Why Jackie Aina’s Newest Eyeshadow Palette Is Important for Black Girls
Another day, Another Black woman making a dent in the beauty industry.
Jackie Aina
On Sunday August 4th, beauty influencer Jackie Aina shared a post (via Instagram and Twitter) with her followers, revealing a strategically assorted eyeshadow palette (with 14 shades) targeting women with darker skin tones. Teaming up with Anastasia Beverly Hills, the YouTuber launched limited quantities of the palette and it is currently available for purchase at www.anastasiabeverlyhills.com. By August 17th, the palettes will be available in stores domestically and internationally until the new year (January 2020).
In an interview with ELLE.com, Aina states, ‘The palette is for everyone but my priority was making sure I chose shades that would specifically work for dark and deep-dark complexions. We almost always have to skip certain popular shades in palettes and I needed this to not be the case.’ As a brown skin girl herself, Aina had a mission to create a palette where other brown skin girls can enjoy every shade in the kit without having to skip over any due to the incompatibility the colors have with their complexion.
With the launch of Fenty Beauty in 2017, the beauty industry has strived to be more marketable to deeper skin pigments by providing a multitude of foundation shades where all women can feel included. Jackie Aina launching an eyeshadow palette targeting towards deep complexions is another inclusive solution she is bringing to the forefront in the industry. Layering and combining colors to compliment our complexions is nothing we, as Black women, are timid of. We grew up in a system not designed to target our market and, thus, had to adjust to the politics of the beauty industry by becoming mixologists with our makeup. Black women making a splash in the industry by creating something for us is something important to acknowledge and be grateful for. It’s gradual progression but we’re finally being seen.
Thank you, Jackie Aina, for keeping a Black girl, like me, in mind.