Black Influencers Drag Youthforia’s Latest Foundation Shade, Calling It ‘Minstrel Show Black’

It may be 2024 on the calendar, but mainstream beauty brands are still being schooled by consumers of color on the need for more inclusive products in the marketplace. This time, beauty brand Youthforia is feeling the heat from social media for a lack of diversity in its foundation shades.

It all started in October 2023, when Black beauty influencer Golloria George called out the brand for its lack of inclusivity. She took the brand to task on TikTok for misrepresenting their darkest foundation shade offering, pointing out the discrepancies in what appeared online, on the packaging and what actually came out of the bottle - which was several shades lighter. Back then, Youthforia offered 15 shades of foundation, but George wasn’t able to find one that got even close to matching her skin tone.

According to NBC News, Youthforia CEO Fiona Co Chan apologized her company’s misstep, saying, “When I first started Youthforia two years ago, all I wanted to do was create a safe space where individual beauty could be celebrated. And unfortunately with our latest launch, we just fell short of that mission.”

But in their attempt to right the wrong and add more shades, Youthforia completely missed the mark, prompting George to call them out again for putting out what she described as “tar in a bottle.”

In an April 30 TikTok video, she compared shade 600, Youthforia’s darkest foundation shade, to black face paint.

“When we say that we want you guys to make shades for us, we don’t mean to go to the lab and ask for minstrel show black,” George said in her review. “What we mean is to take the browns that you have made, create undertones and do what you need to do in the lab so it’s a darker shade of brown.”

George also pointed out the vast difference between the two darkest shades – 600 (described as Deep - Neutral) and 590 (described as Deep - Neutral with Cool Undertones), “there could be like 10 more shades between these two shades,” she said.

And commenters chimed in, calling out the company for not accounting for undertones when developing their shades. “I promise you as a south Sudanese even the darkest amongst us have an undertone. Not literally BLACK 🤦🏾‍♀️,” wrote one person in the comments.

George is not alone. Other dark-skinned creators are speaking out as well.

“This, should be a crime,” said fashion and beauty influencer Awuoi Matiop. “It’s one thing to make a mistake once, but when you make it twice, it’s just a slap in the face. Did we not learn anything?”