Is K-Beauty Excluding Darker-Skinned Consumers?
If you are even slightly into makeup, you know how big Korean beauty, otherwise known as k-beauty much like k-pop or k-drama, has gotten. K- Beauty is used to describe makeup and skincare derived from South Korea. Originally gaining traction with Western consumers through Reddit, K-beauty has become more mainstream and accessible through retailers such as SokoGlam and Sephora introducing K-beauty brands into their product assortment.
The 10 Step K-Beauty Skincare Routine
When K-Beauty became more popular, they were characterized the most by their infamous 10-step beauty routine.
The first step to this routine consists of double cleansing. This means to first use an oil cleanser and then follow up with a water based cleanser. The oil cleanser breaks down oil based detritus such as makeup and sunscreen, while the water based cleanser removes dirt and sweat.
The next step is exfoliation which gets rid of dead skin cells and deep cleans the pores, but should only be done 1-2 times a week to limit overstripping the skin.
After exfoliating, toner is applied to balance moisture and pH levels and to remove any leftover cleanser residue. Essence, treatments and a sheet mask come next. To top the whole routine off, we have eye cream, moisturizer and lastly, sunscreen.
Many Western consumers were overwhelmed and confused by the unique ingredients found in K-beauty and the myriad of terms that were not even considered in the American beauty routine such as: serum and double cleansing. However, brands such as Memebox and Sokoglam made K-beauty more digestible for their U.S consumer.
How K-Beauty Changed the American Beauty Industry
Memebox created a subscription box service that allowed consumers to feel safer using Korean skincare by not sourcing them from a third party vendor such as, Amazon or eBay. Sokoglam, on the other hand, allowed the consumer to create their own 10 step routine based on their skin type and concern.
The brand additionally had curated 5 or 10 step routines that the consumer can choose from. These two entrepreneurial brands brought awareness to K-beauty and brought popularity into the American industry and therefore, educated the average beauty consumer opening the doors for American brands to start upping their skincare game. Now, the K-beauty business has grown to be 11.5 Million in revenue in 2020 and is expected to continue to grow.
K Beauty and its Darker Skinned Consumers
With that being said, there is a missing market between K-beauty and darker skinned skin care consumers. Because of the lack of coverage on darker skin and Korean beauty, Siraad Dirsch, Racked beauty writer, wrote that she was “hesitant to try” K-beauty because she would look on social media and there would be “women who looked nothing like [her].” Additionally, there are products found in the K-beauty world that are meant to “whiten” skin tone because having fairer skin is the beauty standard in Korea. One side of the discussion with whitening actually deems this term as more of a mistranslation.
A lot of different whitening products “won’t actually lighten your skin tone at all” and instead whitening is supposed to be “synonymous with glowing, radiant, and luminous...” There are other words such as “lightning” and “tone up” used for products that are again all terms “lost in translation” and essentially mean the same thing as brightening.
However, commentators don’t necessarily agree with the argument that these words are just terms lost in translation.
“The entire world is still hating on people with brown skin color...using the word, ‘lightening or whitening’ just reinforces the cultural conditioning that brown skin, black skin is inferior,” said Louis W.
Because of Western colonization, colorism exists and skin whitening often means the bleaching of one’s skin. However, within the context of K-Beauty products, the term whitening “speaks more to the texture and overall health of the skin.”
Athena Forbes, however, disagrees. “Yeah no they also mean literally bleaching the skin. It’s pretty commonplace. I’m Korean. I’ve got ajummas [a Korean term used to describe older women] telling my sister who is a shade darker than myself that she needs to whiten if she wants to get married.” This comment touches on the anti blackness and colorism that continues to exist within the Asian community.
Although the K-beauty market might not be actively trying to exclude their darker complexion consumers, brands should direct their focus making sure that their darker skinned consumers feel welcomed to incorporate K-beauty into their routine by showing more media representation of that market. Brands such as Banila Co and Glow Recipe, are showing darker skinned consumers using their products but it is difficult to gauge how this representation is actually contributing to the darker skinned consumer feeling comfortable trying Korean skincare.
Written by Sarah Park
