Dear Asian Makeup Lines...

What I'm about to vent on has probably been an issue for more than forever but I just feel like I had to highlight it because I'm tired of going through it. And I actually feel like I'm not supposed to go through it. I would say my skin is olive shade, so I'm obviously not fair but I'm not exactly really tanned either. But I still feel like a victim in this situation (lol ok victim is too strong of a word), so I wonder how girls who are tanner than me would feel like?

Dear Asian makeup lines, 

Please, please acknowledge the fact that us brown girls are Asian too. It's bad enough that mainstream western media only portrays white ladies in their coverage but do we need to be outcasts in our own region too? To be honest, I was always inclined to western beauty products way back when I thought you can only get beauty products from the pharmacy or from Avon catalogues and even up until I knew the existence of Sephora. But now, asian beauty products are booming in the market probably due to the popularity of Korean pop culture throughout the world. There are a lot of Korean makeup brands that you can find from the drugstore to flagship stores like The Face Shop, Innisfree etc. And one thing I really like about these brands despite me not being a big fan of the K-pop-culture is their packaging are always so cute! 

Last month, I saw that The Face Shop was having a collaboration with Disney and of course as a big Disney fan and makeup enthusiast, I felt like I had to get my hands on them. So I went to the store and I loved the cute little liptints with mickey ears, but what really caught my eye were the BB and CC cushions. Also, BB cushions have been in the Asian market for quite some time now, and I've always wanted to try. It wasn't up until last year that western brands started producing them and finally having them in darker shades. Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh Bear and Mike Wazowski; I totally wanted the Mike Wizowski one, but guess how many shades do they offer? T-W-O. Dos. Dua. Two. And of course the darker of the two wasn't even close to my shade. I was even considering buying it just for the sake of the packaging. But it was priced RM100+ so nope I wasn't gonna throw my money away just like that. Up until now, I still dream of having that CC cushion. I even went to the store TWICE to try out the colour and tell myself to not buy it because it doesn't match my skin.

How can you say no to this?!

And if you still watch television, -yes, that screen in the living room- you might have seen the Chriszen roller foundation advertisement. I've seen the product a few times before in the internet but before this I thought you can only get Chriszen in kedai jamu lol. Even in the advertisement, the girl wasn't as fair as Nelydia Senrose(who was also in the ad) and you can see how the foundation was really off her natural skin tone, but I thought maybe they just wanted to highlight the product application, then the screen changes to this girl with an ashy face. Like, err can't you find somebody else to play in the ad or are you advocating girls to wear foundation which is obviously too light for them so they'll look more "pretty"?? But I won't lie, I was actually interested with the roller application of the foundation so today when I went to my local Guardian, they actually had a Chriszen section and at first I was happy to see their range in shade. They only had three shades but from the stickers of the shades, it looks like it caters to a wide range of consumers. So I picked up the darkest shade out of the three called "Soft Caramel", which on the sticker looked a bit darker than my natural shade, but when I tried it out on my hand: 

Rolled a bit of the product on my h

It was waaaaaaaay lighter than what it claimed to be. I even checked on the packaging to see if I picked up the same shade and yes, it was Soft Caramel. It doesn't even look close like caramel! I won't ever eat caramel that is that pale coloured. So I went around and just to see all the other brands in the shop and the only brand that offer a variety of shades that can cater to a lot of different people was Revlon. Even Maybelline was a bit too white. This one brand, Canmake had a quite impressive number of shades for a drugstore line but they might as well call the shades "Fair" "A bit tanned but still fair" "Rosy fair" and "Sand fair". 

Just look at their foundies!

Puteh, puteh, puteh lagi, haaa lagisatu puteh.

But there was another Asian brand (shown below) that I was quite happy with because it did carry products for darker girls and their packaging is super cute but I think that was the only one in the shop. So, please, dear asian makeup lines, start selling more shades and stop glorifying light skin. Make girls love their own skin and not having to depend on whitening creams and bleaching products to feel beautiful, because every girl is beautiful no matter if they are white, yellow or brown. 

Might try their products some time. Very interesting and cute!