Youthforia’s Act of Colorism & Anti-Blackness Should Not be Forgotten
Fiona Co Chan poses with products from her makeup brand, Youthforia. Source: Shark Tank Products
Dear Youthforia Support Team,
A family member recently gifted me the Date Night Foundation in the 600 shade. I'm amazed with how well it camouflages with my own skin tone! Even though it looks like tar, people hardly notice it on my skin. They’ve even complimented me for the glow it brought to my face. I didn’t know that foundation, much less jet black foundation, could brighten my face so much while being so light. I’ve started using it all over my body to feel beautiful in my own skin. Literally, my. own. skin.
My White friend is one of those who marveled at the 600 shade and wants to try the Date Night Foundation for herself. However, none of the current shades available match her skin tone. If your company made a Date Night Foundation in pure white called "100 Fair - Neutral," she would wear it and feel included in Youthforia's customer base. Think Elmer's glue, but in makeup form. Please forward this suggestion to the lab technicians, as I'm sure they'll do a fabulous job creating the 100 shade foundation.
Thank you so much for your attention on this matter! Keep up the great work in being color inclusive—all skin tones matter!
From a passionate consumer,
Krista
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If the above section sounds like satire, that is because it is satire. Even so, this is an actual email I sent to their support team. You may have laughed or been taken aback by the descriptions of “tar,” “jet black foundation,” and “Elmer’s glue, but in makeup form.” But there is a serious backstory as to why I wrote that email. And it has to do with Youthforia’s recent debacle.
Youthforia recently released a shade in their Date Night Foundation collection called “600 Deep - Neutral.” While it has been removed from their website, the color of the foundation was literally jet black, with an image of black paint in the photo carousel. And as further evidence of that, cosmetic chemist Javon Ford pointed out that the “CI 77499” code in the ingredients section is black iron oxide. It was the only pigment used in the 600 shade. No red iron oxide (CI 77491) or yellow iron oxide (CI 77492) were used to create undertones that occur in human skin due to eumelanin and pheomelanin. However, Youthforia’s lightest shade, “110 Fair - Neutral,” uses all three of those pigments in consideration of skin undertones.
That explains why their 600 shade foundation looks just like black face paint, as beauty influencer Golloria George points out in one of her TikToks. When watching the TikTok of her doing the comparison, it’s evident that one liquid is more pigmented than the other. However, both of them pass as face paint. She sums up the contents of the 600 shade perfectly: “tar in a bottle.”
Typically I would not be surprised by anti-Black behaviors, but I am highly surprised by this one. As demonstrated with blackface scandals surrounding multiple celebrities and politicians, painting one’s face black is absolutely off limits. Blackface dehumanizes Black people into one-dimensional caricatures, fueling stereotypes of their looks and personalities. Blackface dates back to minstrel shows, where White performers used blackface and dressed in rags to mock enslaved Black people and insert Whiteness as the standard. It was low-income White people who profited off being minstrel performers, and White audiences across the U.S. were entertained by minstrel shows. Minstrel shows date back to around the 1830s, and Jim Crow arose as the first minstrel character, played by Thomas Dartmouth Rice. The segregationist Jim Crow laws were named after that character.
Even without knowing those specific facts about blackface, ignorance is no excuse. The anti-Blackness behind it has been emphasized again and again. So why on God’s green Earth would any makeup brand create and sell black foundation that a non-Black person could use to commit blackface? Why would they do so thinking that dark-skinned Black people would accept it? Or that such a foundation would work on the darkest of dark-skinned people? Even the darkest of dark-skinned people have some sort of undertone, and no one’s skin is truly jet black. Black people come in a wide variety of skin tones, and those tones are varying shades of brown. And for that matter, no one’s skin tone is pure white either. As George emphasizes, “When we say we want you guys to make shades for us, we don’t mean to go to the lab and ask for minstrel show black. What we mean is for you to take the browns that you have made and create undertones. Do what you need to do in the lab so it’s a darker shade of brown.”
Ever since Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty shook the beauty industry counters with their wide range of dark skin foundations, other beauty brands have pledged to be inclusive of dark-skinned people with their foundation collections. This is colloquially called the “Fenty Effect.” Brands such as NARS Cosmetics, Haus Labs by Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande’s r.e.m. beauty, and Serena Williams’s newly-launched Wyn Beauty have successfully made dark skin tones matter. However, the issue still feels brand new, because these changes did not start taking place until the past few years. A dissertation can be written on colorism in the beauty industry and how corporations have been complicit in upholding it. Although for those who do not know what colorism is, here is an overview on its pervasiveness in society.
Colorism is discrimination based on skin tone, particularly against dark-skinned individuals. Coined by The Color Purple author Alice Walker, she first used the word in her essay “If the Present Looks Like the Past, What Does the Future Look Like?” featured in her 1983 book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. At the beginning of her essay, she describes colorism as “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color” and calls out colorist dynamics amongst Black U.S. Americans. She also says that Black communities cannot progress without addressing colorism, which is absolutely correct.
Colorism and racism do not carry the same definitions, but they work alongside each other and cannot be separated. In fact, colorism is a form of internalized racism. It exists throughout the Black diaspora, which is unfortunate, because the primary targets of colorism are Black people. Although under White supremacy, colorism also exists amongst non-Black POC as a consequence of White-centric beauty standards forced onto them. And in beauty industries across Asia, the effects include products such as skin lightening creams.
Skin lightening creams exist in countries like Thailand, India, and the Philippines. They get promoted via TV commercials, and celebrities like Priyanka Chopra Jonas have been in lightening cream commercials. What makes Chopra Jonas’ commercial extremely heartbreaking is the backstory behind it. In an episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast , she says, “The commercial was so damaging. I’m darker skinned and this guy comes in. I was selling flowers and he comes in and he doesn’t even look at me. And I start using this cream and I get a job, I get the guy, and all my dreams come true. And that was like, mid-2000s.” In different movies, her skin appeared lighter because of the lighting and make-up she received on-set. Despite being crowned Miss World in 2000, Bollywood filmmakers didn’t stop being colorist towards Chopra Jonas. She is not the only crossover Indian actress to have faced colorism either. Mean Girls star Avantika also said in a Cosmopolitan interview in May that she has felt “uglier” in India than in the U.S. due to colorism and has noticed that she has more opportunities in the U.S. to convince others she’s talented, outspoken, and deserving of success. Of course, colorism still exists in Hollywood and the rest of the U.S. That said, colorism gets called out frequently in the U.S., so it doesn’t go unchecked as often. Also, the selling of over-the-counter skin lightening products is illegal in the U.S.
Going back to Youthforia, its founder, Fiona Co Chan, is Chinese: her parents were Chinese refugees who fled to Vietnam and then to the U.S. Colorism exists amongst Chinese people as well, and it is possible that she saw and heard colorist messaging growing up. Even so, how did she think jet black foundation would adapt to any skin tone? Did she think that being a Black person meant having literal black skin? Or that the Black diaspora’s varying amounts of melanin do not carry any undertones?
This brings up another point that must be emphasized—colorism is inherently anti-Black, because of how it promotes Whiteness at the expense of Blackness. Here is an example of how: a TIME Magazine cover dated for April 23, 2001 features three biracial women: Maggie Q, Tata Young, and Asha Gill. Titled “All Mixed Up,” its cover goes on to read, “Half Asian, Half Caucasian, And 100% Cool. Why Eurasians Are the New Face of Asia.” To be clear, the problem with this cover does not have to do with the three women themselves. It has to do with the glorification of Whiteness and the message that Asians should mix with White people to have beautiful babies. Blackness was not, and to this day, is still not glorified in Asia.
After I ran into that TIME Magazine cover, I said to myself that TIME would never release a cover featuring three half-Black and half-Asian women. I know that back in 2001, they never thought to create a cover featuring Yoon Mi-rae, Amerie, and Kimora Lee Simmons that read, “Half Asian, Half African, And 100% Cool. Why Afro Asians Are the New Face of Asia.” And I know that even in 2024, TIME would still never try to make a cover featuring Kamala Harris, H.E.R., and Naomi Osaka with that headline. Because colorism creates a hierarchy that places Blackness at the bottom of society. The colorism that exists in non-Black communities has ignited anti-Blackness within those communities around the globe.
As Dr. Jishnu Guha-Majumdar, an assistant professor of political science at Butler University, states in The Butler Collegian, “One constant across every classification of [race] is that Black people or people from Africa are put at the bottom. That is reflected in a lot of modern-day society in the sense that one of the ways that people who are non-Black and non-white can try to advance their social status is by throwing Black people, or Blackness, under the bus, and distancing themselves from Blackness. That’s how you achieve more social status or proximity to whiteness.” There is a lot to be said about how anti-Black stereotypes surrounding “anger” and “troublemaking” fuel the exclusion of dark-skinned individuals. When dark-skinned Black people speak out against their exclusion, they’re dismissed as being angry complainers who always “play the race card” and are given the false promise that “they’ll come next” in the line-up.
So when Co Chan posted a since-deleted TikTok about how her brand was not diverse in shade range due to trying to test a “proof of concept,” it did not do her any favors. In addition, the TikTok she posted of her trying to find a model for the 600 shade showed her own lack of confidence in the shade. Let’s not even get started on the filters and selective editing of this video. She claimed to have found two men for whom the shade works on, yet you cannot see the foundation on their skin. She knew it would not blend into their skin, but she had a deadline to meet. One of the men appeared on the shade guide on Youthforia’s website, and it was very insulting how he was used for deceptive marketing.
Youthforia knew what they were doing by releasing the 600 shade. They have faced controversy throughout their rise to fame, and Co Chan has known that dark skin inclusion was her company’s weak spot. Youthforia started gaining notoriety after Co Chan appeared on season 14, episode 15 of Shark Tank, which aired on March 3, 2023. At one point during her pitch, she mentioned the consumers’ request that a wider variety of shade options become available. One of the Sharks, Barbara Corcoran, asked why there needed to be additional shades if the foundation could adjust to every skin tone. That is a fair question. However, another Shark (and Youthforia’s investor) Mark Cuban said something that could qualify as insensitive.
In response to Co Chan mentioning the requests for additional shades, Cuban said, “Sometimes you shouldn’t listen to your customers. When you have something unique, you play that edge.” This statement may sound benign on the surface, considering he said this in the context of not being able to please everyone. And it’s true: you can’t please everyone. But because of the topic Co Chan was referencing, his statement comes across as being dismissive about the valid requests for wider shade range options. The people who made those requests were not doing it for the sake of “complaining.” They were doing so because they know that makeup is supposed to be inclusive of everybody. And if a makeup brand excludes dark-skinned people, then it is not an inclusive brand. It also does not help that in the fall of 2023, Youthforia was criticized for the lack of shade diversity in the Date Night Foundation product. They apologized and promised to do better after that controversy, but unfortunately, they ended up doing worse rather than better.
Why is it considered “too much” to ask for a wider availability of dark shade foundations? In an interview with Beauty Independent back in March, Co Chan said that a reason the shade availability was so limited was due to budgeting and the time it takes to create a collection of shades. Usually I would be understanding of those reasons. But I do not understand how those reasons led to the creation of a jet black foundation. Even with the 24 months it takes to create a high-quality shade range, Youthforia could still show the development of each shade on their social media accounts and get people excited about the release. There is a TikTok video where makeup artist and influencer Jackie Aina calls B.S. on Co Chan’s “proof of concept” and budget excuse. Aina stitches Co Chan’s since-deleted apology, stating that even with a limited budget there should be an even ratio of light, medium, and dark shades available, with undertones factored in.
Aina also states that light-skinned people generally get first dibs on proofs of concept, while dark-skinned people get the “crumbs” or “leftovers.” Although, that is assuming they get any “crumbs” or “leftovers” at all. Co Chan also said in the Beauty Independent interview that Youthforia had achieved “equal distribution in terms of shade representation across the influencers that we work with on a paid basis, especially for this launch.” Well then, how would she respond to George’s TikTok on how the darkest shade available, “590 Deep - Neutral with cool undertones,” appeared too red on her skin? Between the 590 and 600 shades there could indeed be a minimum of 10 additional shades, but Youthforia would consider that task to be “too much,” regardless of budget. Also, the image in that article shows that there are more light shade options than dark shade options. To me at least, many of those light shades look like duplicates of each other, while the dark shades don’t have that many duplicates. Where is the “equal distribution?” Again, even though the founder is Asian, colorist and anti-Black stereotypes have been spread throughout the Asian diaspora. Colorism and anti-Blackness have fueled the “model minority” myth, which is rooted in respectability politics and appealing to the White gaze. The connections between the “model minority” myth and anti-Blackness are worth deeper analysis in another article. Although for now, just know that the “model minority” myth is what leads some Asians to dehumanize Black people.
This “600 Deep - Neutral” shade dehumanizes Black people. Regardless of Youthforia’s intentions with that product, they riled up Black beauty consumers even more than they previously did. Which saddens me, because I watched Co Chan’s Shark Tank pitch around the time it was first aired, and I admired her aura and confidence. Youthforia’s concept was innovative and I envisioned it being a big hit with Gen Z-ers and Millennials. I was rooting for her, we were all rooting for her. However, she, the other Youthforia executives, and the lab techs involved in making the 600 shade need to deeply reflect on their own colorism and anti-Blackness. They should do so while accepting that Black beauty influencers and consumers are not obligated to forgive them for this debacle.
Even if they became inclusive of dark skin tones by spending 2 years making high-quality shades, I highly doubt they will come back from all this. There are a few suppliers, such as Revolve and Credo, that have already stopped stocking Youthforia products. That does not necessarily mean they will go out of business, but their reputation is definitely stained. They exposed their ethos, or lack thereof, by creating the 600 shade, and as the Maya Angelou quote goes, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Personally, I cannot think of a more colorist beauty company. No other modern-day makeup brand would create a foundation that is reminiscent of what White minstrel performers would use to mock Black people. It is worse than not having any dark shades in the foundation collection at all. It breaks my heart to say it, but I have lost all respect for Co Chan. She has defended the indefensible and made feeble excuses at that. The “600 Deep - Neutral” foundation is no longer listed on their website, but their action should be remembered as unspeakably offensive and as the epitome of anti-Blackness in the beauty industry.
And remember at the beginning I mentioned that there should be a pure white foundation (i.e., “Elmer's glue, but in makeup form”)? Youthforia messed with Black beauty influencers by creating a jet black foundation, so now they should mess with White beauty influencers by creating a pure white foundation labeled “100 Fair - Neutral.” It will be simple to make. All they have to do is use the pigment CI 77891 (titanium dioxide), and voila! White beauty influencers now have a foundation for themselves too. And what’s more, children can use Elmer’s not just for crafts, but on their faces as well. Teachers and parents will no longer have to complain about children’s messiness!
Following this controversy, Youthforia announced the Director of Product Development position, which would “focus on inclusivity and the creation of a diverse product line.” They still have not made a real apology for releasing the 600 shade, but they created such a position as their “commitment to providing inclusive products.” My advice for the director would be to demand the creation and release of the “100 Fair - Neutral” shade. My White friends would be so grateful and no longer cry “reverse racism” over the lack of inclusivity.
Speaking of which, Youthforia has not responded to my customer support email. At this point, they likely never will. This exposes their anti-Blackness, because how are they creating a jet black foundation but not a pure white one? It is completely irresponsible and abhorrent, just like my email.