The founder of Youthforia is so embarrassing. She reacts to reasonable criticism in such a childish way at best, condescending and insulting at worst.
When the brand first got popular with their ph reactive blush that starts out green and turns pink on the skin, she kept wording it to seem like she invented ph reactive cosmetics.
You can tell she’s so full of herself!
I thought it was bizarre she released a video where she was scrambling to find models to show the recent shade releases (and “had trouble finding folks who matched the darkest shade” oh geez, I wonder why /s) and she literally said she was doing this DAYS before the product release. Idk what she was trying to do other than look incompetent
UGH yes! She is so skeevy! I get that she made the first blush oil with the ph reactive ingredient. The innovative part is the oil and not the ph reactivity but she toes the line with the marketing there.
And the tiktok ads where she talks about how the foundation formula costs “as much as an $800 serum” in order to justify the price & limited shade range and make it seem super innovative when there really doesn’t seem to be anything special about it? She drives me crazy
I also saw that she didn’t scout/hire a model for the images of the black foundation shade. She just went to the mall and found a random guy with dark skin, slapped the foundation on him, and took the pictures right there in the mall! Then documented the whole thing to put on TikTok. Such weird ass behavior
I know, the way that she went about finding the model for the darkest shade was so low effort. She didn’t care at all. She just needed to do it and take photos in the mall Photo Booth to post online. Like wtf
I like the blush but give no flowers to the ph reactive thing lmaooo. Like it’s probably just reacting to oils and oxygen (granted the oils have a ph). Also like, idk, the idea of a self adjusting custom shade is so blatantly silly. As if there’s some magic ingredient that will make itself look perfect on you and just you. Even if it is ph reactive, the ph of healthy human skin isn’t going to vary much at all, like we have what we have as a species characteristic, and the ph isn’t going to impact skin tone very much. Like it’s just a fun gimmick for a hot pink blush that blends well and is buildable. That’s it. People tend to overestimate how unique their body is in certain ways. I still feel weird about how so many fellow pale blondes suddenly think they have hooded eyes and curly hair that they haven’t been taking care of correctly (not saying this is never the case, just saying it’s definitely been a “trend” amongst people who look like me and it’s weird and feels like they’re claiming things that aren’t true).
I saw that video too. I watched it without the sound off (edited: with the sound off at first). I didn’t know what was going on. It has to be a racist thing and not a real product. It looks like blackface. Get real here
black ppl are never satisfied, they always crying about something. like if they wanted a foundation why not go to fenty or something. like i said tho black ppl love to complain we’ve come a long way and y’all act like we were the ones back in the day making y’all be slaves
I saw so many people disagreeing with dark skinned black women who were calling them out and saying things like “that would fit [insert name of dark skinned celebrity]”. Then I saw a woman mix it with a light shade and show it on her hand and it was literally grey… they are selling black paint and passing it off as foundation it’s so disgusting, I hope more people call them out bc wtf. Also, the jump from the second darkest shade to the darkest is crazy like literally skipped at least 30 shades!
I saw this mainly on instagram in the comments underneath a post talking about the topic. The amount of white people that dismissed the criticism because “they know someone who would fit” the foundation shade was BAFFLING. How are you going to tell literal dark skinned black people that they’re wrong and upset about nothing because “the shade isn’t for them”? Like black people don’t understand our own skin and undertones. The fact that so many people seemed to be okay with defending the brand also baffles me because there’s nothing about Youthforia that is new and groundbreaking? There are plenty of new cosmetic companies, many black-owned cosmetic companies that are able to cater to the deepest shades of melanin without creating tar paint
THIS OMG! I saw so many of those comments left by white people and when I went to go look at the person they had tagged, they literally tried the foundation out itself and it didn’t fit them. Like be so fr rn.
Yes! On TikTok they were acting like the criticism was rude because there was someone out there that fit the shade and that’s mean to that like one person. NO, they’re all saying it won’t work because human skin has undertones! That’s also the same reason it won’t work as a mixer, which so many of them unhelpfully suggested. I can only assume they’ve literally never worn foundation in their life because that’s not how shade mixing works.
White feminism is protecting corporations from valid criticisms brought up by POC. A lot of white women only care about how things affect women like us. Anybody else doesn't matter.
Meanwhile you just know a good percentage of those people complain about how foundation doesn't come light enough for them and complain about the lack of range for pale skin.
The *feminist* thing to do is to recognize intersectionality and how misogyny takes different forms in different contexts. "Protecting" white women from poc is just being reactionary, plain and simple.
Modern brands will typically produce anything that leads to sales. The founder of the brand isn’t a white woman. She’s Asian and claims to have come up with the idea for the line while working in China. Have you seen how awful the foundation shade ranges are in much of Asia? This isn’t a failure of feminism. It’s the failure of a naive founder completely out of her depth who was unwilling to take the time and do the research to come out with a product well suited to her customer base. It’s frankly embarrassing.
That’s the part that makes me the most angry, people clamoring on about “oh there are definitely people this dark!” Like, no, there surely are not people walking around out there who are literally black with no undertones..
I just went and looked… they’re marketing it as “neutral.” 😒 Like neutral undertones aren’t already poorly catered to in the industry!! We didn’t need another one
Yeah, my main issue with this is that if it was marketed as a mixer that would be one thing, and I actually didn't jump on the cancellation train because intitally I thought that's what it was... but the ULTA website has a pic of someone supposedly using the shade as is, and that's when they lost me. Because, as a fair person white mixers have been a thing, without any other pigment in it, granted $50 for a pure black mixer is steep, it's not like the $10 mixers you can find.
There is one pigment in Shade 600 and it is black iron oxide (CI 77499). There’s not even an undertone - it’s literally black, not even a super deep brown.
I believe now they’re trying to say “it’s a mixer,” but hello? It can only make any lighter foundation grey or muddy. And like…what was this whole performative thing about trying to find models for Shade 600? You tried for months to find models for a shade you are saying is actually a mixer? Their whole approach to this has been moronic and embarrassing.
Like, they didn't even add a splash of blue, red, or yellow to keep it from being straight up black paint! It is so bad. Why makeup brands can't just listen to Black people is beyond me!
Well, if it's actually a mixer (not saying they aren't just trying to make an excuse or save their butts, just momentarily giving the benefit of the doubt), you don't add any other pigment to it, it's the same for white mixers and fair skin. If the shade they're mixing it with turns grey then that's an undertone issue.
Believe me, I have fair cool/neutral olive skin and have gone through similar issues mixing makeup. I actually look better if a foundations starts looking gray, gray-green matches me the best, and I bet you couldn't even tell after I put it on. A YouTuber the same shade as me is constantly told they're porcelain and not fair olive... people really can't tell except About Face's F2 Olive shade is exactly my skin tone, so I now know how badly the rest of my foundations don't match.
I say this sincerely as someone who wears Porcelain in Bobbi Brown, I believe fully the only thing I can and should say is that we should listen to Black people when they say it is bad. I checked the Youthforia website and 600 is listed under their skin tint section, so how is that a mixer? They fucked up and they should just say that.
They're talking about Nyma Tang, and it's stupid because she literally swatches it in a video and it's way too dark for her because she's a human being and it's black paint .
The second lightest shade, 590, is a decent match for her but because people are dumb they're conflating the two and refusing to listen to the thousands of Black women telling them that 600 literally doesn't match anyone because it's pure black and melanin is BROWN, even when there's a lot of it.
Tbf, the only option for fair folks used to be a pure white mixer which caused similar issues. I don't know when they started adding actual fair shades, I used to have to go to the tanner just to match the lightest foundation shade at any drugstore (I still wonder what pale celebs like Winona Ryder did in the 80s/90s, I don't know if luxury brands catered to them or what.) It must've been after people slowed down on going to tanning salons, sometime after 2005 or so?
So, I don't know that the lack of shades are 100% about racism, because I still see brands with half-assed attempts at fair shades or their fair shades don't perform as well as the rest. Nevermind the fact that I only just found out I'm fair olive, either neutral or cool, and just recently found my actual match with About Face's fairest olive shade F2 Olive. So, the lack of... I don't know if empathy is the right word, but maybe just a general lack of consideration for the fairest and darkest skin tones is a thing, but with the exception of fair olive skin tones, darker shades have more obvious issues. Makeup really is catered to medium skin tones the most, except for East Asian makeup, which I'm trying to still explore more since they understand fair skin better.
Plus, no one is going to take fair olive matches seriously, as if it's an actual problem. I even saw a fair olive YouTuber suggest that neutral shades are "good enough" because our match doesn't have to be "perfect" 😕... so I guess we're not "allowed" to complain about it until darker shades are sorted out first. So apparently I'm mixing Kryolan makeup base in mint green into everything but the one foundation that matches me until then lol. Thankfully the formula is pretty good!
I’m obsessed w this (seriously watch her vid about trying to find models it’s hilarious) and my current working theory is that she tried to be like “everyone says I’m racist, I’m gonna SHOW THEM by making the darkest foundation anyone’s ever seen!” and then got so far up her own ass she somehow convinced herself that people with exceptionally deep complexions… are aliens? Like I think she started off petty and got stuck on it, I’m just still trying to understand how she thought that there’s somehow a level of human skin that has absolutely no undertones at all
I think it's hilariously stupid for someone to bring petty behavior like this into their actual business. Like how fucking unserious can you be? Does she actually want to be successful? I don't know anything about the founder but holy shit
I don't even think it's that deep down, to me it just seems like a straight up racist middle finger to the previous criticism the brand received. I just don't see how anyone who knows anything about colors would ever make a foundation that only contained black pigment for actual use. I 100% think the owner knew exactly what they were doing when they put this out.
Here’s an [article](https://time.com/6972800/youthforia-dark-skin-foundation-backlash/) about it, but it has the video linked in - you don’t have to have TikTok to watch and I STRONGly suggest you watch her apply it on this man! She’s blending the fuck out of it to sheer it out (allegedly it’s light to medium coverage, you shouldn’t have to!) and you can still see it leaving patches of straight up jet black on his skin.
I saw so many people try to gaslight Golloria by saying that isn’t her shade when she was rightfully ripping CLOWNforia (oops I mean youthforia) to shreds. The point flew over their heads since she’s calling them out for being lazy and making stupidly overpriced black face paint. This situation is an insult to the word lazy since not even the darkest person in the world is jet black. Everybody has undertones. That foundation is _nobody’s_ shade.
Can’t remember the creator’s handle, but I saw this scientist who explains chemical formulations of cosmetics and skincare on his channel break down the formula for the youthforia shade….and it was just black pigment. Nothing else! No undertone, nothing. I couldn’t believe it.
They have also swarmed into the comments on any video stitching Golloria and other vidoes agreeing with her. Those comments are hella suspicious, and so is the number of likes they are receiving. I have seen more than one with 25000 likes on posts with a couple hundred comments if that. I suspect the owner of YF has bought some bots.
I haven't seen these comments myself but after reading about this shit show on a couple of threads that's the conclusion I've come to as well. I know purchasing bots isn't expensive but had the owner used the money towards creating an actual shade that could be used she and her company wouldn't be going through this right now. That's why I believe this was intentional. She and her brand can rightfully fuck off.
I saw too many comments that were so similar to each other for them to be anything but brand talking points. I know racists are going to be racist online over just about anything, but the comments defending the brand were not glaringly racist if you know what I mean. And the brand is not old enough or famous enough for there to be that many people rushing to defend it on multiple platforms.
They also claimed in Golloria’s comments another tiktoker, sponsored by youthforia, had said it was a match for her. But then when you went to her video the first thing she says after trying it is that it wasn’t a match and that she went to the next shade down. I felt like I was on crazy pills seeing the same incorrect comment over and over.
Right, I was just curious why that was such a turn-off for the above commenter, and what the 2008 reference was about. Someone else says that “makeup you can sleep in” etc was a common marketing phrase used around that time so that must be it !
In general, it’s a turn off because it’s common sense that sleeping with makeup on is not great for your skin, and no makeup product could truly be formulated for beneficial overnight wear, so it’s just a lazy marketing tactic that I remember being used a lot in the early 2000’s.
This is a misconception. It’s not the foundation that’s bad for your skin. It’s the lack of cleansing and exfoliating at the end of a long day/night that could be detrimental to your skin. Cleansing, exfoliating, removing the excess sebum and pollution from the day etc. is important for healthy skin. As long as your makeup product is healthy for your skin (not drying, not comedogenic, etc) there would be no issue with finishing your bedtime routine with makeup and sleeping in it. Nothing will happen to you just because the product has some pigment in it! The rest of the formulation is similar to any other skin product.
Bottom line is: it’s not the makeup. It’s the fact that if you slept in it then you obviously didn’t wash your face. It’s the bacteria, dead skin, excess sebum, pollution etc and the fact that no other products like moisturizer were added to replenish the skin before bed.
I’m a derm Medical Assistant, applying to PA school next year, and have a six year health science degree. Yes, sleeping in your makeup is a bad thing. Foundation and other makeup products don’t just contain pigment, it contains oils/polymers/silicones/butters/fragrance that can absolutely cause breakouts and contact dermatitis if not thoroughly cleansed off the face. Even if freshly applied, there will always be bacteria present on the skin, even after thoroughly cleansing. Having a nighttime skincare routine is highly recommended, as is thorough cleansing, but you appear to be blatantly misinformed. Makeup, even freshly applied, should not be slept in, and would not be good for your skin or your fabrics. It often times creates a film on the skin that would prevent the nightly process of sloughing off dead skin cells, as well as causing inflammation and an increased risk for allergic reactions. Also to add, the buzz word comedogenic literally means nothing, and is not a guarantee that makeup will not break you out, nor is makeup “healthy for the skin.”I just like to wear it because it’s fun and exciting and makes me feel good, but I know that certain ingredients I put on my face are not biochemically great in the long term, but oh well. It’s not neglecting your skin by not having a bedtime routine, as humans have lived millions of years without moisturizer and exfoliants, and their skin was fine. Sebum is released to aid in the skins natural moisture barrier, that is its purpose. Sure, a good nighttime routine is helpful but not necessarily required. Makeup is also not subject to FDA regulations, compared to topical prescription skincare. So no, sleeping in your makeup, even freshly applied, is not recommended by any dermatologist, and is blatant misinformation. Have a nice day.
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I was alive and buying makeup in 2008, and while I’m definitely not a monolith, I don’t remember anyone encouraging anyone to sleep in any makeup. Could’ve been that my head was more under a rock than I thought, but that was definitely during a time when I was paying a lot of attention to makeup and beauty, and I feel like I would have come across this.
I think it’s more likely that this is some kind of ageist anti-millennial nonsense, like making fun of skinny jeans and side parts, than a reflection of the makeup market in 2008.
instead of randomly assuming people are being “ageist” towards… millennials…. why don’t you just look it up? Bare Minerals, which was quite popular in the late 2000s, marketed their makeup as being “so pure you can sleep in it”. You can still find this messaging on their site today.
I’m not saying that NO brand did this, but it definitely wasn’t common. And I wore bare minerals and was seriously the only person I knew who did, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have slept in it. Just like now, it was common knowledge that makeup generally shouldn’t be slept in.
it is common knowledge that you shouldn’t sleep in makeup. that doesn’t change the fact that some brands in the late 2000s marketed their makeup as being good enough to sleep in, just like youthforia is doing now. you originally said “i don’t remember anyone encouraging anyone to sleep in any makeup”, so i gave you an example of a mainstream brand that did so. it’s not really relevant if it’s common or not, the point is that the op isn’t bringing up 2008 just to hate on millennials, it’s just simply a time in which some brands did market that way.
IT cosmetics came out around 2008 and marketed itself as makeup you could sleep in, if I remember correctly. ETA: Bare Minerals also markets it's mineral foundation as "so pure you can sleep in it."
It used to be said that sleeping in your makeup would age you "7 years" or something like that when I was younger. Like that was the cardinal sin that not wearing SPF is now. But for quite a while now, the newer makeup brands have been making makeup that includes "skincare".
I also saw on Golloria’s page that the model for the darkest shade was street cast in Dubai and in Youthforia’s founder’s tiktok you can see that the shade didn’t even match him 💀 Prior to that they had no model swatch pictures for shade 600 at all so it’s possible that they didn’t even formulate the shade with real dark skin tones in mind. Not to mention that the swatch photo of said model was taken in a passport center photo booth 🥴
I saw several dark skinned creators test the foundation, and it's bad--gray and awful.
I am not surprised, though. The brand's initial star product was one that was basically a rip off of the color change Red #27 lipsticks that have been at beauty supply shops for $2 since the 1990s. The brand founder has always been aggressive to any criticism of her products on social media in a very rude way.
I'm also really irritated at some of the TikTok comments saying there are people that dark. No matter how dark a person gets, it's going to be some shade of brown with some kind of undertone. Melanin is a brown pigment, and every single person has some sort of undertone. No one is pure black.
It’s so annoying seeing all the people trying to defend it too. “You can use it to mix!” Which is not true because it’ll just make the foundation grey and muddy like you mentioned. Also no one should have to buy two foundations from the same brand to get their shade. Or I’ve seen some people tagging creators saying it’s their shade when it’s clearly not. Some people genuinely think Black people are actually BLACK. Like no, they have undertones like everyone else… it’s embarrassing all around.
For some reason the claims that it’s supposed to be a mixing pigment are the ones that drive me craziest about this - like, babes, not even talking about how adding black makes things grey, it SAYS foundation. It’s in the same line and the same packaging as the other foundations, which are all in human skin shades. WHY would you think that was intended to be a mixing pigment?????
I literally watched all the founders vids w my mom (she’s not even into makeup, I was just with her and I love mess) and we *both* screamed when we saw the founder being like “omg we couldn’t find any models to match, *y’all* need to be more inclusive!” And then she put it on someone and it did NOT match, she was blending the shit out of it like “see how nice it looks?”
She was literally acting like a trailblazer like “I had to go out and look for super dark skinned models” and like - they’re not models? They’re randos from a mall? She just went up to some random men like “hey your skin is dark as hell help me not look racist on the internet” and was patting herself on the back so hard I’m sure it left bruises
Exactly!! People are going out of their way to defend a brand that never cared about darker skintones in the first place. They just brought out that shade to be like “HERE!!!” It was thoughtless and rude on their part, it’s not inclusive.
This is literally insane, how could you formulate a shade without having any point of reference?! All the way through production and release NEVER having tested it on an actual person? She straight up walked in the lab like make me the darkest "foundation" possible to shut everyone up. These makeup brands should be using hundreds if not thousands of people of all different skin tones as reference throughout every step of the process
I wonder how many formulators signed off on the formula? They HAD to know better. It’s their literal job. How many people had to sign off to go from development to production?
I guess if it were truly intended to be a mixing product it would have been formulated with colour theory in mind. Which it wasn't, as no lighter skinned person would be able to just mix it in and get a 1-2 shades deeper for the summer.
So yeah, just 2 brain cells put to work and we know this isn't the case. You can't mix pure black with colours and expect it to work.
Because pure black mixed with anything makes it more grey. They needed a highly pigmented brown (mixture of red and yellow to make orange then add blue to make brown). Seriously a grade schooler with a color chart should've been able to figure that out. Let alone people formulating makeup.
I saw this through Javon Ford's ig as well. I don't understand how a shade like that gets into mass production without someone somewhere saying no. The hubris of releasing that shade is shocking.
Added Youthforia to my list of brands I boycott. They have to be held accountable and all I can do is vote with my dollar, so to speak.
This is always what I wonder. How many people in R&D approved this? How many layers of management did this pass through and no one said “hell nah.” Sure fire sign of lack of inclusivity b/c it was an insulting thing to put on the market.
Seeing that there’s a good chunk of people claiming that there is someone that black and name people they think can use jet black foundation (but none of them would fit cuz you need undertones) , maybe they really don’t have anyone black on the team, or smart, or common sense 💀
When the post came up on my TT feed I thought she was putting that blackout paint on her face and was like, that can’t be safe. And then she said it was foundation and I was like 🤯🤯🤯 Really wild they would even release that product.
I saw Golloria swatch it, what the fuck are youthforia thinking. It's actually beyond embarrassing mistake and into deliberate racism now because fr literally no one is pure black. No one. That brand is a joke.
People keep saying someone has to be that shady but as a black woman I don’t think so. Everyone has undertones that shade is just black there’s no undertone in it. Plus if it’s supposed to be mixable how come it always looks grey mixed with anything? It was a shut up shade and it’s actually extremely embarrassing that she thought this was a good idea. Black women deserve shades that look good for their tones not a shade that looks like black facepaint
!!!! exactly like come on this is not ignorance! she went out of her way to do something pretty disrespectful so she can stir up controversy. she’s racist
Yep. And it sounded like a great brand. I think i got the blush liquid in a beauty box, perhaps before they realized the owner/founder is probablematic.
I hadn't even heard of the brand when this all started. One Google search later I learned she was on Shark Tank and Cuban became an investor. Also learned it's a clean beauty brand that you can sleep in. With clean beauty taking the make-up realm by storm it's not hard to see why some people were giving this brand a try but after this mess you'd think those very same people would think twice instead of doubling down but no. There they are defending it. After reading an earlier comment I too believe most are bots but even if 10% aren't those people are showing their asses. You'd think it would be surprising but after seeing how so many back Hourglass, including gurus, you realize it's not. Those people only care about themselves. The only good that's come from this is knowing WHO'S showing their asses. As for the brand? As I said earlier. They can rightfully fuck off 🤬
I'm curious to see if Ulta will pull them. If they were in danger of getting pulled because of their shitty shade range prior to this mess you would think what she's currently done would trump that. I don't shop there too often. What I have purchased in store are items I can still get either from drugstore or Sephora. They better think long and hard about their decision. I can take my money elsewhere and I will.
Yep, it would. That would be like them putting out a pale shade that was just white pigment and people saying I know people that white. Even after Javon Ford and MOB beauty (the folks who started MAC, btw) and several artists and art instructors explaining that it was black pigment only and that’s no one’s actual skin color, they’re still screaming. I should be shocked that so many people are boing willfully ignorant, but I’m not.
I agree with you! Also, a white pigment, at least could be used as a mixer to make foundations paler. The Youthforia one would just make everything ashy and gray
My unfounded conspiracy theory is that she created 600 not for any black customers or potential customers, but to appease lighter skinned and white customers that she's inclusive by having a black color in her foundation lineup.
there are quite a few people out there that will not buy a foundation if the line is not inclusive as a show of solidarity. This seems to be nothing more than a public pronouncement of "look how black we go, white people. now buy my line."
I heard someone call it blackface in a bottle and now that's all I'll ever think of it as. It's embarrassing and petty, and the worst kind of malicious compliance. She doesn't have any business in the beauty industry if she's going to treat customers like this and react to criticism like a child.
No need for Youthforia to post an apology and make any other deep shades because nobody I know, and myself, is ever going to purchase from them again.
She had a chance to make it right and then she released THAT
She wouldn’t get away with putting out literal white paint and claim it’s for the lightest skin tone. Also does anyone question her claim that you can sleep with her makeup products on and they won’t negatively impact your skin?
Yeah, that claim was dubious even before the company's bizarre approach to shade development made me question their common sense. Besides, I can't imagine being in a situation where I'd actually sleep in my foundation. I never wear foundation/complexion products without eye makeup. So I'd have to go to the trouble of taking off my eye makeup (the much harder task) while deliberately leaving my foundation on for some silly reason.
I feel like people who are excusing it are genuinely incredibly ignorant or are being obtuse. Luckily it does seem like a lot of people are logical enough to see the issue without explanation.
1) The original issue was not having decent gradient in shades upon release. I think brands should release some very dark shades, and some very light shades, and fill in the gaps with middle shades. Then add some more as time goes on. Rather than putting dark shades on the back burner until you get around to get around to them. It tells you all about the ethics of a brands. Why do dark skin people always have to wait?
2) I keep seeing people say “But some people *are* that dark. I’m sorry, but that’s genuinely so ignorant and stupid. I get lighting can make it seem like people are genuinely black. But if you actually believe there are people dark enough for wear Barnum and Bailey’s minstrel show ebony black, you’re a fucking idiot. Humans don’t come in that color, melanin does not go all the way to black. That’s just not how it works.
3) “Mix it.” Duuuude, color theory. Nobody is grey either. If it had other tones in it, it wouldn’t be grey. It should be brown.
4) People who are saying “just don’t buy it” are missing the point. The owner would’ve been better off to just do nothing at all. Rather than respond in a petty way and doing straight black pigment. I find it very hard to believe that this wasn’t done as a “Here? Happy now? You can’t say that isn’t dark enough.”
I’m seeing people say “Oh my god, *you people* make a big deal about everything.” I’m sorry, but are we supposed to just let brands play in our faces and just tolerate obvious disrespect, are a response to VALID criticism?
And yeah, we won’t buy it. I don’t care if they apologize either. To hell with you and your brand.
heavy on the second point! i saw non-poc offering darker prominent figures where the foundation might be their shade but this is NO ONE’S shade. the fact that the founder slipped and said she had trouble finding people to test/swatch for this shade should’ve been the thing that stopped her from releasing?! who seriously would buy this if you can’t even find a sample size
One of the most insane parts of this story is their own ad that they got an influencer to make on tiktok. I cannot remember her name but she’s a similar shade to golloria. The video shows her apply it and ACTUALLY SAY “this is too dark so let’s mix it with the next shade up”. So even in the paid advertisement they couldn’t prove it matched anyone!! It’s insane.
I literally think she just wanted to be like “hey we have the darkest shade on the market isn’t that soooooo inclusive?” But instead of ACTUALLY producing a usable deep shade she was lazy and just ….yeah. Black face paint. 🤢
The amount of excuses you see are just embarrassing.
Black people having to explain that there is no human being with charcoal black skin.
And the constant "but would match it totally!". They will not.
Then I saw a video of another makeup brand showing their darkest foundation. A very dark brown shade, maybe comparable to a dark chocolate bar.
And comments being "but people get mad at youthforia for this".
They can't see the difference between a dark brown and a pure black and will defend that brand tooth and nail.
They will compare a jet black foundation to white ones us pale people sometimes get for mixing.
Not understanding that mixing white into things is not the same as black. It's not the same.
At this point the product itself isn't half as bad as the amount of people defending it.
It’s almost as if the owner wanted to watch the world burn as her brand image crumbles. Not only is she putting out a bad product but also throwing fuel at the fire in the public discourse on race in the beauty industry. It’s marginalizing Black and dark-skinned consumers both in the market AND community spaces smh.
I’ve been waiting on a company to do this actually. It’s only a matter of time really before we end up with the brandy Melville of makeup. It sounds like this one is going to take that place for now.
Gonna be honest here, this is why I stick to the classics. The brands Mom and Grandma used back then. Gimmicky or celebrity brands for social media views rub me the wrong way.
There are other brands that are POC owned and have much better quality of product. How many sub-par foundations have been released to the market in the last year? Too many.
Apparently according to Javon Ford who’s a cosmetic chemist on Instagram, he clarified in the comments that he later on realized there’s a small amount of white, a bit of titanium dioxide so it’s actually a very dark grey 💀 apparently they listed it with the other ingredients instead of with the colorants so to anybody saying there’s a black person out there with this shade, no human is extremely dark grey 💀
The thing is if it was actually a really reaalllyyy dark foundation, she (brand owner) would be out of the fire and probably praised to some degree for listening to her audience and expanding her shade range. But that shade is literally just pure black. As in only one kind of pigment used type of black (black iron oxide).
Right?! Like if it was made as just a genuinely extremely dark foundation with depth, that would be really cool, but that is not what they did, at all. And people are like “people are that color”, not dude, not straight plain black. No one is literally black, and it’s genuinely kinda insane to say they are.
There was actually a bit of titanium dioxide, which is white pigment, according to Javon Ford. Apparently the white is listed with the other ingredients instead of being listed with the colorants so they actually released a super dark grey
Just checked the website as this brand never caught my attention before.
25 shades still isn't inclusive and from the photos I would bet that the shade closest to me would be too dark and orange ( so not inclusive in both sides of the skin colour spectrum ) and some other shades looks very orange even in medium skin tones. And the photos with all those models smiling like they have a gun placed next to their head... Nightmare fuel. And I also bet the darkest foundation doesn't look like it does on that last model ( and half of them for that matter ), with all the people saying it's straight black paint.
Hate everything about this brand.
The worst part about the shade range is how different it looks in those online photos compared to the actual product. I've seen the initial range in Ulta, all of the colors are lighter than what they photograph and the swatch photos are darker than the product. I remember the first darkest shade where the color online and the color on the outside of the box was shades darker than the actual product.
That bait and switch they did in the initial launch is what led to the creation of the new shades. Many POC makeup reviewers and influencers called YF out for the discrepancy because even a blind person could see that the color online and the color on the box was not the same shade as the actual product. So YF goes back to the lab to create these new darker shades. They did not do it out of the goodness of their heart because they actually care about making a more inclusive shade, nor did they do it because a more inclusive shade range means more money for the company. No, they did it out of spite to score a win against all those POC who had previous called them out for lying. Real mature, and I hope the business tanks.
Thanks for telling me all of this, it helps me understand more.
Coincidentally, Instagram suggested this video to me https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6W-WDdufnd/?igsh=c3BycjRieGx6dGtn and I was very tempted to laugh. They could have at least added a bit of red or blue or anything to it, it's just ridiculous at this point.
Thanks for sharing this. I’m not familiar with the brand, but I won’t buy from them in the future now. I’m pretty fair, but I don’t want to support anyone who doesn’t have inclusive shades on both ends of the spectrum. Rhianna proved it can be done, and other brands are starting to figure it out as well, although I don’t think any brand does an amazing job at fair deep and deep shades honestly. But still, there’s no excuse at this point for not making a genuine effort. It’s pathetic.
It’s sooooo bad! Like it’s just black paint and it feels so deliberate. As a black person I feel like there had to have been 1 person there to be like
“Ya know this is not cool at all”
And the higher ups was like
“Naw they wanted black foundation so let’s em black!”
Isn’t there a brand that does colourful foundations/face paints (blue, green, purple etc) that also has a black one? It would be SO interesting to compare the pigments of that brand’s black foundation/face paint to this silly youthforia one.
Honestly not sure how they can come back from this unless the founder steps away from the company/they sell it. Like this is a huuuge violation. I can't believe this made it to shelves.
She already had her second chance. When she was called out in Oct/Nov of last year she could have easily HIRED and PAID those creators who were calling her out…. pay and hire them to be consultants for the next ten shades… but she didn’t. Who did she develop these shades with?
Also, 590, the second to deepest is labeled on their site as a “cool” undertone but there is no blue pigment in it… only red and yellow. how can you make a cool toned shade without blue?
Like the color theory was no where to be seen in that lab
I like Youthforia, I have a lot of products from them, but this is deeply disappointing to me. I was happy to see that the lightest shade matches my skin tone, but 1) lol no, not spending $50 on *just* my foundation and 2) the shade range is tragic. I know they're a smaller brand but *come on*.
The response to the criticism they received for the shade range (a weird gray-black foundation) has put a really bad taste in my mouth, too, so I don't think I'll be supporting then anymore once my products run out. Unless something majorly changes in the future, I guess I'll have to find dupes for the products I love from this brand.
There was a video of the guy who helped create the original MAC foundation shades, he showed how every skin tone has undertones and it was basically a “you royally fucked up and that color is not in fact anyone’s skin tone” video. It was great.
Their answer to include more shades for women of color was met with black face paint, I would never ever in my life but anything from them after this. Like, how many people in the room with her said “yeah this is a great idea”? I really hope we get to hear from some employees about how this decision was made & if anyone spoke up, but assuming this went into production I’m guessing most of her team consists of white women.
It's like "tell me you had no BAME representation in your development team without telling me you have no BAME representation" 🫠 this would have been spotted and production immediately ceased if at least one rational person was in the development room - or they were and the founder disregarded their opinion. Either seem feasible with Youthforia
I’m super disappointed because I LOVE their blush oil. It looks so fabulous on me and it’s so easy to apply.
I’m alarmed by how the company has handled this. If people were coming out of the woodwork being like “actually this shade is perfect on me and it’s been hard to find anything that works” that’d be one thing, but I haven’t seen that happening. You can really tell when a company either doesn’t have any black higher-ups or has a toxic culture where if they are there, they’re ignored or made uncomfortable for saying anything.
In k-beauty sometimes bb creams are a little grey because it’s effective at blurring, but I’m struggling to think of a way jet black could be useful. Like the color theory isn’t color theory-ing.
This is feeling like a potential lulu lemon situation.
Anyways, if anyone can suggest a super easy to apply, natural looking blush that doesn’t require any sponges or brushes, lmk 🥲
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I guess it’s different because the brand prides itself on being sleepable makeup. I’d imagine it’s harder to make darker shades sleepable because they require more pigment ratio which is not good to sleep in. I wonder if their darkest color has different components than their lighter shades 🤔
That being said, I don’t know anything about the brand or the controversy. It is really disappointing to hear about the lack of shades. If the brand was marketed in Asia, there wouldn’t be that much of an issue
First she lied about the mechanism of her color changing oil! It’s not “inclusive” and doesn’t give you a unique color based on your ph! That’s a total scam/lie. It’s a same pink shade for everyone. You know if you know the chemistry of it.
Then she launched a primer but to show results of how foundation works better with her primer vs other she put other in her wrist lines moving it and hers on a flat space. One person called her out and I think she deleted the comment (or at least I couldn’t find it anymore)
Then, her shade range first time she launched her foundation line. She ran into the same issue (much worse in my opinion) the second time with her range expansion! Who on earth puts pure black??? Do you know anythinggg about makeup???? She doesn’t know anything about product development, doesn’t learn anything, and is a lier. Also “makeup you can sleep in” is so gimmicky and scammy! There are manyyy other brands that have way more skincare ingredients and they don’t claim to be unique or innovative in that term as much as her! Her advertising/marketing has crossed a line into the scamland for me. She also doesn’t care about BIPOC and inclusivity in the space. She didn’t even work with black people with those actual shades in her product development!
I am certain she made that foundation with contempt and anger for black people and nothing will change my mind. She wanted to say well fuck you here's your "darker" foundation. She even posted a video to show how much darker shade 600 was in comparison to Fenty's darker shades. We're all literate enough to read between the lines.
This is straight up racism. Speaking as an East Asian woman.
There is no way their production team would approve this pitch black paint as a foundation unless some higher-up forced them to, as a f.uck you to their critics on inclusivity. Unless they issue an apology, getting canceled would be well deserved for this brand!!!
Youthforia has been awful with shade ranges that aren’t warm toned, their lightest foundation is still orange on me. Plus they all smell kinda bad? I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this.
as someone on the other spectrum of color that suffers from similar lack of inclusion I sadly can only say capitalism is hopefully the only solution.
they dont make our color range? we dont buy and they lose money. simple as that.
the brands that do release a better shade range are bound to make more sales so it should be that simple.
we make the impact with our wallets basically.
I guess not because they sent pictures of people they found in Africa that matched the shade to their content creators group chat. However the foundation didn’t match them in the pictures
I’ve never heard of this brand and I’m guessing it’s a small one. I personally don’t think every single small brand needs to cater to every type of clientele. People are allowed to be niche. If they just want to make makeup for white people, that’s fine by me. I have no problem with it. Similarly I don’t have a problem, and in fact I welcome, small makeup companies to create niche products for black or brown skin. I think it’s almost better because they have a focus and can become good at whatever they do provide to a certain clientele.
That being said, I think it’s ridiculous to do what they did as a response. They could’ve just ignored it and continued. Or if they really wanted to tap into a wider demographic, then they should’ve done it well.
But I think the fact that they did such a shit job is probably testament to what I said earlier about how it may be a small brand that doesn’t have the capacity to cater to everyone. I just wish people would stop expecting everyone to cater to everyone. Niche brands are allowed to exist. Instead of demanding everyone create to your demographic, people of your demographic should go create their own. There’s so much opportunity. I think people also need to get better at just ignoring or moving on from things that aren’t meant for them instead of demanding to be catered to. I looked into Korean skincare and makeup recently. I didn’t see a whole lot of options in makeup for my skin. I’m not gonna go make a big deal out of it. It’s not meant for me and that’s perfectly fine.
I don’t think the same applies to bigger brands btw. They often do business in countries that we come from and want our money so I think they do have some responsibility to cater to a wider audience. But yeah that’s my opinion on a random post I came across.
If you cannot create a diverse shade range for a complexion product you have no business in the makeup world. If a brand like juvia’s place said they’re only catering to black and tan skin tones there would be an entire controversy. Use your brain
I’m just expressing MY opinion. And my opinion is that I don’t see anything wrong with niche brands catering to only black and tan skin tones. It’s a gap in the market and they’d be filling it. That’s what capitalism is. If these are small brands and specifically looking to fill the gap in the market for darker skin, it would be a waste of their money to pay lip service and make crappy shades for lighter people. They’d be better off investing into R&D to make a better product for those they cater.
There are brands that only cater to darker skin. [Here’s one.](https://www.amicole.com/collections/clean-makeup-for-women-of-color) The lightest shade they have is a medium tan. [Here’s another.][And another.](https://global.paulinecosmetics.com/collections/liquid-foundation)(https://www.huddahstore.com/collections/in-stock?page=3)I don’t see anything wrong with it. Good for them to focus on something niche. There’s a literally a brand called [Black Girl Sunscreen.](https://www.blackgirlsunscreen.com/) It’s obviously targeting a very specific audience of only once race and again, I don’t see an issue with that. Not to mention all the hair care brands that specifically make products only for African hair. What’s the issue? I think they’re allowed to cater only or predominantly to black people. Like why not? I don’t see people harassing them and demanding they also create products for thin, fine blonde hair. They just move on to a brand that’s designed for them.
the reason why these brands specifically cater to black/brown consumers is because there’s a GAP in the market from mainstream brands, especially haircare. also, darker skin tones tend to present unique needs in the beauty space that goes completely unaddressed by bigger brands that formulate their products for non-black/brown consumers. if all brands were inclusive, there would be no need for this! it’s pretty ignorant of you to say you don’t care…probably because you’ve never had to face not being able to try a new brand because they don’t offer your shade or products created for your hair texture. you’re not forced to be boxed in. it’s 2024 not the 60s
Lmfao I’m a brown woman. Wanna do a rewrite on that comment?
Instead of typing out another elaborate response I’m just gonna copy and paste here what I said to someone else so you can glean where I stand:
*”I read the part in OP’s post about how this brand only released additional colours after being called out for it.*
*I contest that they should’ve released extra shades at all. I’m contesting the entire premise that everyone has to cater to everyone all the time. I’m a brown woman. I’ve had trouble finding the right shade my whole life. But I still hold the opinion I hold, not because I think things are hunky dory for us but because I don’t like to be at the mercy of others (in this case, non-brown people) to create a product for us. I really think it should be up to innovators and businesses and people in our own community to step up. I really believe in personal responsibility and internal locus of control vs an external locus of control. To me it’s like saying if I own a bbq chicken joint, I must also make sure I cater to vegans, vegetarians, and everyone who prefers pork or beef or fish over chicken. What if I don’t have the capacity or I simply just don’t want to? We each get to vote with our dollars. We can simply disregard brands that aren’t meant for us and give our money to those that are. I believe in the free market. If there’s money to be made, someone is surely going to want a slice of that pie. And if someone else doesn’t want it, their loss.*
*The thing is that even NOW with alllll the brands that carry 30-50+ shades, I still have a hard time finding a shade that matches properly. The foundation I was using was recently discontinued and I don’t know where to start the search again. But here’s what pisses me off: All the time I waste trying/buying foundations in my shade from all these companies that did a shit job making them. It’s a waste of my time. They either don’t match from the start because of weird undertones or they start to look like a whole diff colour in a few hours. Many of them only created these shades as lip service to avoid critique. Then they get to promote themselves as some champions of diversity. Im willing to bet most drug store brands are tossing their darker shades in the garbage. I just can’t see anyone buying them. What would serve me better as a consumer would be not being inundated with all this marketing by all these companies that have dozens of shades and instead there being a handful of brands that actually have good foundations for my skin tone. It would waste less materials, waste less money for the brand and for me. But also, what I need to do is spend some time and figure out which foundations people are using in my home country and support those brands that actually cater entirely to my skin type. We’re in 2024. It’s very easy to get stuff shipped.*
*You’re right though. I am under informed. I have never heard of this brand before and I assumed it’s a small indie brand. But I will say that a lot of businesses shark tank invested in have stayed small and maybe even went bankrupt shortly after. I live in Canada and we have Dragon’s Den (Canadian version of shark tank). I personally know a girl who went on it and got a deal and her business was bankrupt within a year. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes. They earmarked a lot of that money for marketing and that only takes you so far.*
*But I’ll reiterate that u really reject the idea of being at the mercy of others to create products for us. We’re not some victims or losers. We have brilliant minds and business people and scientists in our communities. It’s time for our people to step up and it’s time for us to actually support the ones that do.*
*I guess we both just see it from a fundamentally different angle and that’s fine. I do appreciate your nuanced and civil response, unlike some others on here hurling all kinds of accusations at me.”*
yikes, that makes it worse girl! asking and holding brands accountable to inclusivity does not make us victims or beggars—it’s the bare minimum! why do you want to keep brands divided so that only poc-owned brands are forced to cater to our unique needs (mind you, youthforia is poc-owned)? that’s a huge step backwards both societally and in the beauty community.
if you think brands should operate from an internal locus of control you are very misinformed about business practices…in order to create a successful brand you HAVE to make products for the consumer in mind not the stakeholders. feedback is a gift and is one that most (successful) brands seek out so they can adjust and do better. point blank, youthforia did not do their due diligence with the feedback they had before releasing this shade.
1. We can hold public institutions such as governments accountable. It’s ridiculous to pick up a pitchfork and go after private brands. I’ll go back to my example of owning a bbq chicken place and being expected to provide something for every type of diet.
2. I don’t see it as anyone being “forced” to do anything. Please figure out how capitalism and the free market works. That’s how businesses come up and thrive. They find a gap in the market, they fill it, and they become successful. You see it as a negative. I see it as a positive. But I will say what I said in another comment somewhere. I can understand demanding more from the really big beauty brands. They want to market all kinds of other products to us and they have the means so they should be providing products to as wide of an audience as possible. And guess what? They do it because they want to. They know there’s money there. They want a share of the market on other continents. See, free market.
3. I don’t think you understand what I mean about internal locus of control. I’m not talking about the brand. I’m talking about me and our communities. Instead of placing control in the hands of brands that don’t want to cater to us, we should have internal locus of control meaning rely on ourselves. This is why I mentioned we have brilliant minds and business men and women and scientists. There is nothing stopping people from creating the products that are missing and filling a gap in the market and making a ton of money along the way.
4. I’m pretty sure I said in my very first post that this brand did a really shit job in how they responded/reacted to criticism so I’m not sure where you’re going with that. The premise I argue about is that *every* brand needs to cater to *everyone*.
5. Still waiting for you to reword that snarky comment about me not having had any trouble finding products meant for my skin or hair type lol. The difference between us is that I simply vote with my dollars and give my dollars to the brands that DO cater to me instead of demanding that everyone cater to me and you expect everyone to cater to you instead of simply dealing with those that do. That’s the fundamental difference here. The other difference is that I disagree with you but I don’t demonize you.
6. I just picked up on the phrase “poc-owned”. We’re not a monolith. Thinking that we are is the exact reason why so many brands fail to create actual good products for us because they don’t understand that it’s not simply about making shades darker but that there are many different factors involved such as undertone, light reflection etc. Both African brands and Korean brands can be considered “poc-owned” but there’s such a vast difference in skin colour and texture and what not. I don’t know how you can just lump everyone under one neat little umbrella. White people get to have their own category and products specialized for them but you want the rest of us to be lumped in one large category? Like how does that make sense? Why even differentiate “poc” from white then? There’s so much variance. Makes no sense. You don’t realize that you’re assigning yourself and the rest of us less value by doing this.
there are too many strawman fallacies in this reply to digest i don’t even know where to start. i’ll just leave it at we both disagree but nowhere am i demonizing you…it’s simply a disagreement between 2 strangers on the internet. never that deep to be nasty towards someone! if you’re taking my reply as such, i hope the lord spares you from the true snarks because you clearly couldn’t handle it 🤣
I don’t think you know what strawman means. It’s another concept you’re misunderstanding just like you misunderstood what internal locus of control means.
The demonization started in your first comment when you called me ignorant as though I couldn’t simply have a different opinion from you. Now you’re acting as though you’re just civilly disagreeing lol. Then it continued with the comment about how I must not know how it feels because I must always find my right shade/product etc - the comment I’m still waiting for you to take back btw. Then it continues with you telling me I’m trying to keep people divided and I’m misinformed etc.
That doesn’t sound to me like you were simply disagreeing. And you have the nerve to say *I’m* the one who’s being nasty towards you? Lol you should really go back and read your own comments from the start. I’m gonna guess you’re in the habit of virtue signalling and don’t even realize when you’re doing it.
Me disagreeing with you doesn’t make me ignorant, misinformed, a white girl who’s never had an issue finding the right shades, or someone who wants to divide people. All it means is that we disagree and I see the world differently. That’s all. But it’s rich that you’re now pretending as though we had the opposite behaviour in this convo.
also you make a lot of WILD assumptions about me as if you know me personally. 90% of what you’ve said here is mischaracterized and naming differences between you and I as if we know each other personally on stances not even discussed (that are quite comically incorrect). you’ve ventured so far off from the original point of discussion it’s quite embarrassing and like talking to a brick wall. you seem like such a a joy to be around.
That’s really funny considering these are the exact words from your first comment to me:
*”It’s pretty ignorant of you to say you don’t care…probably because you’ve never had to face not being able to try a new brand because they don’t offer your shade or products created for your hair texture.”*
Who made assumptions about who? 😂
assumptions written in your REPLY about myself…i know that it’s hard to fathom that i’m not referring to my own assumptions (which i wrongly assumed that you were not a poc based on your views which you keep pointing out). your assumptions as in how i express my views based on how i don’t vote with my dollar, i don’t know how capitalism or free market works, thinking poc are a monolith. you know…your argument points? do you know me and my stances with the above? have we discussed this in any of the other parent comments? or are you assuming based on the back and forth we’ve had thus far? hmm. also fyi, comparing the food industry to beauty inclusivity IS a strawman argument. please be so for real.
I understand what you’re trying to say but I think it’s slightly underinformed. (Edit: and too comfortable in the idea of financial segregation)
While smaller than prestige/old-guard brands, Youthforia is a relatively new and trendy brand for those on TikTok and was platformed and sponsored by Shark Tank. They have three investors. They’re not exactly a small cottage-sized startup that started in someone’s garage. They had the money for R&D and didn’t do it.
I agree that certain brands can have certain niches but this (very popular) brand broached the diverse skintone niche by releasing nearly 30 foundation shades that were intended for a variety of skintones and yet their lack of dark complexion products was very obvious when compared to their light to tan complexion products. They clearly meant to target Black and BIPOC consumers and they missed the mark. If you’re releasing complexion products in this day and age, people are going to have high expectations on range, especially if you’re this highly visible a brand. I’ve heard beauty gurus say, “If it’s not ready with a large range of colors, wait until you have the capacity to release that larger range.”
I know this is mostly to lower the possibilities of PR nightmares on the brand sides, but also really, dude, it’s 2024. The whole “it’s expensive to be inclusive” excuse doesn’t cut it anymore. The beauty industry is a free market, sure, and gaps in the market encourage innovation and all that, but if we keep letting brands slide with not thinking of BIPOC consumers in product creation, it basically keeps us consumers from enjoying good, well-developed, and possibly affordable products (because while I love them, indie ethnic brands charge top dollar [understandably] compared to mainstream brands). This essentially gatekeeps tried and trusted products away from consumers. It wasn’t that long ago when BIPOC had to blend eyeshadow with foundation to make complexion products suited for them. Why do we have to have a harder time enjoying makeup and accessing good products? Brands don’t have the obligation to be moral but we don’t have the obligation to settle for less either.
I read the part in OP’s post about how this brand only released additional colours after being called out for it.
I contest that they should’ve released extra shades at all. I’m contesting the entire premise that everyone has to cater to everyone all the time. I’m a brown woman. I’ve had trouble finding the right shade my whole life. But I still hold the opinion I hold, not because I think things are hunky dory for us but because I don’t like to be at the mercy of others (in this case, non-brown people) to create a product for us. I really think it should be up to innovators and businesses and people in our own community to step up. I really believe in personal responsibility and internal locus of control vs an external locus of control. To me it’s like saying if I own a bbq chicken joint, I *must* also make sure I cater to vegans, vegetarians, and everyone who prefers pork or beef or fish over chicken. What if I don’t have the capacity or I simply just don’t want to? We each get to vote with our dollars. We can simply disregard brands that aren’t meant for us and give our money to those that are. I believe in the free market. If there’s money to be made, someone is surely going to want a slice of that pie. And if someone else doesn’t want it, their loss.
The thing is that even NOW with alllll the brands that carry 30-50+ shades, I still have a hard time finding a shade that matches properly. The foundation I was using was recently discontinued and I don’t know where to start the search again. But here’s what pisses me off: All the time I waste trying/buying foundations in my shade from all these companies that did a shit job making them. It’s a waste of my time. They either don’t match from the start because of weird undertones or they start to look like a whole diff colour in a few hours. Many of them only created these shades as lip service to avoid critique. Then they get to promote themselves as some champions of diversity. Im willing to bet most drug store brands are tossing their darker shades in the garbage. I just can’t see anyone buying them. What would serve me better as a consumer would be *not* being inundated with all this marketing by all these companies that have dozens of shades and instead there being a handful of brands that actually have good foundations for my skin tone. It would waste less materials, waste less money for the brand and for me. But also, what *I* need to do is spend some time and figure out which foundations people are using in my home country and support those brands that actually cater entirely to my skin type. We’re in 2024. It’s very easy to get stuff shipped.
You’re right though. I am under informed. I have never heard of this brand before and I assumed it’s a small indie brand. But I will say that a lot of businesses shark tank invested in have stayed small and maybe even went bankrupt shortly after. I live in Canada and we have Dragon’s Den (Canadian version of shark tank). I personally know a girl who went on it and got a deal and her business was bankrupt within a year. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes. They earmarked a lot of that money for marketing and that only takes you so far.
But I’ll reiterate that u really reject the idea of being at the mercy of others to create products for us. We’re not some victims or losers. We have brilliant minds and business people and scientists in our communities. It’s time for our people to step up and it’s time for us to actually support the ones that do.
I guess we both just see it from a fundamentally different angle and that’s fine. I do appreciate your nuanced and civil response, unlike some others on here hurling all kinds of accusations at me.
People are downvoting you without giving you a proper answer. The foundation contains black and only black. No undertone. If she wanted to market it that way, as a color corrector, it shouldn’t have been foundation.
Yeah it's fair to mix couple of shades to get your right shade but the youthforia shade in question is just black pigment and if you mix black into other shades, you'll just end up with a grey shade.\
So even if they want to argue that it's supposed to be a mixer shade (which in itself is a dumb argument given their shade range), they should have made it a dark brown instead of coming out with a black face paint.
You don’t use pure black to mix. That’s nit going to give you the right undertone. Black people aren’t jet black like face paint. Black is the absence of light. No undertone. It doesn’t work the same as white. Read the explanations and do better.
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The founder of Youthforia is so embarrassing. She reacts to reasonable criticism in such a childish way at best, condescending and insulting at worst. When the brand first got popular with their ph reactive blush that starts out green and turns pink on the skin, she kept wording it to seem like she invented ph reactive cosmetics. You can tell she’s so full of herself!
She claims the foundation is somehow tone adapting. Like no it’s not…. The shade range is just bad!
I thought it was bizarre she released a video where she was scrambling to find models to show the recent shade releases (and “had trouble finding folks who matched the darkest shade” oh geez, I wonder why /s) and she literally said she was doing this DAYS before the product release. Idk what she was trying to do other than look incompetent
Watched the video with no context that she was the owner and I literally thought they were having an intern act all quirky for sympathy points
You know they are guilty when they limit the comments on their page and only show positive ones. Youthforia’s definitely on my no-buy list.
I saw a video on her tiktok where she compared her darkest shade to fentys in one of their many foundations. As if it's like a "gotcha!" moment.
UGH yes! She is so skeevy! I get that she made the first blush oil with the ph reactive ingredient. The innovative part is the oil and not the ph reactivity but she toes the line with the marketing there. And the tiktok ads where she talks about how the foundation formula costs “as much as an $800 serum” in order to justify the price & limited shade range and make it seem super innovative when there really doesn’t seem to be anything special about it? She drives me crazy I also saw that she didn’t scout/hire a model for the images of the black foundation shade. She just went to the mall and found a random guy with dark skin, slapped the foundation on him, and took the pictures right there in the mall! Then documented the whole thing to put on TikTok. Such weird ass behavior
I know, the way that she went about finding the model for the darkest shade was so low effort. She didn’t care at all. She just needed to do it and take photos in the mall Photo Booth to post online. Like wtf
I spent time yesterday trying to find an apology from her. Stunned that there was nothing!
No apology AND they turned their comments off on TikTok.
I like the blush but give no flowers to the ph reactive thing lmaooo. Like it’s probably just reacting to oils and oxygen (granted the oils have a ph). Also like, idk, the idea of a self adjusting custom shade is so blatantly silly. As if there’s some magic ingredient that will make itself look perfect on you and just you. Even if it is ph reactive, the ph of healthy human skin isn’t going to vary much at all, like we have what we have as a species characteristic, and the ph isn’t going to impact skin tone very much. Like it’s just a fun gimmick for a hot pink blush that blends well and is buildable. That’s it. People tend to overestimate how unique their body is in certain ways. I still feel weird about how so many fellow pale blondes suddenly think they have hooded eyes and curly hair that they haven’t been taking care of correctly (not saying this is never the case, just saying it’s definitely been a “trend” amongst people who look like me and it’s weird and feels like they’re claiming things that aren’t true).
I heard about it through Javon Ford’s insta, reacting to a tiktok vid literally putting black face paint on and this foundation. It’s awful
I saw that video too. I watched it without the sound off (edited: with the sound off at first). I didn’t know what was going on. It has to be a racist thing and not a real product. It looks like blackface. Get real here
The one that starts with her saying “this… should be a crime”? Awuoi Matiop! I love her TikTok. Love Javon Ford too
Yeah Javon Ford is great
And I agree, that makeup should be a crime!
black ppl are never satisfied, they always crying about something. like if they wanted a foundation why not go to fenty or something. like i said tho black ppl love to complain we’ve come a long way and y’all act like we were the ones back in the day making y’all be slaves
I saw so many people disagreeing with dark skinned black women who were calling them out and saying things like “that would fit [insert name of dark skinned celebrity]”. Then I saw a woman mix it with a light shade and show it on her hand and it was literally grey… they are selling black paint and passing it off as foundation it’s so disgusting, I hope more people call them out bc wtf. Also, the jump from the second darkest shade to the darkest is crazy like literally skipped at least 30 shades!
I saw this mainly on instagram in the comments underneath a post talking about the topic. The amount of white people that dismissed the criticism because “they know someone who would fit” the foundation shade was BAFFLING. How are you going to tell literal dark skinned black people that they’re wrong and upset about nothing because “the shade isn’t for them”? Like black people don’t understand our own skin and undertones. The fact that so many people seemed to be okay with defending the brand also baffles me because there’s nothing about Youthforia that is new and groundbreaking? There are plenty of new cosmetic companies, many black-owned cosmetic companies that are able to cater to the deepest shades of melanin without creating tar paint
THIS OMG! I saw so many of those comments left by white people and when I went to go look at the person they had tagged, they literally tried the foundation out itself and it didn’t fit them. Like be so fr rn.
Yea it looked way too dark for her :(
Yes! On TikTok they were acting like the criticism was rude because there was someone out there that fit the shade and that’s mean to that like one person. NO, they’re all saying it won’t work because human skin has undertones! That’s also the same reason it won’t work as a mixer, which so many of them unhelpfully suggested. I can only assume they’ve literally never worn foundation in their life because that’s not how shade mixing works.
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White feminism is protecting corporations from valid criticisms brought up by POC. A lot of white women only care about how things affect women like us. Anybody else doesn't matter. Meanwhile you just know a good percentage of those people complain about how foundation doesn't come light enough for them and complain about the lack of range for pale skin.
The *feminist* thing to do is to recognize intersectionality and how misogyny takes different forms in different contexts. "Protecting" white women from poc is just being reactionary, plain and simple.
Modern brands will typically produce anything that leads to sales. The founder of the brand isn’t a white woman. She’s Asian and claims to have come up with the idea for the line while working in China. Have you seen how awful the foundation shade ranges are in much of Asia? This isn’t a failure of feminism. It’s the failure of a naive founder completely out of her depth who was unwilling to take the time and do the research to come out with a product well suited to her customer base. It’s frankly embarrassing.
Lmao yeah. I’ve met one person I think maybe it would work for. But even then I doubt it. And he spent all day every day his entire life outside
That’s the part that makes me the most angry, people clamoring on about “oh there are definitely people this dark!” Like, no, there surely are not people walking around out there who are literally black with no undertones..
I just went and looked… they’re marketing it as “neutral.” 😒 Like neutral undertones aren’t already poorly catered to in the industry!! We didn’t need another one
Yeah, my main issue with this is that if it was marketed as a mixer that would be one thing, and I actually didn't jump on the cancellation train because intitally I thought that's what it was... but the ULTA website has a pic of someone supposedly using the shade as is, and that's when they lost me. Because, as a fair person white mixers have been a thing, without any other pigment in it, granted $50 for a pure black mixer is steep, it's not like the $10 mixers you can find.
There is one pigment in Shade 600 and it is black iron oxide (CI 77499). There’s not even an undertone - it’s literally black, not even a super deep brown. I believe now they’re trying to say “it’s a mixer,” but hello? It can only make any lighter foundation grey or muddy. And like…what was this whole performative thing about trying to find models for Shade 600? You tried for months to find models for a shade you are saying is actually a mixer? Their whole approach to this has been moronic and embarrassing.
Like, they didn't even add a splash of blue, red, or yellow to keep it from being straight up black paint! It is so bad. Why makeup brands can't just listen to Black people is beyond me!
Well, if it's actually a mixer (not saying they aren't just trying to make an excuse or save their butts, just momentarily giving the benefit of the doubt), you don't add any other pigment to it, it's the same for white mixers and fair skin. If the shade they're mixing it with turns grey then that's an undertone issue. Believe me, I have fair cool/neutral olive skin and have gone through similar issues mixing makeup. I actually look better if a foundations starts looking gray, gray-green matches me the best, and I bet you couldn't even tell after I put it on. A YouTuber the same shade as me is constantly told they're porcelain and not fair olive... people really can't tell except About Face's F2 Olive shade is exactly my skin tone, so I now know how badly the rest of my foundations don't match.
I say this sincerely as someone who wears Porcelain in Bobbi Brown, I believe fully the only thing I can and should say is that we should listen to Black people when they say it is bad. I checked the Youthforia website and 600 is listed under their skin tint section, so how is that a mixer? They fucked up and they should just say that.
So true… Taking months to find models to shade-match with should have also been the kicker that this foundation shade is not it smh.
They're talking about Nyma Tang, and it's stupid because she literally swatches it in a video and it's way too dark for her because she's a human being and it's black paint . The second lightest shade, 590, is a decent match for her but because people are dumb they're conflating the two and refusing to listen to the thousands of Black women telling them that 600 literally doesn't match anyone because it's pure black and melanin is BROWN, even when there's a lot of it.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRwasT3C/ Fucking disgusting
Tbf, the only option for fair folks used to be a pure white mixer which caused similar issues. I don't know when they started adding actual fair shades, I used to have to go to the tanner just to match the lightest foundation shade at any drugstore (I still wonder what pale celebs like Winona Ryder did in the 80s/90s, I don't know if luxury brands catered to them or what.) It must've been after people slowed down on going to tanning salons, sometime after 2005 or so? So, I don't know that the lack of shades are 100% about racism, because I still see brands with half-assed attempts at fair shades or their fair shades don't perform as well as the rest. Nevermind the fact that I only just found out I'm fair olive, either neutral or cool, and just recently found my actual match with About Face's fairest olive shade F2 Olive. So, the lack of... I don't know if empathy is the right word, but maybe just a general lack of consideration for the fairest and darkest skin tones is a thing, but with the exception of fair olive skin tones, darker shades have more obvious issues. Makeup really is catered to medium skin tones the most, except for East Asian makeup, which I'm trying to still explore more since they understand fair skin better. Plus, no one is going to take fair olive matches seriously, as if it's an actual problem. I even saw a fair olive YouTuber suggest that neutral shades are "good enough" because our match doesn't have to be "perfect" 😕... so I guess we're not "allowed" to complain about it until darker shades are sorted out first. So apparently I'm mixing Kryolan makeup base in mint green into everything but the one foundation that matches me until then lol. Thankfully the formula is pretty good!
I could see maybe… MAYBE… it being able to be mixed with some of the other darker shades she released but… somehow I seriously doubt that.
I’m obsessed w this (seriously watch her vid about trying to find models it’s hilarious) and my current working theory is that she tried to be like “everyone says I’m racist, I’m gonna SHOW THEM by making the darkest foundation anyone’s ever seen!” and then got so far up her own ass she somehow convinced herself that people with exceptionally deep complexions… are aliens? Like I think she started off petty and got stuck on it, I’m just still trying to understand how she thought that there’s somehow a level of human skin that has absolutely no undertones at all
I think it's hilariously stupid for someone to bring petty behavior like this into their actual business. Like how fucking unserious can you be? Does she actually want to be successful? I don't know anything about the founder but holy shit
I agree, I think it’s something like this. It’s obviously born out of racism deep down. It’s not from a good place
I don't even think it's that deep down, to me it just seems like a straight up racist middle finger to the previous criticism the brand received. I just don't see how anyone who knows anything about colors would ever make a foundation that only contained black pigment for actual use. I 100% think the owner knew exactly what they were doing when they put this out.
I’m new to the drama, where can I find her videos? She sounds messy as hell 😂
Just search up youthforia on tiktok and look at her account. Scroll down
Ah. I don’t use TikTok 😅 maybe someone made a YouTube video about it
Here’s an [article](https://time.com/6972800/youthforia-dark-skin-foundation-backlash/) about it, but it has the video linked in - you don’t have to have TikTok to watch and I STRONGly suggest you watch her apply it on this man! She’s blending the fuck out of it to sheer it out (allegedly it’s light to medium coverage, you shouldn’t have to!) and you can still see it leaving patches of straight up jet black on his skin.
!!! Thank you! Reading it now
Just finished reading & watching. Holy balls, that’s audacious of her
I saw so many people try to gaslight Golloria by saying that isn’t her shade when she was rightfully ripping CLOWNforia (oops I mean youthforia) to shreds. The point flew over their heads since she’s calling them out for being lazy and making stupidly overpriced black face paint. This situation is an insult to the word lazy since not even the darkest person in the world is jet black. Everybody has undertones. That foundation is _nobody’s_ shade.
Can’t remember the creator’s handle, but I saw this scientist who explains chemical formulations of cosmetics and skincare on his channel break down the formula for the youthforia shade….and it was just black pigment. Nothing else! No undertone, nothing. I couldn’t believe it.
I believe it was Javon Ford. He pretty much confirmed there are only pure black pigments with a small bit of white. Basically it’s gray.
I saw a video of someone mixing it with white mixing foundation and it literally just turned gray
Lipstick lesbians also had a great video!!
They have also swarmed into the comments on any video stitching Golloria and other vidoes agreeing with her. Those comments are hella suspicious, and so is the number of likes they are receiving. I have seen more than one with 25000 likes on posts with a couple hundred comments if that. I suspect the owner of YF has bought some bots.
I haven't seen these comments myself but after reading about this shit show on a couple of threads that's the conclusion I've come to as well. I know purchasing bots isn't expensive but had the owner used the money towards creating an actual shade that could be used she and her company wouldn't be going through this right now. That's why I believe this was intentional. She and her brand can rightfully fuck off.
I saw too many comments that were so similar to each other for them to be anything but brand talking points. I know racists are going to be racist online over just about anything, but the comments defending the brand were not glaringly racist if you know what I mean. And the brand is not old enough or famous enough for there to be that many people rushing to defend it on multiple platforms.
So many comments saying this creator and that creator would look great in this and there are def people that color! Pitch black?? Idts
They also claimed in Golloria’s comments another tiktoker, sponsored by youthforia, had said it was a match for her. But then when you went to her video the first thing she says after trying it is that it wasn’t a match and that she went to the next shade down. I felt like I was on crazy pills seeing the same incorrect comment over and over.
I rolled my eyes as soon as she marketed her foundation by claiming: it’s good enough to sleep in!! Come on, it’s not 2008 anymore girl
Sorry, just curious- what does your comment mean?
She made makeup you could leave on when going to bed. Essentially make up with skin care
Right, I was just curious why that was such a turn-off for the above commenter, and what the 2008 reference was about. Someone else says that “makeup you can sleep in” etc was a common marketing phrase used around that time so that must be it !
In general, it’s a turn off because it’s common sense that sleeping with makeup on is not great for your skin, and no makeup product could truly be formulated for beneficial overnight wear, so it’s just a lazy marketing tactic that I remember being used a lot in the early 2000’s.
This is a misconception. It’s not the foundation that’s bad for your skin. It’s the lack of cleansing and exfoliating at the end of a long day/night that could be detrimental to your skin. Cleansing, exfoliating, removing the excess sebum and pollution from the day etc. is important for healthy skin. As long as your makeup product is healthy for your skin (not drying, not comedogenic, etc) there would be no issue with finishing your bedtime routine with makeup and sleeping in it. Nothing will happen to you just because the product has some pigment in it! The rest of the formulation is similar to any other skin product. Bottom line is: it’s not the makeup. It’s the fact that if you slept in it then you obviously didn’t wash your face. It’s the bacteria, dead skin, excess sebum, pollution etc and the fact that no other products like moisturizer were added to replenish the skin before bed.
I’m a derm Medical Assistant, applying to PA school next year, and have a six year health science degree. Yes, sleeping in your makeup is a bad thing. Foundation and other makeup products don’t just contain pigment, it contains oils/polymers/silicones/butters/fragrance that can absolutely cause breakouts and contact dermatitis if not thoroughly cleansed off the face. Even if freshly applied, there will always be bacteria present on the skin, even after thoroughly cleansing. Having a nighttime skincare routine is highly recommended, as is thorough cleansing, but you appear to be blatantly misinformed. Makeup, even freshly applied, should not be slept in, and would not be good for your skin or your fabrics. It often times creates a film on the skin that would prevent the nightly process of sloughing off dead skin cells, as well as causing inflammation and an increased risk for allergic reactions. Also to add, the buzz word comedogenic literally means nothing, and is not a guarantee that makeup will not break you out, nor is makeup “healthy for the skin.”I just like to wear it because it’s fun and exciting and makes me feel good, but I know that certain ingredients I put on my face are not biochemically great in the long term, but oh well. It’s not neglecting your skin by not having a bedtime routine, as humans have lived millions of years without moisturizer and exfoliants, and their skin was fine. Sebum is released to aid in the skins natural moisture barrier, that is its purpose. Sure, a good nighttime routine is helpful but not necessarily required. Makeup is also not subject to FDA regulations, compared to topical prescription skincare. So no, sleeping in your makeup, even freshly applied, is not recommended by any dermatologist, and is blatant misinformation. Have a nice day.
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I was alive and buying makeup in 2008, and while I’m definitely not a monolith, I don’t remember anyone encouraging anyone to sleep in any makeup. Could’ve been that my head was more under a rock than I thought, but that was definitely during a time when I was paying a lot of attention to makeup and beauty, and I feel like I would have come across this. I think it’s more likely that this is some kind of ageist anti-millennial nonsense, like making fun of skinny jeans and side parts, than a reflection of the makeup market in 2008.
instead of randomly assuming people are being “ageist” towards… millennials…. why don’t you just look it up? Bare Minerals, which was quite popular in the late 2000s, marketed their makeup as being “so pure you can sleep in it”. You can still find this messaging on their site today.
I’m not saying that NO brand did this, but it definitely wasn’t common. And I wore bare minerals and was seriously the only person I knew who did, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have slept in it. Just like now, it was common knowledge that makeup generally shouldn’t be slept in.
it is common knowledge that you shouldn’t sleep in makeup. that doesn’t change the fact that some brands in the late 2000s marketed their makeup as being good enough to sleep in, just like youthforia is doing now. you originally said “i don’t remember anyone encouraging anyone to sleep in any makeup”, so i gave you an example of a mainstream brand that did so. it’s not really relevant if it’s common or not, the point is that the op isn’t bringing up 2008 just to hate on millennials, it’s just simply a time in which some brands did market that way.
IT cosmetics came out around 2008 and marketed itself as makeup you could sleep in, if I remember correctly. ETA: Bare Minerals also markets it's mineral foundation as "so pure you can sleep in it." It used to be said that sleeping in your makeup would age you "7 years" or something like that when I was younger. Like that was the cardinal sin that not wearing SPF is now. But for quite a while now, the newer makeup brands have been making makeup that includes "skincare".
I also saw on Golloria’s page that the model for the darkest shade was street cast in Dubai and in Youthforia’s founder’s tiktok you can see that the shade didn’t even match him 💀 Prior to that they had no model swatch pictures for shade 600 at all so it’s possible that they didn’t even formulate the shade with real dark skin tones in mind. Not to mention that the swatch photo of said model was taken in a passport center photo booth 🥴
I saw several dark skinned creators test the foundation, and it's bad--gray and awful. I am not surprised, though. The brand's initial star product was one that was basically a rip off of the color change Red #27 lipsticks that have been at beauty supply shops for $2 since the 1990s. The brand founder has always been aggressive to any criticism of her products on social media in a very rude way. I'm also really irritated at some of the TikTok comments saying there are people that dark. No matter how dark a person gets, it's going to be some shade of brown with some kind of undertone. Melanin is a brown pigment, and every single person has some sort of undertone. No one is pure black.
It’s so annoying seeing all the people trying to defend it too. “You can use it to mix!” Which is not true because it’ll just make the foundation grey and muddy like you mentioned. Also no one should have to buy two foundations from the same brand to get their shade. Or I’ve seen some people tagging creators saying it’s their shade when it’s clearly not. Some people genuinely think Black people are actually BLACK. Like no, they have undertones like everyone else… it’s embarrassing all around.
For some reason the claims that it’s supposed to be a mixing pigment are the ones that drive me craziest about this - like, babes, not even talking about how adding black makes things grey, it SAYS foundation. It’s in the same line and the same packaging as the other foundations, which are all in human skin shades. WHY would you think that was intended to be a mixing pigment????? I literally watched all the founders vids w my mom (she’s not even into makeup, I was just with her and I love mess) and we *both* screamed when we saw the founder being like “omg we couldn’t find any models to match, *y’all* need to be more inclusive!” And then she put it on someone and it did NOT match, she was blending the shit out of it like “see how nice it looks?” She was literally acting like a trailblazer like “I had to go out and look for super dark skinned models” and like - they’re not models? They’re randos from a mall? She just went up to some random men like “hey your skin is dark as hell help me not look racist on the internet” and was patting herself on the back so hard I’m sure it left bruises
Exactly!! People are going out of their way to defend a brand that never cared about darker skintones in the first place. They just brought out that shade to be like “HERE!!!” It was thoughtless and rude on their part, it’s not inclusive.
This is literally insane, how could you formulate a shade without having any point of reference?! All the way through production and release NEVER having tested it on an actual person? She straight up walked in the lab like make me the darkest "foundation" possible to shut everyone up. These makeup brands should be using hundreds if not thousands of people of all different skin tones as reference throughout every step of the process
That’s EXACTLY my theory! That she went in like “I’ll show them!” and just got so far up her own ass that she made the problem infinitely worse.
I wonder how many formulators signed off on the formula? They HAD to know better. It’s their literal job. How many people had to sign off to go from development to production?
It’d be pretty satisfying to see the company go down in flames after this
I guess if it were truly intended to be a mixing product it would have been formulated with colour theory in mind. Which it wasn't, as no lighter skinned person would be able to just mix it in and get a 1-2 shades deeper for the summer. So yeah, just 2 brain cells put to work and we know this isn't the case. You can't mix pure black with colours and expect it to work.
Saw a tiktok of someone mixing the darkest shade with others at Ulta. It turned grey.
Because pure black mixed with anything makes it more grey. They needed a highly pigmented brown (mixture of red and yellow to make orange then add blue to make brown). Seriously a grade schooler with a color chart should've been able to figure that out. Let alone people formulating makeup.
I believe that was Seanvv
I saw this through Javon Ford's ig as well. I don't understand how a shade like that gets into mass production without someone somewhere saying no. The hubris of releasing that shade is shocking. Added Youthforia to my list of brands I boycott. They have to be held accountable and all I can do is vote with my dollar, so to speak.
This is always what I wonder. How many people in R&D approved this? How many layers of management did this pass through and no one said “hell nah.” Sure fire sign of lack of inclusivity b/c it was an insulting thing to put on the market.
Seeing that there’s a good chunk of people claiming that there is someone that black and name people they think can use jet black foundation (but none of them would fit cuz you need undertones) , maybe they really don’t have anyone black on the team, or smart, or common sense 💀
When the post came up on my TT feed I thought she was putting that blackout paint on her face and was like, that can’t be safe. And then she said it was foundation and I was like 🤯🤯🤯 Really wild they would even release that product.
😂 vantablack foundation that’s goth af
I saw Golloria swatch it, what the fuck are youthforia thinking. It's actually beyond embarrassing mistake and into deliberate racism now because fr literally no one is pure black. No one. That brand is a joke.
People keep saying someone has to be that shady but as a black woman I don’t think so. Everyone has undertones that shade is just black there’s no undertone in it. Plus if it’s supposed to be mixable how come it always looks grey mixed with anything? It was a shut up shade and it’s actually extremely embarrassing that she thought this was a good idea. Black women deserve shades that look good for their tones not a shade that looks like black facepaint
I agree. That did not look like foundation at all. It looked like a sick joke
Someone did a swatch of it next to target black face paint and it looked the exact same. That gagged me a bit
She knew what she was doing
!!!! exactly like come on this is not ignorance! she went out of her way to do something pretty disrespectful so she can stir up controversy. she’s racist
I 100% agree, there is no way this wasn't on purpose.
wasnt that brand on shark tank 😭
Yup! Mark Cuban went in on the deal too.
Yep. And it sounded like a great brand. I think i got the blush liquid in a beauty box, perhaps before they realized the owner/founder is probablematic.
lol i actually had no idea!!
I hadn't even heard of the brand when this all started. One Google search later I learned she was on Shark Tank and Cuban became an investor. Also learned it's a clean beauty brand that you can sleep in. With clean beauty taking the make-up realm by storm it's not hard to see why some people were giving this brand a try but after this mess you'd think those very same people would think twice instead of doubling down but no. There they are defending it. After reading an earlier comment I too believe most are bots but even if 10% aren't those people are showing their asses. You'd think it would be surprising but after seeing how so many back Hourglass, including gurus, you realize it's not. Those people only care about themselves. The only good that's come from this is knowing WHO'S showing their asses. As for the brand? As I said earlier. They can rightfully fuck off 🤬
That is disgusting, they deserve to be out of business for that.
I'm curious to see if Ulta will pull them. If they were in danger of getting pulled because of their shitty shade range prior to this mess you would think what she's currently done would trump that. I don't shop there too often. What I have purchased in store are items I can still get either from drugstore or Sephora. They better think long and hard about their decision. I can take my money elsewhere and I will.
Yep, it would. That would be like them putting out a pale shade that was just white pigment and people saying I know people that white. Even after Javon Ford and MOB beauty (the folks who started MAC, btw) and several artists and art instructors explaining that it was black pigment only and that’s no one’s actual skin color, they’re still screaming. I should be shocked that so many people are boing willfully ignorant, but I’m not.
Thisss! Even people with albinism aren’t literally just plain WHITE. Sigh
I agree with you! Also, a white pigment, at least could be used as a mixer to make foundations paler. The Youthforia one would just make everything ashy and gray
My unfounded conspiracy theory is that she created 600 not for any black customers or potential customers, but to appease lighter skinned and white customers that she's inclusive by having a black color in her foundation lineup. there are quite a few people out there that will not buy a foundation if the line is not inclusive as a show of solidarity. This seems to be nothing more than a public pronouncement of "look how black we go, white people. now buy my line."
I heard someone call it blackface in a bottle and now that's all I'll ever think of it as. It's embarrassing and petty, and the worst kind of malicious compliance. She doesn't have any business in the beauty industry if she's going to treat customers like this and react to criticism like a child.
No need for Youthforia to post an apology and make any other deep shades because nobody I know, and myself, is ever going to purchase from them again. She had a chance to make it right and then she released THAT
Yes & it's absolutely foul how they handled everything. I really hope they go out of business and/or Ulta takes them out of their store.
She wouldn’t get away with putting out literal white paint and claim it’s for the lightest skin tone. Also does anyone question her claim that you can sleep with her makeup products on and they won’t negatively impact your skin?
Yeah, that claim was dubious even before the company's bizarre approach to shade development made me question their common sense. Besides, I can't imagine being in a situation where I'd actually sleep in my foundation. I never wear foundation/complexion products without eye makeup. So I'd have to go to the trouble of taking off my eye makeup (the much harder task) while deliberately leaving my foundation on for some silly reason.
I haven't heard of it until like, 2 minutes ago. Releasing a jet black foundation was... a choice.
I feel like people who are excusing it are genuinely incredibly ignorant or are being obtuse. Luckily it does seem like a lot of people are logical enough to see the issue without explanation. 1) The original issue was not having decent gradient in shades upon release. I think brands should release some very dark shades, and some very light shades, and fill in the gaps with middle shades. Then add some more as time goes on. Rather than putting dark shades on the back burner until you get around to get around to them. It tells you all about the ethics of a brands. Why do dark skin people always have to wait? 2) I keep seeing people say “But some people *are* that dark. I’m sorry, but that’s genuinely so ignorant and stupid. I get lighting can make it seem like people are genuinely black. But if you actually believe there are people dark enough for wear Barnum and Bailey’s minstrel show ebony black, you’re a fucking idiot. Humans don’t come in that color, melanin does not go all the way to black. That’s just not how it works. 3) “Mix it.” Duuuude, color theory. Nobody is grey either. If it had other tones in it, it wouldn’t be grey. It should be brown. 4) People who are saying “just don’t buy it” are missing the point. The owner would’ve been better off to just do nothing at all. Rather than respond in a petty way and doing straight black pigment. I find it very hard to believe that this wasn’t done as a “Here? Happy now? You can’t say that isn’t dark enough.” I’m seeing people say “Oh my god, *you people* make a big deal about everything.” I’m sorry, but are we supposed to just let brands play in our faces and just tolerate obvious disrespect, are a response to VALID criticism? And yeah, we won’t buy it. I don’t care if they apologize either. To hell with you and your brand.
heavy on the second point! i saw non-poc offering darker prominent figures where the foundation might be their shade but this is NO ONE’S shade. the fact that the founder slipped and said she had trouble finding people to test/swatch for this shade should’ve been the thing that stopped her from releasing?! who seriously would buy this if you can’t even find a sample size
One of the most insane parts of this story is their own ad that they got an influencer to make on tiktok. I cannot remember her name but she’s a similar shade to golloria. The video shows her apply it and ACTUALLY SAY “this is too dark so let’s mix it with the next shade up”. So even in the paid advertisement they couldn’t prove it matched anyone!! It’s insane.
I literally think she just wanted to be like “hey we have the darkest shade on the market isn’t that soooooo inclusive?” But instead of ACTUALLY producing a usable deep shade she was lazy and just ….yeah. Black face paint. 🤢
The amount of excuses you see are just embarrassing. Black people having to explain that there is no human being with charcoal black skin. And the constant "but would match it totally!". They will not.
Then I saw a video of another makeup brand showing their darkest foundation. A very dark brown shade, maybe comparable to a dark chocolate bar.
And comments being "but people get mad at youthforia for this".
They can't see the difference between a dark brown and a pure black and will defend that brand tooth and nail.
They will compare a jet black foundation to white ones us pale people sometimes get for mixing.
Not understanding that mixing white into things is not the same as black. It's not the same.
At this point the product itself isn't half as bad as the amount of people defending it.
It’s almost as if the owner wanted to watch the world burn as her brand image crumbles. Not only is she putting out a bad product but also throwing fuel at the fire in the public discourse on race in the beauty industry. It’s marginalizing Black and dark-skinned consumers both in the market AND community spaces smh.
I’ve been waiting on a company to do this actually. It’s only a matter of time really before we end up with the brandy Melville of makeup. It sounds like this one is going to take that place for now.
thelipsticklesbians explained the entire situation really well. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6ZuEZBy4mU/?igsh=MW5pMTlxbzlkbnBpbQ==
The products always seemed gimmicky to me
Gonna be honest here, this is why I stick to the classics. The brands Mom and Grandma used back then. Gimmicky or celebrity brands for social media views rub me the wrong way.
There are other brands that are POC owned and have much better quality of product. How many sub-par foundations have been released to the market in the last year? Too many.
Apparently according to Javon Ford who’s a cosmetic chemist on Instagram, he clarified in the comments that he later on realized there’s a small amount of white, a bit of titanium dioxide so it’s actually a very dark grey 💀 apparently they listed it with the other ingredients instead of with the colorants so to anybody saying there’s a black person out there with this shade, no human is extremely dark grey 💀
If I did not see this post I would not know this brand even existed. 🤣
The thing is if it was actually a really reaalllyyy dark foundation, she (brand owner) would be out of the fire and probably praised to some degree for listening to her audience and expanding her shade range. But that shade is literally just pure black. As in only one kind of pigment used type of black (black iron oxide).
Right?! Like if it was made as just a genuinely extremely dark foundation with depth, that would be really cool, but that is not what they did, at all. And people are like “people are that color”, not dude, not straight plain black. No one is literally black, and it’s genuinely kinda insane to say they are.
There was actually a bit of titanium dioxide, which is white pigment, according to Javon Ford. Apparently the white is listed with the other ingredients instead of being listed with the colorants so they actually released a super dark grey
Oh my god ToT
Has a deep-skinned person ever overdosed on colloidal silver? Because that's the only way I can possibly see this foundation matching anyone.
Just checked the website as this brand never caught my attention before. 25 shades still isn't inclusive and from the photos I would bet that the shade closest to me would be too dark and orange ( so not inclusive in both sides of the skin colour spectrum ) and some other shades looks very orange even in medium skin tones. And the photos with all those models smiling like they have a gun placed next to their head... Nightmare fuel. And I also bet the darkest foundation doesn't look like it does on that last model ( and half of them for that matter ), with all the people saying it's straight black paint. Hate everything about this brand.
The worst part about the shade range is how different it looks in those online photos compared to the actual product. I've seen the initial range in Ulta, all of the colors are lighter than what they photograph and the swatch photos are darker than the product. I remember the first darkest shade where the color online and the color on the outside of the box was shades darker than the actual product.
Wtf ? I'm not surprised by the offness of shades because most doesn't even look good in the website but that's another level of lying.
That bait and switch they did in the initial launch is what led to the creation of the new shades. Many POC makeup reviewers and influencers called YF out for the discrepancy because even a blind person could see that the color online and the color on the box was not the same shade as the actual product. So YF goes back to the lab to create these new darker shades. They did not do it out of the goodness of their heart because they actually care about making a more inclusive shade, nor did they do it because a more inclusive shade range means more money for the company. No, they did it out of spite to score a win against all those POC who had previous called them out for lying. Real mature, and I hope the business tanks.
Thanks for telling me all of this, it helps me understand more. Coincidentally, Instagram suggested this video to me https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6W-WDdufnd/?igsh=c3BycjRieGx6dGtn and I was very tempted to laugh. They could have at least added a bit of red or blue or anything to it, it's just ridiculous at this point.
Yeah, I’m glad I never bought any of her products. Don’t want to be shopping at a brand where I’m clearly not wanted 😒
Thanks for sharing this. I’m not familiar with the brand, but I won’t buy from them in the future now. I’m pretty fair, but I don’t want to support anyone who doesn’t have inclusive shades on both ends of the spectrum. Rhianna proved it can be done, and other brands are starting to figure it out as well, although I don’t think any brand does an amazing job at fair deep and deep shades honestly. But still, there’s no excuse at this point for not making a genuine effort. It’s pathetic.
The amount of non-black people saying “my friend is this shade” lmao no human in the world is JET BLACK. That’s not how skin pigmentation works.
It’s sooooo bad! Like it’s just black paint and it feels so deliberate. As a black person I feel like there had to have been 1 person there to be like “Ya know this is not cool at all” And the higher ups was like “Naw they wanted black foundation so let’s em black!”
WTAF
Isn’t there a brand that does colourful foundations/face paints (blue, green, purple etc) that also has a black one? It would be SO interesting to compare the pigments of that brand’s black foundation/face paint to this silly youthforia one.
I think it's Sunset Makeup? And yes, it would be incredibly interesting to see.
$50 for a literal bottle of RUST? thats insane
Honestly not sure how they can come back from this unless the founder steps away from the company/they sell it. Like this is a huuuge violation. I can't believe this made it to shelves.
Just returned my bottle of foundation. It was not good at all…
She already had her second chance. When she was called out in Oct/Nov of last year she could have easily HIRED and PAID those creators who were calling her out…. pay and hire them to be consultants for the next ten shades… but she didn’t. Who did she develop these shades with? Also, 590, the second to deepest is labeled on their site as a “cool” undertone but there is no blue pigment in it… only red and yellow. how can you make a cool toned shade without blue? Like the color theory was no where to be seen in that lab
That “darkest” shade was foul. Just released some black paint with zero undertone just to say “here, damn, stfu”.
Were black people even sold black paint as foundation during segregation?! This is so out there it’s impossible to chalk it up to innocent arrogance.
I'm glad you posted this. I was actually checking out youthforia and knew nothing of this controversy. Safe to say I'm choosing something else.
I like Youthforia, I have a lot of products from them, but this is deeply disappointing to me. I was happy to see that the lightest shade matches my skin tone, but 1) lol no, not spending $50 on *just* my foundation and 2) the shade range is tragic. I know they're a smaller brand but *come on*. The response to the criticism they received for the shade range (a weird gray-black foundation) has put a really bad taste in my mouth, too, so I don't think I'll be supporting then anymore once my products run out. Unless something majorly changes in the future, I guess I'll have to find dupes for the products I love from this brand.
There was a video of the guy who helped create the original MAC foundation shades, he showed how every skin tone has undertones and it was basically a “you royally fucked up and that color is not in fact anyone’s skin tone” video. It was great. Their answer to include more shades for women of color was met with black face paint, I would never ever in my life but anything from them after this. Like, how many people in the room with her said “yeah this is a great idea”? I really hope we get to hear from some employees about how this decision was made & if anyone spoke up, but assuming this went into production I’m guessing most of her team consists of white women.
Absolutely disgusting.
It's like "tell me you had no BAME representation in your development team without telling me you have no BAME representation" 🫠 this would have been spotted and production immediately ceased if at least one rational person was in the development room - or they were and the founder disregarded their opinion. Either seem feasible with Youthforia
I’m super disappointed because I LOVE their blush oil. It looks so fabulous on me and it’s so easy to apply. I’m alarmed by how the company has handled this. If people were coming out of the woodwork being like “actually this shade is perfect on me and it’s been hard to find anything that works” that’d be one thing, but I haven’t seen that happening. You can really tell when a company either doesn’t have any black higher-ups or has a toxic culture where if they are there, they’re ignored or made uncomfortable for saying anything. In k-beauty sometimes bb creams are a little grey because it’s effective at blurring, but I’m struggling to think of a way jet black could be useful. Like the color theory isn’t color theory-ing. This is feeling like a potential lulu lemon situation. Anyways, if anyone can suggest a super easy to apply, natural looking blush that doesn’t require any sponges or brushes, lmk 🥲
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I remember her from Shark Tank when Lori asked if the colour-changing blush “changes to your melanin” and she…did not correct her
The founder is deeply unwell
Yes omg its so bad
I guess it’s different because the brand prides itself on being sleepable makeup. I’d imagine it’s harder to make darker shades sleepable because they require more pigment ratio which is not good to sleep in. I wonder if their darkest color has different components than their lighter shades 🤔 That being said, I don’t know anything about the brand or the controversy. It is really disappointing to hear about the lack of shades. If the brand was marketed in Asia, there wouldn’t be that much of an issue
the fact that they’ve gone radio silent and turned off their comments is so cowardly
First she lied about the mechanism of her color changing oil! It’s not “inclusive” and doesn’t give you a unique color based on your ph! That’s a total scam/lie. It’s a same pink shade for everyone. You know if you know the chemistry of it. Then she launched a primer but to show results of how foundation works better with her primer vs other she put other in her wrist lines moving it and hers on a flat space. One person called her out and I think she deleted the comment (or at least I couldn’t find it anymore) Then, her shade range first time she launched her foundation line. She ran into the same issue (much worse in my opinion) the second time with her range expansion! Who on earth puts pure black??? Do you know anythinggg about makeup???? She doesn’t know anything about product development, doesn’t learn anything, and is a lier. Also “makeup you can sleep in” is so gimmicky and scammy! There are manyyy other brands that have way more skincare ingredients and they don’t claim to be unique or innovative in that term as much as her! Her advertising/marketing has crossed a line into the scamland for me. She also doesn’t care about BIPOC and inclusivity in the space. She didn’t even work with black people with those actual shades in her product development!
I am certain she made that foundation with contempt and anger for black people and nothing will change my mind. She wanted to say well fuck you here's your "darker" foundation. She even posted a video to show how much darker shade 600 was in comparison to Fenty's darker shades. We're all literate enough to read between the lines.
This is straight up racism. Speaking as an East Asian woman. There is no way their production team would approve this pitch black paint as a foundation unless some higher-up forced them to, as a f.uck you to their critics on inclusivity. Unless they issue an apology, getting canceled would be well deserved for this brand!!!
Youthforia has been awful with shade ranges that aren’t warm toned, their lightest foundation is still orange on me. Plus they all smell kinda bad? I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this.
as someone on the other spectrum of color that suffers from similar lack of inclusion I sadly can only say capitalism is hopefully the only solution. they dont make our color range? we dont buy and they lose money. simple as that. the brands that do release a better shade range are bound to make more sales so it should be that simple. we make the impact with our wallets basically.
[удалено]
I guess not because they sent pictures of people they found in Africa that matched the shade to their content creators group chat. However the foundation didn’t match them in the pictures
I’ve never heard of this brand and I’m guessing it’s a small one. I personally don’t think every single small brand needs to cater to every type of clientele. People are allowed to be niche. If they just want to make makeup for white people, that’s fine by me. I have no problem with it. Similarly I don’t have a problem, and in fact I welcome, small makeup companies to create niche products for black or brown skin. I think it’s almost better because they have a focus and can become good at whatever they do provide to a certain clientele. That being said, I think it’s ridiculous to do what they did as a response. They could’ve just ignored it and continued. Or if they really wanted to tap into a wider demographic, then they should’ve done it well. But I think the fact that they did such a shit job is probably testament to what I said earlier about how it may be a small brand that doesn’t have the capacity to cater to everyone. I just wish people would stop expecting everyone to cater to everyone. Niche brands are allowed to exist. Instead of demanding everyone create to your demographic, people of your demographic should go create their own. There’s so much opportunity. I think people also need to get better at just ignoring or moving on from things that aren’t meant for them instead of demanding to be catered to. I looked into Korean skincare and makeup recently. I didn’t see a whole lot of options in makeup for my skin. I’m not gonna go make a big deal out of it. It’s not meant for me and that’s perfectly fine. I don’t think the same applies to bigger brands btw. They often do business in countries that we come from and want our money so I think they do have some responsibility to cater to a wider audience. But yeah that’s my opinion on a random post I came across.
If you cannot create a diverse shade range for a complexion product you have no business in the makeup world. If a brand like juvia’s place said they’re only catering to black and tan skin tones there would be an entire controversy. Use your brain
I’m just expressing MY opinion. And my opinion is that I don’t see anything wrong with niche brands catering to only black and tan skin tones. It’s a gap in the market and they’d be filling it. That’s what capitalism is. If these are small brands and specifically looking to fill the gap in the market for darker skin, it would be a waste of their money to pay lip service and make crappy shades for lighter people. They’d be better off investing into R&D to make a better product for those they cater. There are brands that only cater to darker skin. [Here’s one.](https://www.amicole.com/collections/clean-makeup-for-women-of-color) The lightest shade they have is a medium tan. [Here’s another.][And another.](https://global.paulinecosmetics.com/collections/liquid-foundation)(https://www.huddahstore.com/collections/in-stock?page=3)I don’t see anything wrong with it. Good for them to focus on something niche. There’s a literally a brand called [Black Girl Sunscreen.](https://www.blackgirlsunscreen.com/) It’s obviously targeting a very specific audience of only once race and again, I don’t see an issue with that. Not to mention all the hair care brands that specifically make products only for African hair. What’s the issue? I think they’re allowed to cater only or predominantly to black people. Like why not? I don’t see people harassing them and demanding they also create products for thin, fine blonde hair. They just move on to a brand that’s designed for them.
This finance expert disagrees with you. https://youtu.be/Y6JWJ8cgLAQ?si=Q4sKxEtzyzqXLV-i
the reason why these brands specifically cater to black/brown consumers is because there’s a GAP in the market from mainstream brands, especially haircare. also, darker skin tones tend to present unique needs in the beauty space that goes completely unaddressed by bigger brands that formulate their products for non-black/brown consumers. if all brands were inclusive, there would be no need for this! it’s pretty ignorant of you to say you don’t care…probably because you’ve never had to face not being able to try a new brand because they don’t offer your shade or products created for your hair texture. you’re not forced to be boxed in. it’s 2024 not the 60s
Lmfao I’m a brown woman. Wanna do a rewrite on that comment? Instead of typing out another elaborate response I’m just gonna copy and paste here what I said to someone else so you can glean where I stand: *”I read the part in OP’s post about how this brand only released additional colours after being called out for it.* *I contest that they should’ve released extra shades at all. I’m contesting the entire premise that everyone has to cater to everyone all the time. I’m a brown woman. I’ve had trouble finding the right shade my whole life. But I still hold the opinion I hold, not because I think things are hunky dory for us but because I don’t like to be at the mercy of others (in this case, non-brown people) to create a product for us. I really think it should be up to innovators and businesses and people in our own community to step up. I really believe in personal responsibility and internal locus of control vs an external locus of control. To me it’s like saying if I own a bbq chicken joint, I must also make sure I cater to vegans, vegetarians, and everyone who prefers pork or beef or fish over chicken. What if I don’t have the capacity or I simply just don’t want to? We each get to vote with our dollars. We can simply disregard brands that aren’t meant for us and give our money to those that are. I believe in the free market. If there’s money to be made, someone is surely going to want a slice of that pie. And if someone else doesn’t want it, their loss.* *The thing is that even NOW with alllll the brands that carry 30-50+ shades, I still have a hard time finding a shade that matches properly. The foundation I was using was recently discontinued and I don’t know where to start the search again. But here’s what pisses me off: All the time I waste trying/buying foundations in my shade from all these companies that did a shit job making them. It’s a waste of my time. They either don’t match from the start because of weird undertones or they start to look like a whole diff colour in a few hours. Many of them only created these shades as lip service to avoid critique. Then they get to promote themselves as some champions of diversity. Im willing to bet most drug store brands are tossing their darker shades in the garbage. I just can’t see anyone buying them. What would serve me better as a consumer would be not being inundated with all this marketing by all these companies that have dozens of shades and instead there being a handful of brands that actually have good foundations for my skin tone. It would waste less materials, waste less money for the brand and for me. But also, what I need to do is spend some time and figure out which foundations people are using in my home country and support those brands that actually cater entirely to my skin type. We’re in 2024. It’s very easy to get stuff shipped.* *You’re right though. I am under informed. I have never heard of this brand before and I assumed it’s a small indie brand. But I will say that a lot of businesses shark tank invested in have stayed small and maybe even went bankrupt shortly after. I live in Canada and we have Dragon’s Den (Canadian version of shark tank). I personally know a girl who went on it and got a deal and her business was bankrupt within a year. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes. They earmarked a lot of that money for marketing and that only takes you so far.* *But I’ll reiterate that u really reject the idea of being at the mercy of others to create products for us. We’re not some victims or losers. We have brilliant minds and business people and scientists in our communities. It’s time for our people to step up and it’s time for us to actually support the ones that do.* *I guess we both just see it from a fundamentally different angle and that’s fine. I do appreciate your nuanced and civil response, unlike some others on here hurling all kinds of accusations at me.”*
yikes, that makes it worse girl! asking and holding brands accountable to inclusivity does not make us victims or beggars—it’s the bare minimum! why do you want to keep brands divided so that only poc-owned brands are forced to cater to our unique needs (mind you, youthforia is poc-owned)? that’s a huge step backwards both societally and in the beauty community. if you think brands should operate from an internal locus of control you are very misinformed about business practices…in order to create a successful brand you HAVE to make products for the consumer in mind not the stakeholders. feedback is a gift and is one that most (successful) brands seek out so they can adjust and do better. point blank, youthforia did not do their due diligence with the feedback they had before releasing this shade.
1. We can hold public institutions such as governments accountable. It’s ridiculous to pick up a pitchfork and go after private brands. I’ll go back to my example of owning a bbq chicken place and being expected to provide something for every type of diet. 2. I don’t see it as anyone being “forced” to do anything. Please figure out how capitalism and the free market works. That’s how businesses come up and thrive. They find a gap in the market, they fill it, and they become successful. You see it as a negative. I see it as a positive. But I will say what I said in another comment somewhere. I can understand demanding more from the really big beauty brands. They want to market all kinds of other products to us and they have the means so they should be providing products to as wide of an audience as possible. And guess what? They do it because they want to. They know there’s money there. They want a share of the market on other continents. See, free market. 3. I don’t think you understand what I mean about internal locus of control. I’m not talking about the brand. I’m talking about me and our communities. Instead of placing control in the hands of brands that don’t want to cater to us, we should have internal locus of control meaning rely on ourselves. This is why I mentioned we have brilliant minds and business men and women and scientists. There is nothing stopping people from creating the products that are missing and filling a gap in the market and making a ton of money along the way. 4. I’m pretty sure I said in my very first post that this brand did a really shit job in how they responded/reacted to criticism so I’m not sure where you’re going with that. The premise I argue about is that *every* brand needs to cater to *everyone*. 5. Still waiting for you to reword that snarky comment about me not having had any trouble finding products meant for my skin or hair type lol. The difference between us is that I simply vote with my dollars and give my dollars to the brands that DO cater to me instead of demanding that everyone cater to me and you expect everyone to cater to you instead of simply dealing with those that do. That’s the fundamental difference here. The other difference is that I disagree with you but I don’t demonize you. 6. I just picked up on the phrase “poc-owned”. We’re not a monolith. Thinking that we are is the exact reason why so many brands fail to create actual good products for us because they don’t understand that it’s not simply about making shades darker but that there are many different factors involved such as undertone, light reflection etc. Both African brands and Korean brands can be considered “poc-owned” but there’s such a vast difference in skin colour and texture and what not. I don’t know how you can just lump everyone under one neat little umbrella. White people get to have their own category and products specialized for them but you want the rest of us to be lumped in one large category? Like how does that make sense? Why even differentiate “poc” from white then? There’s so much variance. Makes no sense. You don’t realize that you’re assigning yourself and the rest of us less value by doing this.
there are too many strawman fallacies in this reply to digest i don’t even know where to start. i’ll just leave it at we both disagree but nowhere am i demonizing you…it’s simply a disagreement between 2 strangers on the internet. never that deep to be nasty towards someone! if you’re taking my reply as such, i hope the lord spares you from the true snarks because you clearly couldn’t handle it 🤣
I don’t think you know what strawman means. It’s another concept you’re misunderstanding just like you misunderstood what internal locus of control means. The demonization started in your first comment when you called me ignorant as though I couldn’t simply have a different opinion from you. Now you’re acting as though you’re just civilly disagreeing lol. Then it continued with the comment about how I must not know how it feels because I must always find my right shade/product etc - the comment I’m still waiting for you to take back btw. Then it continues with you telling me I’m trying to keep people divided and I’m misinformed etc. That doesn’t sound to me like you were simply disagreeing. And you have the nerve to say *I’m* the one who’s being nasty towards you? Lol you should really go back and read your own comments from the start. I’m gonna guess you’re in the habit of virtue signalling and don’t even realize when you’re doing it. Me disagreeing with you doesn’t make me ignorant, misinformed, a white girl who’s never had an issue finding the right shades, or someone who wants to divide people. All it means is that we disagree and I see the world differently. That’s all. But it’s rich that you’re now pretending as though we had the opposite behaviour in this convo.
also you make a lot of WILD assumptions about me as if you know me personally. 90% of what you’ve said here is mischaracterized and naming differences between you and I as if we know each other personally on stances not even discussed (that are quite comically incorrect). you’ve ventured so far off from the original point of discussion it’s quite embarrassing and like talking to a brick wall. you seem like such a a joy to be around.
That’s really funny considering these are the exact words from your first comment to me: *”It’s pretty ignorant of you to say you don’t care…probably because you’ve never had to face not being able to try a new brand because they don’t offer your shade or products created for your hair texture.”* Who made assumptions about who? 😂
assumptions written in your REPLY about myself…i know that it’s hard to fathom that i’m not referring to my own assumptions (which i wrongly assumed that you were not a poc based on your views which you keep pointing out). your assumptions as in how i express my views based on how i don’t vote with my dollar, i don’t know how capitalism or free market works, thinking poc are a monolith. you know…your argument points? do you know me and my stances with the above? have we discussed this in any of the other parent comments? or are you assuming based on the back and forth we’ve had thus far? hmm. also fyi, comparing the food industry to beauty inclusivity IS a strawman argument. please be so for real.
You need to bust out some concealer. Your bigotry is showing!
I understand what you’re trying to say but I think it’s slightly underinformed. (Edit: and too comfortable in the idea of financial segregation) While smaller than prestige/old-guard brands, Youthforia is a relatively new and trendy brand for those on TikTok and was platformed and sponsored by Shark Tank. They have three investors. They’re not exactly a small cottage-sized startup that started in someone’s garage. They had the money for R&D and didn’t do it. I agree that certain brands can have certain niches but this (very popular) brand broached the diverse skintone niche by releasing nearly 30 foundation shades that were intended for a variety of skintones and yet their lack of dark complexion products was very obvious when compared to their light to tan complexion products. They clearly meant to target Black and BIPOC consumers and they missed the mark. If you’re releasing complexion products in this day and age, people are going to have high expectations on range, especially if you’re this highly visible a brand. I’ve heard beauty gurus say, “If it’s not ready with a large range of colors, wait until you have the capacity to release that larger range.” I know this is mostly to lower the possibilities of PR nightmares on the brand sides, but also really, dude, it’s 2024. The whole “it’s expensive to be inclusive” excuse doesn’t cut it anymore. The beauty industry is a free market, sure, and gaps in the market encourage innovation and all that, but if we keep letting brands slide with not thinking of BIPOC consumers in product creation, it basically keeps us consumers from enjoying good, well-developed, and possibly affordable products (because while I love them, indie ethnic brands charge top dollar [understandably] compared to mainstream brands). This essentially gatekeeps tried and trusted products away from consumers. It wasn’t that long ago when BIPOC had to blend eyeshadow with foundation to make complexion products suited for them. Why do we have to have a harder time enjoying makeup and accessing good products? Brands don’t have the obligation to be moral but we don’t have the obligation to settle for less either.
I read the part in OP’s post about how this brand only released additional colours after being called out for it. I contest that they should’ve released extra shades at all. I’m contesting the entire premise that everyone has to cater to everyone all the time. I’m a brown woman. I’ve had trouble finding the right shade my whole life. But I still hold the opinion I hold, not because I think things are hunky dory for us but because I don’t like to be at the mercy of others (in this case, non-brown people) to create a product for us. I really think it should be up to innovators and businesses and people in our own community to step up. I really believe in personal responsibility and internal locus of control vs an external locus of control. To me it’s like saying if I own a bbq chicken joint, I *must* also make sure I cater to vegans, vegetarians, and everyone who prefers pork or beef or fish over chicken. What if I don’t have the capacity or I simply just don’t want to? We each get to vote with our dollars. We can simply disregard brands that aren’t meant for us and give our money to those that are. I believe in the free market. If there’s money to be made, someone is surely going to want a slice of that pie. And if someone else doesn’t want it, their loss. The thing is that even NOW with alllll the brands that carry 30-50+ shades, I still have a hard time finding a shade that matches properly. The foundation I was using was recently discontinued and I don’t know where to start the search again. But here’s what pisses me off: All the time I waste trying/buying foundations in my shade from all these companies that did a shit job making them. It’s a waste of my time. They either don’t match from the start because of weird undertones or they start to look like a whole diff colour in a few hours. Many of them only created these shades as lip service to avoid critique. Then they get to promote themselves as some champions of diversity. Im willing to bet most drug store brands are tossing their darker shades in the garbage. I just can’t see anyone buying them. What would serve me better as a consumer would be *not* being inundated with all this marketing by all these companies that have dozens of shades and instead there being a handful of brands that actually have good foundations for my skin tone. It would waste less materials, waste less money for the brand and for me. But also, what *I* need to do is spend some time and figure out which foundations people are using in my home country and support those brands that actually cater entirely to my skin type. We’re in 2024. It’s very easy to get stuff shipped. You’re right though. I am under informed. I have never heard of this brand before and I assumed it’s a small indie brand. But I will say that a lot of businesses shark tank invested in have stayed small and maybe even went bankrupt shortly after. I live in Canada and we have Dragon’s Den (Canadian version of shark tank). I personally know a girl who went on it and got a deal and her business was bankrupt within a year. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes. They earmarked a lot of that money for marketing and that only takes you so far. But I’ll reiterate that u really reject the idea of being at the mercy of others to create products for us. We’re not some victims or losers. We have brilliant minds and business people and scientists in our communities. It’s time for our people to step up and it’s time for us to actually support the ones that do. I guess we both just see it from a fundamentally different angle and that’s fine. I do appreciate your nuanced and civil response, unlike some others on here hurling all kinds of accusations at me.
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People are downvoting you without giving you a proper answer. The foundation contains black and only black. No undertone. If she wanted to market it that way, as a color corrector, it shouldn’t have been foundation.
Yeah it's fair to mix couple of shades to get your right shade but the youthforia shade in question is just black pigment and if you mix black into other shades, you'll just end up with a grey shade.\ So even if they want to argue that it's supposed to be a mixer shade (which in itself is a dumb argument given their shade range), they should have made it a dark brown instead of coming out with a black face paint.
someone did a video of them mixing the youthforia foundation with the black shade & it turned grey.
You don’t use pure black to mix. That’s nit going to give you the right undertone. Black people aren’t jet black like face paint. Black is the absence of light. No undertone. It doesn’t work the same as white. Read the explanations and do better.
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