The Importance of Fenty Beauty

We all know Rihanna as the gorgeously badass music and fashion icon, but in recent weeks she's added beauty influencer and melanin maven to her image. Taking her own effortless beauty and bottling it, RiRi launched her cosmetics line, Fenty Beauty, earlier this month. It features every makeup product you'll ever need, including foundations, highlighters, brushes, and long-lasting lip gloss to max your hustle from an 8 a.m. class to frat party after hours.

Aside from the collection’s sexy packaging and high-end quality, Fenty is special because it does the thing that most makeup lines fail to do –– it caters to the diverse range of complexions black women have. Every black woman has some version of the story where she walks into a drug or beauty store, investigates the foundation inventory, and experiences disappointment when she realizes the darkest shade available is Zoe Kravitz when what she needs is Justine Skye.

The evident lack of diversity among beauty brands causes many women of color to feel unimportant. It's bullshit that Marc Jacobs –– with its billions of dollars in revenue ––can’t produce shades darker than caramel; luckily, Fenty does an amazing job of rectifying this outrageous oversight with 40 shades ranging from 100 (which is light enough to match some albino skin tones) to 400.

Rihanna has spoken passionately about how important it is that her makeup collection represents women of all skin tones: "Foundation is one of those areas in the beauty industry that has a big void for women at extreme ends of the shade spectrum," said Rihanna. "There’s this middle ground that's covered really, really well. But then if you're very pale or if you're very dark, there aren’t a lot of options. And so, I wanted to make sure that women of all skin tones were covered so they could be included in what I created." 

With the release Fenty Beauty, many other beauty collections have been cancelled, and by cancelled, we mean women will hopefully stop wasting their precious time and money on brands that fail to cater to or recognize their complexions. Fenty just further proves that everything Rihanna touches is pure gold, and we can’t wait to see what industry she conquers next.

Here are some of Jerk’s Favorites from the Collection:

1. “Match Stix”