully subsidized veterinary care to households with low incomes or facing other challenges. The hospital offers B.C.’s only 100 percent interestfree payment plan. While other veterinarians are
shortening their hours due to capacity limitations, RAPS Animal Hospital has continually added hours and anticipates becoming a 24/7 hospital this year or next. This is because eliminating the profit motive and the pressure on veterinarians to upsell expensive procedures make the community-owned hospital an enviable place to work, which means RAPS is able to attract the talent that other clinics struggle to recruit in a time of desperate staffing shortages. The promise of the communityowned hospital is evident in thousands of happy endings. One story is Samantha’s. She was rescued by a Good Samaritan from a life of gross neglect and abuse and brought to the RAPS Animal Hospital. During surgery to remove a tumour on Samantha’s head and to spay her, doctors discovered an infection of the uterus. If surgery had been delayed by days or possibly even hours, Samantha would have died.
Instead, the surgery saved her life. Because RAPS has Canada’s only hyperbaric oxygen therapy facility for pets—a cutting-edge modality long used in human healthcare and now available at the most advanced vet facilities in the United States—Samantha’s skin condition and other issues improved dramatically. She was brought up to a healthy weight. Samantha was adopted by a family in Comox, where she is living the island life surrounded by all the love every dog deserves. Hers is just one of many stories in which the not-for-profit RAPS Animal Hospital saved the life of an animal who might have faced euthanasia elsewhere. “Nobody likes to pay bills, especially unexpected vet expenses,” Lichtmann says. “But our clients say that, in addition to the affordability of our not-for-profit hospital, knowing that funds go to save and improve the lives of other animals, like Samantha, gives them a really good feeling.”
