The changing face W

Jewel went freelance aged 24. “I knew I’d never be made a beauty director, I had a big West African body and I have darker skin. I knew my face would never ft,” she says. “I call it work horse and show pony. I was always good enough to do the work, but I was never good enough to be front-of-house representing so I just twirled away and did my own thing.”

As it turns out, her own thing is writing for Vogue, Sunday Times Style, The Financial Times, and The Guardian. She’s had a column in Marie Claire and written for Holly Willoughby’s wellness platform Wylde Moon She is also writing her frst book – Curls and Coils: The Ultimate Guide to Loving Your Hair

“I literally spent my entire career just writing for everybody to prove a point, not only to other people, but to myself that I was enough, because I always felt I was on the outside of beauty journalism looking in.” She continues, “You can be

That’s what true discrimination is.”

And the fgures support the feelings. According to a 2021 study by LSE, Black journalists accounted for just 0.2 per cent of the industry, compared with the then 3 per cent of the population.

Only in the last three years has Jewel seen Black representation within beauty journalism really change. “I do think postBlack Lives Matter the whole world shifted and people can now see all these invisible barriers that they didn’t see before.”

Irene Shelley, editor in chief of Black Beauty and Hair, agrees that palpable change has only occurred within the last three years of her 36-year career. “I think it’s only since the Black Lives Matter protests that people woke up to the fact that there was a Black, mostly female audience that consumed beauty and hair [content] like their European counterparts,” she says.

“Before that, if I was doing just general article, or even a roundup of new product launches, I would struggle to fnd pictures of Black women promoting those brands, it just didn’t happen, so a lot of the time I’d have to miss it out or work around it,” says Shelley. “Because there’s nothing worse than saying you’re a Black publication and then people aren’t seeing the people they look like.”

According to a 2021 study by Future Forums, just 3 per cent of Black people felt ready to return to full time in-person work

“I pointed out that Elle and all those publications mix and match the price points of the beauty products they mention so that didn’t make any sense. She came back with another excuse, and I thought you’re making it up now.” Shelley forwarded the thread on to an EDI offcer at the beauty company but never got a response.

Keeks Reid has her own story of discrimination within beauty journalism. For two years during university, she used holidays to intern two weeks on, two weeks off at the Sunday Mirror as this was the maximum she could legally work without being paid.

But even with so much experience, she struggled for months after university to get an interview for a job or unpaid internship. “The only way I could get my foot in the door was by starting at Black Hair magazine which is a magazine specifcally for Black women,” she says.

“If anyone else gave my CV a chance, they probably would have been really impressed by it,” but they didn’t. After two years, she was acting editor in chief. She has since written for Refnery29, Harper’s Bazaar – among others – and is a contributing beauty editor at Cosmopolitan

After leaving Black Hair and going freelance, Reid felt stuck. “I was going to become a teacher because I thought,