Unconventional Ad Shows How Makeup Can Make It Easier to Be Yourself

Here’s an unexpected approach for a makeup commercial: These videos feature two women removing their makeup and showing the “imperfections” that lie underneath, rather than floating through some airbrushed fantasy.

AdWeek reports that the spots are for Dermablend, a “camouflage” brand generally used by those dealing with skin conditions. So they got Cassandra Bankson, who does YouTube makeup tutorials and has acne, and Cheri Lindsay, a volleyball coach with the depigmentation condition vitiligo, to sit down and talk about the role that concealing makeup plays in their lives. Both suggest it makes it easier for them to move through the world and be recognized as who they truly are:

“I used to use makeup to cover up, and to hide who I was. Now, I use it to express myself and show the world who I truly am,” Bankson says in her video. Lindsay is even more explicit: “I chose to just find an alternative—something that I could put on my face that would help people to look through the initial shock of, ‘Oh, half her face is white but she’s a black girl.'”

It’s clear these two women have found makeup to be a genuinely empowering tool for self-expression. But it’s also sad to think that society has put them in a situation where they feel they need some sort of strategy to cope with the fact they look different.