As a South Asian woman with brown skin I’m often turning to the Internets for advice on what make-up suits my skin – and trust me the advice is thin on the ground. So shout out to Mindy Kaling for helping a sister out.
"One of the things about having dark skin is that it's really hard to find really pretty lip colors that flatter your skin," Kaling says in her Instagram video. "Either they're too chalky or too light. Sometimes the models they use are too light-skinned, so you can't really gauge. So, what I thought I'd do is show you all of my favourite lip colours for all of us dark-skinned girls out there . . . I think [they] will also look good on you if you have light-coloured skin."
She then goes on to talk about her favourite lipsticks, and this is when I started taking notes.
It’s been a bugbear of mine about how little beauty advice there is for women of colour and how we have to go seeking these nuggets of advice in forums and social media pages – often referred to by friends.
Mindy has clearly noticed the gap in the market and got the ball rolling by tagging some of her own celebrity woc friends to share their make-up suggestions. Many of her fans in the comments have also been coming up with tips of their own.
Till it does I’m hitting the shops, because as many beauty editors seem to forget, women of colour have spending power too.
Saman Shad is the Editor of SBS Voices.
