Exploring Cosmetics as a Black Archive to Document the Experiences of Black Women

This paper examines the uses, methods, strengths, and weaknesses of cosmetics as a historical archive to better understand the experiences of Black women in North America during the twentieth century. Encompassing cosmetic products, advertisements, magazines, and companies, the archive of cosmetics documents Black women’s secondary role within the cosmetic industry as both buyers and businesswomen. As large, white-owned cosmetic companies virtually dominated the makeup industry, Black women were sidelined and racially exploited, largely rendered unable to exercise the agency to determine their own beauty standards through dictating the representation of, messaging around, and distribution of beauty products designed for Black women. Their lack of agency within the cosmetic industry will be explored through the beginning of the twentieth century, during which the emphasis on skin lightening products reinforced the undesirability of dark skin. Throughout the later twentieth century, despite the emergence of the ‘Black is Beautiful’ campaign, there was instead a predominately superficial shift in the cosmetic industry with companies releasing new lines specifically designed to suit dark skin. Moreover, the experiences of Black women in the United States and Canada will be analysed through the use of case studies of Madame C.J. Walker and Viola Desmond to further contextualise and compare the exclusion of Black women within the cosmetic industry across North America.