The past year has seen many fashion and beauty brands become more inclusive and – finally – start catering to a far wider range of skin tones. However, not all of them always get it right first time. High-end cosmetics brand Becca Cosmetics has apologised after social media users spotted that a model's skin colour had been edited to appear darker. The company released an advert for its Skin Love Weightless Blur Foundation, which is part of its Skin Love range, which aimed to showcase the shade range's inclusivity by showing swatches on four arms with different skin tones. However, some beauty fans soon spotted something was amiss.
It was pointed out on social media that the models' palms did not change colour
Social media users pointed out that the darker skinned model's palm was the same colour as her arm – in reality, people with darker skin tones have lighter skin on their palms. “So did Becca cosmetics really refuse to hire black women for these swatches? They just edited a white hand darker? Look at the two darker hand’s palms,” one Twitter user wrote.
Another added: "Not only is this an issue of race, but if you're editing the colour to match your swatches, I'd say that’s a little like being dishonest about how well your products match different skin colours."
In response, the brand released a new image showing the swatches on different, unedited hands. It announced on Twitter: "Thanks to everyone who shared feedback on our recent arm swatch image, we hear you and want you to know that we remain committed to continually representing our inclusive Becca beauties. To demonstrate this commitment, we've re-shot with real girls from the Becca office."
Another cosmetics brand to have received criticism for not being as inclusive as it tried to appear is Kim Kardashian's KKW Beauty line, which was slammed on social media for not catering to darker skin shades with its concealers. One Twitter user commented: "The irony of the new KKW concealer launch is having a dark skin model in the shoot that can’t even use any of the shades being promoted."
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