Fenty Beauty Didn't Invent Inclusion
There’s a persistent belief in beauty culture that inclusivity began in 2017, when Rihanna launched Fenty Beauty. The story is simple and emotionally satisfying: before Fenty, brands didn’t care. After Fenty, they did. It’s been repeated so often that it’s now treated like fact.
It’s also wrong.
What happened in 2017 wasn’t the invention of inclusive shade ranges. It was the operationalization of them at scale. That distinction matters, especially now, when every flawed foundation launch gets framed as a moral failure instead of what it usually is: a business decision colliding with market expectations.
Y'all not tired of the constant outrage? Sheesh.
This article isn’t about intent. It’s about execution. Markets respond to outcomes, not effort, and the beauty industry is no exception.
Inclusion Existed Long Before 2017
Extensive shade ranges didn’t suddenly appear with Fenty. Well before 2017, several brands had already built foundations with real depth and undertone diversity.
MUFE Ultra HD launched with 40 shades in 2015
MAC Studio Fix had 43+ by 2017 (now 67)
Iman (1994) had 16 shades built exclusively for women of color
Black Opal positioned itself around a complete portfolio for darker skin
The existence of these products isn’t up for debate. They were real, they were available, and they worked for a lot of people. The idea that the industry didn’t know how to formulate deeper shades, or hadn’t thought about them at all, doesn’t hold up under even light scrutiny.
So if the shades already existed, why did foundation shopping still feel exclusionary to so many people?
The Real Pre-2017 Failure Was Access
The issue wasn’t chemistry. It was distribution.
Retail shelf space is limited and optimized for what sells fastest. Brands are usually given a fixed number of slots per product, often somewhere between a dozen and twenty. Those slots get filled with shades that move quickly, which historically has meant medium tones clustered around the middle of the spectrum. Slower-moving shades get deprioritized, pushed online, or dropped entirely.
That creates a loop. Deep shades are stocked less, which keeps sales lower, which then “justifies” stocking them less. The shade technically exists, but in practice it may as well not. Online-only availability becomes a way to manage inventory risk, not a real solution to access.
This is the part of the story that often gets skipped. The industry didn’t lack awareness. It lacked incentive alignment. Inclusion existed, but it was treated as optional instead of foundational.
2017 Was an Operational Event, Not a Moral Awakening
Fenty’s launch mattered because it treated shade range as a launch requirement, not something to fix later. Forty shades launched at once, across hundreds of retail locations and multiple countries. They were easy to find and fully stocked. Consumers didn’t have to hunt or compromise. The shades were simply there.
The market responded immediately. First-year revenue estimates reached into the hundreds of millions, and reports consistently noted that deeper shades sold out fastest. That directly challenged long-held assumptions about demand. That data point mattered more than any campaign or mission statement.
Fenty didn’t convince brands to care. It proved that ignoring a large segment of customers was no longer defensible from a revenue standpoint. That’s what actually changed.
Youthforia and the Limits of Serious Critique
The criticism surrounding Fiona Co Chan and Youthforia's initial foundation launch was valid. The shade range leaned heavily toward lighter tones, and in a beauty market shaped by the last several years of inclusion-focused conversation, that was always going to raise eyebrows. Consumers were right to point out the gap between how the brand positioned itself and what it actually delivered at launch. That critique didn’t need exaggeration to be fair.
Where the conversation started to lose clarity was in what happened next. After the backlash, Youthforia chose to speed up its planned shade-range expansion. According to the brand, what would normally take about two years of development was compressed into roughly four months. Developing foundation shades isn’t just about adding more colors. It involves reformulating the base so shades behave consistently, testing undertones, checking stability, sourcing materials, coordinating manufacturers, and making sure products are safe and shelf-stable. When that process is rushed, the results are rarely perfect.
That doesn’t excuse the shortcomings, but it does explain them. A compressed timeline almost always leads to tradeoffs. Fewer refinements. Less testing. More room for things to go wrong. A rushed product behaves like a rushed product. That’s not evidence of incompetence or bad intent. It’s the predictable outcome of limited time and limited resources.
Instead of allowing that update to be treated as a normal attempt to improve the product, the criticism escalated. The conversation shifted from “this needs work” to something closer to permanent judgment. At that point, critique stopped functioning as accountability and started functioning as performance. The expectation was no longer that the product get better, but that the brand continue to answer for its original mistake indefinitely.
That framing falls apart once you zoom out. Makeup is one of the most choice-heavy consumer categories that exists. Consumers ARE NOT locked into any single brand. Many of the loudest critics already own multiple foundations that match them well. Treating one poorly executed launch as emotional harm ignores both consumer choice and market reality. If a product doesn’t work for you, the most effective response is simple: don’t buy it. Use something else.
Emotional Escalation Lowers Standards
When criticism turns into emotional escalation in situations like this, it doesn’t raise standards. It blurs them. It replaces clear expectations with outrage and shifts attention away from execution, which is the only thing that actually matters in the long run.
Youthforia didn’t commit a cultural offense. It launched a weak product, received predictable criticism, and tried to course-correct under public pressure. That sequence isn’t tragic. It’s ordinary.
Markets already have a corrective mechanism. Consumers leave. Brands that miss expectations lose relevance. Brands that adapt survive. Outrage adds noise, not clarity.
Conclusion
Not every failure is moral. Not every disappointment deserves emotional weight. Some situations call for standards, not feelings. Youthforia was one of them.
When outrage drags on long after the response is obvious, accountability isn’t the goal anymore. In a category with infinite alternatives, that kind of persistence usually says less about harm and more about people needing something to stay mad at. I said what I said. 🙂
Peace. ✌🏽