Tarte and the Art of Being So Racist You Don’t Even Realize It

Hot take: the beauty industry sucks. It sucks because it relies on hype, preys on ignorance, and feeds off of insecurity. The beauty industry propagates damaging standards of appearance and gender expectations, and it makes money off of this. And finally, the beauty industry–like all firmly established industries in the Western world–is deeply racist. In fact, the beauty industry might actually be the best microcosm to observe the resilience and the longevity of racist ideals because it deals with faces, skin, bodies. When was the first opportunity a White man in the US had to be racist? It was when he looked at the face of an African slave and decided he or she was inferior because of their appearance. Now imagine what the beauty standards will look like in a society controlled by those American White men. A beauty industry in such a society doesn’t have much incentive to cater to dark-skinned folk, does it now?

In 2018, Tarte cosmetics has shown us that our modern day beauty industry still sees people darker than mayonnaise as an afterthought. Behold this abysmal showcase of the shades of their newly released foundation:

There are exactly three darker shades. I won’t even say dark because they’re not that dark. They’re just darker in comparison to the other shades.

Now, fortunately (and perhaps unfortunately too in some situations) in this day and age, the Internet never stops watching and never forgets. After Tarte released this image, the uproar was immediate. Twitter, Instagram, Reddit and YouTube blew up with indignant cries for more shades. Tarte responded by ignoring everyone and deleting comments, and then three days later offered this pathetic and mind-boggling excuse:

They also posted an apology on their Instagram stories, which automatically disappears after 24 hours. You can see screenshots of their stories here. 

Many devil’s advocates were quick to point out that the reason behind this egregious exclusion of shades was economic. Most best-selling foundation shades are on the light to medium spectrum, so creating foundations for dark skinned-people (who presumably don’t buy foundation that much) is costly, as is the shelf space that companies need to buy to sell their products. One eloquent Youtube commenter put it this way:

And then there are beacons of kindness and empathy–like Reddit user sabrinabodybuilding in the screenshot below–who like to make their opinion known:

These are all words and responses that people of color have heard before: calm down; it’s just the way it is; if you don’t  like it, don’t watch it/buy it/live here/vote for him/eat that/do this/be that way; there are more important problems in the world; these conversations distract us from real moments of racism; bla and bla and bla. You all know the rest.

Now, these oh-so-righteous harbingers of the truth and prophets of justice and insight might think they are expressing harmless opinions, but actually these people are the minions of White Supremacy. They just don’t  know it, which is why they cause so much damage. Groups like the KKK and the GOP, by contrast, hate brown and black people and can even openly admit it themselves. But sabrinabodybuilding and thomas b? They’re just nobodies with a provincial view of the world. And they spread that provincial, narrow-minded, unenlightened, asphyxiated little view of the world like a grassroots activist. We can’t vote these people out. We can’t demand their resignation or their expulsion or suspension. We can’t even write thinkpieces criticizing them because we don’t know who they are.

But Tarte does, and Tarte caters to them. Because Tarte, evidently, is directed by and created by these little minions, who are so entrenched in their bubbles of Whiteness, they don’t even fear public backlashes from POC. They don’t have to. They’ll make a profit anyway. And if one or two complaints actually reach their ears, they’ll talk to POPSUGAR about it, and post a half-assed, temporary apology on a platform that only people who will always love and defend them care to watch.

Now you tell me: has anything truly changed at all since the first White man to see a Black person on American soil decided the Black person was an inferior, forgettable, and irrelevant being?

-Luiza L.

Picture credit: Tarte