2017

http://www.blackenterprise.com/lifestyle/fashion-beauty/lawyer-online-beauty-women-color/

Brands like Maréna Beauté are featured on Marjani’s website (Image: Marjani Beauty Co.)

 

Remember the name Marjani Beauty because it just might be the black and brown girl’s answer to Sephora.com. This e-commerce beauty destination, dedicated to the beauty and skincare needs of women of color, was created over a span of six months by Kimberly Smith, a Washington D.C.-based attorney who was tired of seeing big-name makeup brands treat black and brown skin as an afterthought.

“This came out of frustration. I was doing my normal beauty run looking for products and couldn’t find exactly what I needed, I couldn’t find products for my skin tone,” she told Black Enterprise in a phone interview. “I thought it would be cool if women of color had a go-to beauty site where they can find all their products.”

Marjani, which means “coral” in Swahili, aims to be that platform. Launched in February, the digital cosmetics and skin care retailer carries a selection of quality products for women of color made by people of color. The brands are curated from all parts of the world, from Morocco to the Caribbean, the U.S., and even Sweden.

Kimberly Smith, Founder and CEO of Marjani Beauty Co. (Image: Marjani Beauty Co.)

 

Smith’s avid love of beauty and travel also compelled her to create the site. Whether traversing through countries in Africa, Asia, or South America, she noticed that all women of color face the same challenges.

“Colorism and how fair and dark you are comes into play anywhere. When you’re trying to find a foundation for instance, the darker you are the more difficult it is to find the right shade,” she said. “This is the No. 1 issue when it comes to makeup.”

Though she noted that some brands are extending the brown shades they offer, she stressed that a space like Marjani is still needed; where all of the brands are made by people that look like and understand the unique challenges of their potential customers.

“How cool is it to patronize a brand that from the jump, had you in mind as part of what they were formulating when they were creating that product?” Smith said, noting that when women of color visit Marjani, they can feel confident that every product was created with their specific beauty needs front and center.

To determine which brands will make it to the site, Smith and her team sample products to make sure it reflects a particular brand’s promise.

“The fun part is that I am a consumer, what I would want to see and what I’m interested in, a lot of women like me would want these things too,” she said. “We want people to have that boutique experience. When you go to the site, we want to give a taste of luxury made for you.”

Smith wants Marjani Beauty Co. to be known as a leading global beauty platform, accessible to all black and brown consumers regardless of age, hair texture, skin tone, nationality and geographic location. She also envisions it as a global ecosystem that empowers women and encourages them to realize it’s beyond makeup and more about how they feel about themselves.

This is her first run in retail but she’s fortunate to have the help of loved ones on her journey. Her mother runs the operations part of the business.

“Growing up, she was a mentor; she operated her own small business,” Smith said.

The site has already received a lot of praise via personal emails as well as social media, where Marjani has a following of almost 5,000 on Instagram.

“This shows you that it’s beyond superficial. There are many women who are wanting something more,” she said. “We aim not just to be a retailer, but a community.”

 

Some of Marjani’s black-owned beauty brands

 

Marjani currently offers 20 brands from around the world. These products reflect Smith’s natural love of collecting various beauty finds when she travels across the globe, from ayurvedic oils straight out of India to cocoa butter from Costa Rica. Her aim is to introduce American women to brands they don’t usually have access to.

 

AfroDeity

 

AfroDeity’s Caribbean Hair Mask (Image: Marjani Beauty Co.)

 

Since this mother-daughter owned brand hit the site, it’s been a hot seller and is one of Smith’s favorites. The U.K-based Caribbean hair and skin care line is known for their luxury Joliette collection. The ocean-inspired Joliette Caribbean Coconut Hair Treatment Mask is made with sea kelp and prickly pear seed oil. The Joliette Caribbean Radiance Facial Wash offers a two-in-one blend of a cream cleanser and a foaming face wash. It’s perfect for uneven skin and made with natural fruit extracts like coconut.

 

Urban Skin Rx

 

Urban Skin Rx’s Purifying Pumpkin Pore Mask (Image: Marjani Beauty Co.)

 

This skincare brand was designed for women of color and their specific skin care issues, particularly the issues that are faced by women who have more melanin. The Even Tone Cleansing Bar offers a blend of kojic and azelaic acids to help fight inflammation and promote even skin pigmentation. It can be used as a mask or daily exfoliator and the brand’s promise is that with regular use, skin tone appears more even. The Purifying Pumpkin Pore Mask combines minerals, enzymes, and vitamins to reduce pore size while cleansing and hydrating.

 

AJ Crimson

AJ Crimson’s Chasing Saturday matte lipstick (Image: Marjani Beauty Co.)

 

One of the most trusted names in the beauty industry, Crimson is usually the first choice for celebrities like Missy Elliot, Regina King, and Angela Bassett. Marjani carries a range of foundations, highlighters, and a finishing powder from this Los Angeles brand. Don’t forget to add his #NoFilter and Chasing Saturday lipstick colors to the cart.

 

Maréna Beauté

 

Maréna Beauté’s Blush Tarou (Image: Marjani Beauty Co.)

 

This Swedish brand formulates products exclusively for darker-complexioned consumers. The highly-pigmented blushes are sure to be a show-stopper whether at the office or on a night out. The Blush Tarou comes in six hues, from high-powered Cambi Berry to the warm, Sweet Brown. The brand was founded by makeup artist, Diarry Maréna who is originally from Senegal.

 

True Moringa

 

True Moringa’s Black Soap Moringa (Image: Marjani Beauty Co.)

 

Named after the Moringa tree in Ghana, which contains numerous health benefits, this brand is 100% vegan. Moringa is rich in zeatin, known for stimulating cell division, growth, and delaying aging of cells. The Magic Black Soap is True Moringa’s modern take on the traditional African black soap. It is handcrafted in small batches using raw shea, moringa, neem, and essential oils. Their Ultra-Light Whipped Body Butter is made of a blend of wild-crafted shea and moringa.

As Mother’s Day is quickly approaching, check out Marjanibeauty.com for some quality last-minute, confidence-boosting gifts.

http://www.geek.com/movies/moviebob-reviews-the-void-2017-1699116/?source

Few things are more likely to make me feel apprehensive as the combination of the words “indie retro horror.” There’s a lot of well-intentioned material with that self-applied categorical description floating around the […]

The post MovieBob Reviews: THE VOID (2017) appeared first on Geek.com.

http://nerdist.com/the-90s-guardians-of-the-galaxy-were-incredibly-bizarre/

Warning, this post contains spoilers for the film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Proceed with caution. 

For longtime fans of Marvel Comics, one of the biggest treats in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was seeing the original Guardians of the Galaxy debut on the big screen. Led by Sylvester Stallone in the role of Stakar Ogord, also known as Starhawk, the OG Guardians were re-positioned as Ravagers, much like their former teammate Yondu (the always amazing Michael Rooker).

Created in 1969 by writer Arnold Drake and artist Gene Colan,  Guardians of the Galaxy bounced around the year 3000, traveling back and forth in time and battling all sorts of villainous aliens. It was basically a generic superhero comic with a semi-rotating cast until the 1990s and a man named Jim Valentino–the very same who helped found Image Comics.

With a fresh new #1 issue, Guardians of the Galaxy relaunched with Valentino serving as writer and artist. Under his creative direction, the adventures of Starhawk, Aleta, Charlie-27, Yondu, Martinex, and Nikki got weird. Really weird and really awesome.

Does the inclusion of these characters mean that Marvel plans on showcasing some of their bizarre adventures? It’s certainly possible. With the current slate of Guardians of the Galaxy films, Marvel Studios has proven they ain’t afraid of getting weird, and that’s a good thing. If they plan on exploring the adventures of the original Guardians, things are going to get even weirder.

We encourage you to visit your favorite comic book store and pick up some of the classic Guardians of the Galaxy collections, but in the meantime, we thought we’d share some of our favorite moments from the awesomely crazy ’90s run of the series.

Taserface and the Stark

The real star of the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is Taserface, the mutineer Ravager who wages battle upon Yondu. You could be thinking, in the comics, Taserface was a Stark: a race of aliens who worshiped Tony Stark. These folks loved Iron Man so much they named their entire race after him. Unlike his cinematic counterpart, the Taserface of the comics is named as such because he literally shoots a taser beam out of his facial armor–it’s not metaphorical, in other words.

Earth, home of the Punishers

The Guardians find themselves on Earth on a number of different occasions, but the strangest involves a trip to Manhattan and a battle with the Punishers. New York has all but been taken over by this brutal gang of Frank Castle devotees. The Guardians engage in an epic street war with these goons and it basically ends with the Guardians retreating. The Punishers are too vast and too insane.

The Mutants of the Future

In the world of the original Guardians of the Galaxy, mutantkind fled Earth and started a new life on a different planet. The series actually lays out a pretty cool backstory for this, but the strangest footnote is that the descendants of Wolverine essentially take over as supreme rulers of all mutants.

When the Guardians cross paths with the mutants, they are lead by Rancor. She’s a tyrant who looks exactly like Wolverine – that haircut ain’t a good look, lady – and murders her own father. She then takes over the whole planet and turns all the humans she can find into slaves for mutants. It’s crazy stuff.

Major Victory

The one character that seems to be missing from the lineup of original Guardians in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is Vance Astro. The former astronaut is a time traveler, of sorts. He was in a hypersleep on a ship that veered off course, leaving him in suspended animation for over a thousand years. The Guardians discover him, and he joins up with them, eventually becoming the group’s leader and moral center. He ends up with Captain America’s shield, like the original Captain America, and wields it with telekinetic powers that he gained, uh, somehow. All in all, he’s actually a pretty cool character with a great design, that is, until he is reborn as Major Victory.

Yes, Major Victory, the most 90’s superhero ever. Even in the far reaches of outer space, in the distant future, mullets and headbands became fashionable. Just look at this guy! The sleeves trenchcoat, the collar, the thigh-high boots! In a comic series filled with crazy stuff, this just might be the craziest. Major Victory, we salute you and your weird fashion choice.

There are plenty of other bizarre moments in the 62-issue run of the 1990s Guardians of the Galaxy. Sure, most of them won’t make it into any Marvel movies, but some might. Hey, 20 years ago, who would have thought we’d have a big screen version of Rocket Raccoon? Maybe Major Victory is ready for his close-up? I mean, Taserface got his screen time, right? Give Vance Astro his due, Marvel!

Did you read the old-school Guardians of the Galaxy? If you did, sound off in the comments below and let us know your favorite moment from the series!

Images: Marvel Comics

Which Guardian is the Guardians’ favorite?

https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2017/05/10/race-intersectionality-and-the-end-of-the-world-the-problem-with-the-handmaids-tale/

by Shannon Gibney and Lori Askeland

Hulu’s reboot of The Handmaid’s Tale opens with a car chase: the protagonist (Elisabeth Moss), who will later be called “Offred,” is racing with her husband Luke (O-T Fagbenle) and daughter Hannah (Jordana Blake) in their faded, old model Volvo through a frozen landscape, sirens of their invisible pursuers wailing.

The decision to introduce us to Offred as a member of an interracial family revealed an obvious break from the overwhelmingly white world of the novel and 1990 movie. Many reviewers construed that fact — and the powerful presence of Samira Wiley in the role of Offred’s badass lesbian friend, Moira — as undeniable evidence that the series would be more intersectional in its approach to feminist themes than the novel had been.  (“There’s intersectionality, too, with Moira, a lesbian, played by a black actress, Ms. Wiley,” was the breezy quip of the New York Times’ Katrina Onstad.) But sadly, bodies of color alone do not a liberatory racial narrative make. Indeed, a deeper look at the series shows the uncomplicated, and therefore, problematic effects of this “colorblind” casting.

Back in the world of the series’ opening sequence, the car crashes off to the side of the icy road as the pursuers gain on them, and Luke, “not-yet-Offred’s” black husband, tells his wife and child to run into the woods across the street. The camera focuses on mother and child, frantically, desperately running through the bleak landscape… until we hear the stark sound of a gunshot in the distance. The anguished look on “not-yet-Offred’s” face tells us everything we need to know: That her beloved has been killed by the insurgents, that he has in fact sacrificed himself in order for his family to live (cue sardonic groan of all viewers of color at this point, maybe three minutes into the first episode). Indeed, the frequency with which characters of color are killed off early in movies and films so that the deserving white people they love so much can live, has become something of a running joke. The trope has become so familiar to black and viewers of color that one friend called it a “blackrifice” on her social media feed.

Of course, Luke reappears in the numerous flashbacks peppered throughout the series, giving characters texture and depth via their lives pre-Gilead, and I know that legions of viewers of color are thrilled that actor O-T Fagbenle will still get work this year, even though his character is ostensibly dead. But the point remains that, narratively speaking, his role in the series as its lone sacrificial and very-much-dead black man, is suspect.

As a friend pointed out on an online discussion, the Handmaid’s Tale series is a missed opportunity to examine how evangelical movements, which are almost always patriarchal, often rely on racism to achieve their goals. I was thinking, in that first episode: Oohh: how are they going to make 2017 Luke’s experience of the patriarchy as a black man different from the experience of the novel’s white 1985 Luke? My assumption was: obviously, he will not be treated the same. When he goes out onto the street, would Moira really be likely to be “safer” with a tall, muscular black man, or would they together seem like a threat? Is his ability and right to “protect” Offred — paternalistic as it might be — going to be respected in the world as white Luke’s paternalistic rights were (except for the fact that he was divorced?). But, alas, as director Bruce Miller has noted with misplaced pride, “Once you have decided it’s going to be a diverse world, it doesn’t change the story.” When black characters are just substituted in, the post-racial optics are what allow the television show to erase any interrogation of white supremacy as a logical part of any post-apocalyptic scenario in a US context — which is what Atwood was shooting for.

Then there is the issue of Offred’s “sassy” and “take no shit/take no prisoners,” best friend Moira, who is now a black lesbian, rather than a white lesbian, in this iteration of Atwood’s world. While I was happy to see the series attempting to accurately represent contemporary America, racially and otherwise, I was let down when I realized they were attempting to do so via yet another tried and true stereotype Hollywood and white folks love to perpetuate about black folks: The “wild,” “Ride Or Die,” black lesbian friend who is “far more woke” than her perpetually meeker white female counterpart, the “sister who is just not here for this,” who through her nonconforming black female lesbian body, shows her “white sister” how to “resist.”

Problematic.

Which brings us to the decision to include people of color into the television series world of Gilead at all. The whiteness of the novel’s world was a deliberate erasure: not the result of a blindness on the part of the novelist that Miller’s post-racial directing is correcting, but a vital part of Atwood’s efforts to fully imagine what a theocratic revolution in the US would look like, given our history. Atwood dedicated the book to Perry Miller who taught her the history of Puritan theocracy in New England, and has repeatedly said in interviews that every incident had historical precedent.

Thus, the “Children of Ham” discussion* in chapter 14 of  the novel  can be understood as a revival  of the American Colonization Society dream: the idea, warmly supported by white abolitionist luminaries from Thomas Jefferson to Harriet Beecher Stowe to Abraham Lincoln, that the best way to “deal with” black people (when you hate slavery only a little more than you hate slaves, to paraphrase Toni Morrison), is to ship them back to any random place on the continent of Africa (Liberia eventually founded for the purpose) or perhaps to a Caribbean island. In the novel, the 1985’s Offred hears a TV News report that the “Children of Ham,” the term from biblical precedent that was regularly used to justify slavery in the US, were being shipped out to “Homelands” in the West, that a “pure” white-supremacist world could be created in Gilead, with the exception of a few “Marthas” who are “allowed” to be servants (described as brown). Atwood’s understanding of what a likely evangelical coup would look like in the US is, logically, genocidal — the Cherokee Removal also comes to mind — and focused on “racial purity.”

In an interview with TVLine, Miller suggests, in fact, that Atwood at least initially resisted the post-racial direction he was taking, saying it was:

“a huge discussion with Margaret Atwood, and in some ways it is ‘TV vs. book’ thing.” After all, on the printed page, ‘It’s easy to say ‘they sent off all the people of color,’ but seeing it all the time on a TV show is harder. ‘Also, honestly,’ he adds, ‘what’s the difference between making a TV show about racists and making a racist TV show? Why would we be covering [the story of handmaid Offred, played by Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss], rather than telling the story of the people of color who got sent off to Nebraska?’”

Which is, of course, a fair question of Atwood’s 1985 narrative, but not one that is simply resolved by acting as if racism is readily solved by “diversity” in the cast. (And, if we’re really dreaming, could perhaps more easily be resolved by simply making a series out of Octavia Butler’s Parable novels…!)

A television show about racists can critically examine the nature and power dynamics of the race-based hierarchy portrayed on screen, thus unhinging it for the viewer. And a television show about “nice, open-minded people” or “evil, small-minded racists” can also be racist if it relies on unexamined stereotypes to tell its story. That Miller doesn’t recognize this key difference is telling.

In a recent Think Progress piece, Miller says: “When you think about a world where the fertility rate has fallen precipitously [as it has in Gilead], fertility would trump everything. And we’ve seen that: When fertility becomes an issue, racism starts to fall because people adopt kids from Ethiopia and Asian countries and from everywhere.”

With all due respect, I wonder if Miller has heard of colonialism? That is, the process by which a country or society with more power ostensibly rapes, pillages, and reaps the natural resources (one of which is children) of a less powerful society or country, in order to gain more power and resources? Talk to transracial adoptees, and you will learn very quickly that our adoption into majority white cultures in the Global North does not necessarily or even often mean they are instantly welcoming or open to the presence of non-white bodies in their midst. The real issue is how these black, brown, and indigenous bodies are used in the service of building up these majority white societies — a key subtlety Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale  never quite seems to get to.

Indeed, Miller’s uncomplicated analysis of transracial adoption and its ubiquity signalling a new kind of racial tolerance reveals troubling fissures in his understanding of power and difference. And these fissures are unfortunately echoed in the series itself.

And yet. Despite the fact that this entire article is devoted to the series’ problems with race and representation, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale still packs an indelible punch. In today’s Trumped up world, in which white male Republicans hold the majority in both state and federal government (many of them evangelicals), and the global attack on women’s rights is steadily gaining steam, the idea that a society like Gilead could gain prominence is not so far-fetched. After all, as Glosswitch explains in The New Statesman, it is already happening:

“Today there are parts of the world in which renting the womb of a poor woman is indeed ten times cheaper than in the US. The choice of wealthy white couples to implant embryos in the bodies of brown women is seen, not as colonialist exploitation, but as a neutral consumer choice. I can’t help wondering why, if the fate of the fictional Offred is so horrifying to western feminists today, the fate of real-life women in surrogacy hostels is causing so little outrage.

“I suppose the main argument of these feminists would be that real-life women choose to be surrogates, whereas Offred does not. But is the distinction so clear? If Offred refuses to work as a handmaid, she may be sent to the Colonies, where life expectancy is short. Yet even this is a choice of sorts. As she herself notes, ‘nothing is going on here that I haven’t signed up for. There wasn’t a lot of choice but there was some, and this is what I chose.’ In the real world, grinding poverty drives women of colour to gestate the babies of the wealthy. As one Indian surrogate tells interviewer Seemi Pasha, ‘Why would I be a surrogate for someone else if I don’t need the money? Why would I make myself go through this pain?’”

The timeliness of this story, given our current political reality, cannot be understated. Although critics such as Francine Prose argue that the series is simply, “…a seven-hour-long orgy of violence against women — promoted and marketed as high-minded, politically astute popular entertainment,” I believe otherwise. The show works best, and to be clear, it often does work, when it reveals the raw, visceral violence hiding at the core of most otherwise “civilized” cultures, where women are concerned. And I, for one, appreciate that the producers have not sugar-coated this truth, or made it in any way easier for viewers to digest. I also appreciate that they have opted to show how women ourselves are some of the most vicious perpetrators of violence on other women, and how this in turn keeps the whole system of patriarchy working.

That a television series, just four episodes in, should provoke such impassioned responses, and outpouring of critique and analysis, shows that it is doing some very important work. This work could be even more powerful, however, with a more complex racial lens.

---

Lori Askeland loves beautiful writing that engages political ideas head on, especially speculative fiction and life writing of all sorts — memoir, personal essays, journals. She’s currently a teacher of American literature and composition at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. Follow on twitter: @AskelandLori