Color Me (Not) Impressed

I promise I'm not turning this into a beauty blog (lord knows I don't have the time nor the money -- nor  the hubris to casually breeze by the makeup counter, swatch lipstick shades on my forearm, and look inconspicuous), but this is a really great article on why those "draping" systems that tell you which colors are your best fail a lot of women of color:

"Well, guess what. If your hair is black, according to any analysis that I have seen, you are a winter. Now, let’s think about this for a second. Based on black hair alone (winter also includes some other hair colors), that winter category is going to contain the vast majority of people of Asian descent, the vast majority of people of ethnic African descent, the majority of Middle Easterners, the majority of Latinos, most Native Americans, most Australian aboriginals, a large number of European caucasians from countries such as Greece, Italy, Russia, and Spain, and a whole slew of other people besides. Now, I’m no expert on global demographics or population statistics, but I’m going guess very conservatively that people with black hair constitute more than half the world’s population. (And yes, I know there are exceptions, but don’t go bringing up the fact that you know an Indian woman who has beautiful natural red hair or a lovely blonde Puerto Rican as some sort of counterexample intended to prove that black hair isn’t actually that common. That would be what we call “flawed logic.”) So basically we’re talking about the majority of the world’s population supposedly only looking good in one quadrant of the color season spectrum, and the remaining cool blond/honey blond/light brown/chestnut brown/redhead folks sharing the other three quarters (not to mention that some of them also fall into the winter category)? I DON’T THINK SO."

 Granted, I don't know how many younger women -- of any stripe or ethnicity -- follow such draconian rules about what to wear based on hair, eye, and skin color, but growing up in the 80s with my mom's original copy of Color Me Beautiful, I knew those winter colors wouldn't work for me, despite having dark hair and eyes. While I still fall under the umbrella of "white" in most people's eyes  (I'm essentially a Mediterranean mutt with maybe a skosh Mi'kmaq and Ojibwe) so much of this rings true even though I've long given up on such arbitrary rules about what looks good. For what it's worth, I think "Spring" colors (warm yellow-greens, corals, bright blues) look good on me.

The entire article and the lengthy discussion it spawned are well worth the read.