Mar 30, 2021 06:00:00

Graph showing that unconscious discrimination is rooted in the 'skin color' of cosmetics

It has been pointed out that there is a prejudice that cannot be seen in technology, including the

recognition of black people as gorillas by Google Photos. Amber Thomas, CEO of cosmetics brand Cocoa Swatches , visualizes the invisible prejudices in a graph, saying that there are also invisible prejudices on cosmetics brand online shopping sites.

The Naked Truth
https://pudding.cool/2021/03/foundation-names/

It is a well-known fact that whether or not a website is accessed on the Internet depends on the search ranking, but similarly, the ones that are displayed at the top of online shopping sites are easy to access. For this reason, what is important to the seller tends to appear at the top of the website.

Based on this idea, 6816 color samples were extracted from 328 foundation products of 107 cosmetic brands, and Thomas and Ofunne Amaka investigated how many colors would be displayed at the top of the shopping site. As a result, it was first found that 97% of the 130 products serially displayed on the websites of Sephora and Ulta Beauty , which are popular in the United States, are bright shades. In addition, many of the four brand foundations , Bare Mineral , Urban Decay Cosmetics , FENTY BEAUTY by Rihanna, and Maybelline, are bright in color. And since the number of the serial number of the color is smaller in the bright color, the bright color is displayed preferentially at the top of the website.

As shown below, 40% of brands have smaller serial numbers in darker colors.

And since words related to color are often used in the names of cosmetics, it was also investigated whether there is any bias in the words used for each shade. For example, there were 73 products and 110 colors in total for foundations containing the word 'nude' ...

If you graph each shade, you can see that there are many extremely bright colors. It is said that the shade surrounded by the black frame occupies 80% of the whole.

If you show the distribution of the entire cosmetics brand with a solid green line and the product distribution of the cosmetics brand 'Cocoa Swatches' for underestimated complexion with a gray wavy line, you can see that the distribution of Cocoa Swatches is smoother. ..

Moreover, the part surrounded by the black frame below is

a product of the brand NUDESTIX , and it is a fact that many of the dark skin tones simply bear the brand name.

Also, the darkest shades are not just 'nude', they are characterized as 'nude mocha'.

In addition, the word 'natural' is more prominent. Amaka points out that this includes the implicit prejudice that dark skin tones are 'unnatural' and 'unnatural.'

In addition, dark skin tones are often named after drinks such as 'coffee,' 'latte,' and 'espresso,' and it has been pointed out that they lack creativity. Bright colors are not only food and drink, but also jewelry and plants, and there are more ways to name them. And while foundation names sometimes use words that fall into the 'praise' category, such as 'perfect' and 'classical,' while there are 15 brands that use compliments in bright colors. Amaka also notes that only two brands used compliments on dark colors.