of beauty journalism

I can’t get back into the industry.”

She had applied for a job at Cosmopolitan and hadn’t heard back. “But then I just emailed the digital beauty editor, Vic Jowett, and I was just like, I really love your website, I really love the beauty content and I would love to write for you,” she explains. She felt that the content didn’t cater to Black women and pitched some ideas. “And even if I don’t write for you, could I just talk to you about what a Black woman might want to see?”

“She emailed me back and said, ‘Can you write them for me?’ And I was like, ‘Yes! Yes, I’ll literally do that right now. Drop everything.’ If Vic didn’t give me that chance, I don’t know where my career would have been, because it wasn’t just my words, it was my face.”

Jowett asked her to do before and after pictures with foundation and test the best products for Black skin and hair. Reid has played a vital role in their product testing process since 2017. “I really credit Cosmo. When I think about it, it gives me chills. I know that sounds really cheesy,” she laughs.

All three women agree that representation has improved within beauty journalism but it is not yet where it should be. “A lot of hair trends come from Black women, you know, we started it,” says Shelley, going on to say how Caucasian women jump on trends like braids or baby hair formation. “There’s nothing wrong with that because they could turn round and say, ‘Well, you straighten your hair, but then I could turn round and say, ‘Yeah but we only straighten our hair because we are criticised for our hair by you guys. You do it out of choice.’”

Kemi Alemoru, gal-dem’s culture editor who has written on beauty at the publication

Guardian, agrees that it’s harmful when Black trends are adopted by other women.

“With beauty, obviously it can be a joyous space but it’s also an inherently political space,” she says, citing the annoyance many feel at braids being attributed to the Kardashians when Black women have been discouraged from wearing them for being supposedly unprofessional. “Beauty desks will parrot that as if [the Kardiashians] are the pioneers of it rather than really looking into the history of that look.”

“I want us to question what is beautiful,” says Alemoru, who believes that as a society we have very narrow beauty ideals. “I think it’s great to champion darker skin tones,

“When the colour of your skin doesn’t matter is when you see Black women in all felds of journalism. They’re writing about white stuff, they’re writing about Black stuff, they’re writing about whatever. They’re not pigeonholed, when at the moment I think we might be getting pigeonholed.”

Reid adds that for representative beauty journalism, the industry needs to stop viewing Black people as a monolith and appreciate that the experience of each person from each culture has its own nuances, naming Jewel and Twiggy Jalloh, a beauty and lifestyle writer for Vogue. “We are not just the be all and end all of Black beauty,” she says. “There are things that we miss from each of our cultures as well, so the more diversely you hire the better.” because colourism exists. I think we should question Eurocentric standards of beauty.”

Alemoru agrees that hiring diversely is the route to industry progression when it comes to representation, adding that desks at traditional publishers are predominantly white, especially those in senior editing roles.

She continues: “I think there are far more conversations and far more aesthetics that can be explored, and I think that just takes editors who have an eye on the fringes and look at different communities and don’t just parrot what is trending.”

For things to progress further, Reid says other journalists need to speak about Black beauty and shouldn’t be afraid to write on the subject. “I love when my friends message me like, ‘Babe just checking, is this a box braid

“There are a lot of [PoC] creatives in journalism who might get to write the odd piece or might get featured on beauty pages, but in terms of beauty editors, of course right the way through journalism there are real issues with diversity,” she says. “When we’re talking about journalists it’s really important to think about who has the power to commission, who has the money to commission, who’s at senior editorial levels, and we know that that is not diverse.”

“Real diversity means that these people are at the top,” says Jewel, who is now launching her own beauty range with 20 shades of foundation. “In the boardrooms, CEOs, beauty directors, all