Beauty brand Youthforia is under fire for its newly released shades of Date Night Skin Tint Serum Foundation geared toward darker skin tones, which customers are saying only uses black pigment.
Last year, Youthforia faced criticism after a number of Black and brown beauty bloggers felt that its newly released line of foundations, with 15 different shades, did not cater to darker skin tones. This March, the company finally rolled out 10 deeper shades of the Date Night foundation, but beauty influencers were quick to notice that the darkest color is just straight-up black, with no undertones.
Several customers complained about the new shades on social media, including TikToker Mick (@mickbutnotjagger), whose video received 1.3 million views.
“It took that lady three f*cking years to make foundation that I could use as eyeliner, and [she] thought that we couldn’t look up the freaking ingredients list. You just used black pigment,” Mick says, sounding incredulous.
“Are you making foundation for him?” she asks as she pans the camera toward her all-black cat.
“Whatever happened to learning about undertones, cool and warm?” she asks, adding, “The Fenty Beauty foundation guidebook is on Sephora’s website if you need help finding shades for everyone.”
Mick is referring to Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty foundation which, when it was released, came in 40 different shades. The runaway success of the beauty line soon created a “Fenty-effect,” with other brands scrambling to increase the range of shades of foundation they offered. Youthforia, however, seems to have missed the memo.
“You should be in jail,” Mick says at the end of her video.
@mickbutnotjagger like walk me thru this decision making process idk #youthforia #fyp ♬ original sound – mick
Viewers were equally incensed over the Date Night foundation shade.
“Even the darkest skin tones can barely get away with using it as a contour,” one person wrote.
“Someone looked up jet black eyeliner ingredients and they had more pigments in them,” another said.
However, some viewers seemed to think people were making something out of nothing.
In a now-deleted comment, one person wrote, “I think people are over reacting because sometimes they make foundation in shades that make no sense. Jeffree Star put out paper white and nobody came for him.”
However, Mick disagreed with this line of thought and explained herself in a follow-up video.
“What we’re not gonna do is say that people are overreacting because they’re pissed off that their foundation shades and their complexions have been treated like an afterthought and a joke by the beauty industry for multiple decades,” she says.
She added that bringing up Jeffree Star in a conversation about Black complexions was “incendiary and out of touch,” presumably referring to the fact that he has a history of making racist comments.
She also points out that the “paper white” foundation the commenter brought up as an example was, by and large, a usable product. However, she says the darkest shade of Youthroria’s Date Night foundation is not, as it makes the wearer look “ashy.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Mick via TikTok direct message and to Youthforia via email.
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