Latest / Skin Anarchy / Jennifer Norman, Founder of The Human Beauty Movement

Transcript

Jennifer Norman, Founder of The Human Beauty Movement · Skin Anarchy

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hi guys, welcome back to Skincare Anarchy.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is Ekta, and I am super excited because I was waiting for this interview for a while.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I have with me today Jennifer Norman, the founder of the human beauty movement.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm in love with everything um that you're doing, Jennifer.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome to the show.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Ecta, thank you so much for inviting me.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's such a pleasure to be here to meet all of your wonderful audience members.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's I honestly, you know, when I was reading um about your like the human beauty movement, I was just so inspired just reading about it.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm so excited for you to share that with us and how, you know, just you've come to this place um in the beauty industry your whole career.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: So can you tell us?
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be delighted to, you know, I um probably like many of your listeners, um, had discovered a love for beauty at a young age.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was probably, you know, in my teens and going through a whole lot of just, you know, trying to figure out who the heck I was, right?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's a what a lot of teenagers do.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I, of course, started to like look through magazines and I was like, ooh, this is kind of fun.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you kind of like, you know, experiment with makeup, experiment with your hair, experiment with your style, and you could essentially transform and change, you know, what you look like.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it became a lot of fun.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, fast forward to um a time when I, you know, went through college and went through um went through grad school.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: I actually was recruited by L'Oreal as my very first um job after my MBA.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so I got a chance to work at in Manhattan on um fun things like um lip color, nail enamel, um, eyeshadows and eyeliners, as well as hair color.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then after that, that really started a 20-plus year career in beauty.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: I never looked back.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: I really was like, I found my home, I really enjoy this.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, interestingly enough, uh, you know, it's amazing how much has changed in beauty over the past 20 years, as far as what was constituted as beautiful before and what is now known to be beautiful today.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that society has gone through some real magnanimous shifts, um, which has been very exciting to see.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: But that was not without people recognizing that there were things about the beauty industry, little known to us because we were just kind of doing what we thought sold products, frankly, but you know, looking at the aspiration of what beauty stood for.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's the skinniest, tallest beauty, most most unrealistic supermodels that you could find.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: It was like the Barbie doll.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was perfect skin, perfect hair, sexuality.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, you know, just like um very it girl, very of the moment.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then it became um, you know, buy this lipstick.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, this season's over.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's so last year, that's so last season.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Buy this one.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just this culture of more, more, more, more, faster, faster, faster.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that um consumerism in general, I mean, we're we're kind of waking up to realizing, oh gosh, what have we done?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: We've created a monster.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's you know, it's led to, I feel like beauty, I you know, make you made such excellent points there, first of all.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, honestly, I could not agree more with everything you said.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's interesting um because I feel like beauty only moves forward when we have this complete saturation of a specific um market.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't, I've never understood why, you know, even growing up watching that, just everything you've um actually described, you know, like it's it's it was like that with, you know, foundation.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was like that with, you know, hair care, everything.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I totally agree with you.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I want to actually, I want to talk more about um just you know, all like what really inspired you to start the the human beauty.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um Right.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: I there in starting the human beauty movement, I really looked back at everything that I loved about the beauty industry and then everything that I felt could really use a change and and more progressive change than what had been done in the past.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so in doing so, I felt that the beauty industry was, you know, starting to kind of really understand that there were some negatives happening in the marketplace, but a lot of companies just were not necessarily ready or able to move on things so quickly.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll give you an example.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: There was a there had been many companies where I'd I'd just kind of be like, oh gosh, there are so many wonderful, wonderful people, really great human beings that are making very bad decisions.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And they're making bad decisions because they're beholden to the bottom line.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so they may end up shortcutting safety, or they may be shortcutting ingredients, or they may be making packaging decisions that are cheaper but not may not necessarily be as safe or good for you know for the consumer or for the environment and and or or manufacturing because it's cheap, um, but it might not use great labor in order to make the things.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so, but a lot of people are making these decisions because they are being evaluated on how much money that they can make a company and how much profit that they can make a company.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it began to become so unsettling because I kept seeing it over and over and over again.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: It really became bothersome to find that, you know, there there were um companies and and you know, heads of companies that would say, you know what, gosh, I know that what we're doing is deceptive, but how else are we going to sell this product?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if we use like these before and after pictures, or if we or you know, uh another company would be like, gosh, you know, I know that it's illegal for us to be manufacturing nail polish in the city of Los Angeles this way, but how else are we going to compete?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do it without permits, or the and it was just like you know, it really just was a bit a bit bothersome on my on my conscience, and uh because I kept seeing it over and over and over again.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was thinking to myself, I really want to do things better.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be better, I want to stand for better.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: The the the consumer deserves better, the world deserves better, and we just have to kind of hold our own selves accountable for doing the right thing, don't we?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And being on the opposite, absolutely, no, absolutely.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, I think that that is such a beautiful message that you you're sending here because, you know, for me growing up, like, you know, I think beauty for all of us has a very special place for her, right?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: We all have our own relationship with beauty.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And rather than being the safe space of trust and vulnerability and all these amazing things that we can be, it for a while, you know, as a consumer, it did feel like, well, I I gotta buy the new, you know, best mascara, or I gotta buy the, but it was always like for me personally, I don't know if you agree, but for me, it was always like I want that red lip again, you know, the perfect red lipstick, or I want the perfect nude lipstick.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want all these like, you know what I mean, ridiculous products.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like for me, it all I always wondered where the trends even came from.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: That was my that was my biggest thing.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I always blamed that because it was like it's almost like this snowball effect that never stops, you know what I mean?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of stopping and focusing on really, you know, beauty, real beauty.
• 7:47
  unknown: Yeah.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I wanted to do with the human beauty movement was really kind of pull back the veil and really have a very honest and truthful dialogue with consumers to tell them that, you know, beauty for for better or worse is really very ego-driven, as we know.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: And we know that what happens when you try to satisfy the ego, the ego is never satisfied.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: It always wants more.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing that we are fulfilling with a lot of consumerism and have been doing over the past, you know, however many years, 50 years call it, um, for like industrialization and all of this production that has gone kind of haywire and is creating so much um damage to you know mental wellness and to physical wellness and and earth wellness, it's because we are trying to fill holes in our hearts and in our heads and in our minds that cannot be filled externally.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: But we but we're led to believe that the clothes and the makeup and the hairstyle and the validation of other people are going to fix and make us feel better about ourselves, about our ego.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like the lottery winners that win all this money, but they're still completely sad and depressed because that's not the key to happiness.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: The key to happiness is to unlock it within yourself and be happy with yourself and to love yourself.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: And when you start from a place of self-love and compassion for self, then everything else just becomes window dressing and you can be in control rather than feeling anxious and feeling obsessed and this compulsion to buy, bye, buy, buy, buy.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so yeah, and that runs counter to what a lot of companies are saying because frankly, they're being rewarded when you buy, bye, bye, bye, bye, right?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: My whole life.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh, I could not agree more with you.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Seriously, that is so beautiful you said that.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I think it's important because you know, internally, like we have to, we have to, you're right, look in words a lot more.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where the whole self-care aspect comes in, right?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I feel like beauty kind of took off like this train, and we just kind of left self-care behind, you know, at some point.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's like almost as if it's resurfacing again, you know what I mean, in mainstream media, and you know, we have a lot more apps now for meditation.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, so what do you how do you feel about that?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do you feel about this?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I really what I'm asking is I feel like self-care is also becoming a trend.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you feel about that?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think that what is interesting is like for all of the you know, the the negatives that have happened with COVID, there are some positives, there are some real kind of silver linings to it.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And one was that I think that it caused us to stop.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Stopping was important, like we like like almost like the economy shut down.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: People's work, like it really kind of abruptly shook us all up and made us rethink the way that we were living.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so from that, obviously there are mental health issues.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: There is like, okay, what am I going to do to conserve?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: But it really did shine a light on humanity.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that, you know, there are a few things that really bind us together, and that is love and it's health and wellness, and it's what we can do to help support each other, right?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there have been some brilliant and beautiful stories of our frontline workers, essential worker, like of people who are going out of their way to treat, you know, to really help others, which has really been just so heartwarming.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because it, you know, again, we we recognize that, you know, all of those things that we thought about, brand names and labels, a lot of that, as you can probably tell, is like it's starting to diminish in value and it almost seems like it's tone-deaf, doesn't it?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I think here's the thing.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: I I love that you are so willing to have these conversations because I think, you know, by the way, I, you know, I think the name is perfect.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: The, you know, the human beauty movement, because it really is a movement, and I think it's a movement towards self-love, like you're talking about.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: And also for me, I know growing up, you know, beauty always brought me more into the present moment.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was a moment for me to like appreciate myself.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was a moment for me to look at myself in the mirror.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we don't look at ourselves.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was I've always thought this.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: We don't look at ourselves in the mirror enough and talk to ourselves.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, that growing up, it was a moment where I stopped, I looked at Ecta, and I thought, you know what I mean, whatever I thought.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to come back to that, you know, the heart of presence, or you know, like just being more, you're right, like less ego-driven and more, you know, just fulfillment driven, I guess, you know.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I will also add to what you're saying is that sometimes when people look in the mirror, there it's negative talk, unfortunately.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: They're looking at all their flaws and what's wrong.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so the more that we can do the ekta, which is look at yourself and and give yourself, you know, just kudos and compliments and you know, support, you got this.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: You, you know, and and there is nobody on earth like you.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: There is no other you, and and recognize how powerful you are and how beautiful you are, and the more beauty that you can shine on others, and the more that you can help others will only help to exponentially increase your own beauty and and uh you know, and the good in the world.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I it's very individual by individual.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm almost going like person by person, which to your point, it is a movement.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like I ever feel that this is something that we will may achieve in a lifetime, but it's like, you know, what wherever we can we can move individuals so that the whole collective can eventually evolve to a place where there's greater self-love, self-worthiness, compassion, and love of others.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, that to me is where the real beauty lies.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other, like I said, all the other stuff, all the products and things that we, you know, the more that we can help to create more regenerative products and and really kind of respect and think about the earth and its resources and and the ingredients that we're we're putting on our skin, and less about kind of like these ego-driven tactics to try to force people to buy because they think that they're not good enough without it, you know.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: So like move away from that old thinking, that old paradigm needs to just go away.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we all need to evolve into butterflies that can be free and just you know, uh, you know, just like live in a place where we really know ourselves and we really absolutely absolutely and you know that's that's I love that.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: I really love that.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna just restate everything you're saying because that's exactly how I think.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: No, honestly, everything you're saying.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And my biggest question though, I'm gonna ask you, honestly, you know, um, is this whole right now we're we're really facing an interesting time, I think, in you know, in history, which I think is always happening, but you know, uh, right now we're focusing on a lot of like, you know, just things that needed to be talked about, like racism.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we're talking about uh racism toward Asian Americans, racism towards black Americans, you know, anyone of color.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to really talk openly about this and how this ties into beauty for us as individuals.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: So do you want to share your perspective a little bit on that?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, um, did that play in at all with your vision and stuff?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, um, and and this also is a very personal journey for me, too, because I am a person who was adopted at two years old from Korea, and I was raised by a Caucasian family.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I grew up looking like I was Asian, but not speaking or not necessarily identifying with Asian culture the way that others would have identified with Asian culture.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my mother was British, my father was, you know, American Caucasian born and raised in the Bronx in New York.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, however, they also had three of their own children, Caucasian, and they adopted me, and they adopted my sister and brother from Vietnam, who were half Asian and half Caucasian.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so we had this amazing mixed bag of nuts for a family.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we grew up just really kind of celebrating the fact that you know we were different, but it was it was love and compassion that brought us all together.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: My parents were amazingly compassionate people, and so I never forgot that.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: But as I was growing up, I recognized how you know I was getting teased for the way that I looked, and it really injured my self-esteem because I didn't look like the Caucasians that were in my neighborhood or around me, and you know, people are just ignorant and they you know need to power trip, and so they have to make themselves feel better about themselves and make other people feel worse.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and uh I eventually I married a gentleman who was half black and half Puerto Rican.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we had a son who's a quarter black, quarter Puerto Rican, half Korean, and he's disabled.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we like talk about the idea of manifesting the need for diversity appreciation, not only from a race perspective, but also from an ability perspective.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so it became my mission once I recognized, particularly after my son uh, you know, had difficulty breathing and needed to have a trach in his throat.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so he had tubes coming out of his body.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: He had a wheelchair.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: I saw when he had a little bit more of ability when he was younger, how kids would stare.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then I would look at him and I would look at his reaction.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: I would see my then husband get frisked at the at the airport when no one else around us was getting frisked.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was just like just seeing the the you know, the things that happen either intentionally or unconsciously, that's kind of ingrained in in you know our society and in just our DNA, frankly.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking to myself, I really want this to be part of the human beauty movement as well.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that is to have these open conversations about different abilities, about different races, about the the notion that this is what humankind is, this is what it looks like.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: We are all different, and that is amazing.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's wonderful.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing that um we we really have to eradicate is this idea of power over other races or other abilities, and this and that again, that's ego-driven as well as fear.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: We have to really look at ourselves and and retrain ourselves to move away from the fear of others that are different from us.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not easy because a lot of these things are just ingrained and there's things that have been passed down generation to generation.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so again, it's like it's a long conversation, but it's it's a conversation that has already started.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's one that's come a long way.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's taken powerful movements for it to really get to the place where we are now where people can talk about LGBTQ rights, you know, of course, with women and you know, career and God bless, you know, Kamala Harris for, you know, helping to shatter more ceilings for women and in politics and um and you know, just thinking about trans rights, thinking about um Black Lives Matter, and of course, more recently, what's going on in the Asian American community as a result of misplaced blame for COVID.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it's just like thinking about these things where people, you know, are are expressing anger, they're expressing animosity.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Where is this really born from?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's born out of fear, it's born out of power.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: And if we can, you know, really commit to each, you know, our to ourselves individual by individual that we are gonna do the work in order to overcome those things so that we can all live shoulder to shoulder as humans, then the world will be a better place and we're absolutely oh my gosh, absolutely.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Seriously, I could I'm gonna be able to talk to you for like a lifetime at this point.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: But this is nowhere near the end of the episode, by the way.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: If I after I read this, no, but I completely agree with you.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the idea of just being human is something that we really have to like, yeah, we've come up with the catchphrase, you know what I mean, but we have to embrace that mentally.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I have, you know, you're one of the few people I've spoken to that really under, I feel I feel like understands, you know what I mean?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: That really is grasping this concept because I'm not getting earlier this week.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was having the conversation with a colleague that we were talking about how racism needs to be put into the DSM 5, which is the go-to book for all psychiatric disorders.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we were talking about it because it's like at this point in our evolution as human beings, our minds, like there is no place for racism anymore.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, like making it like it should not be a controversy, it should be treated as a a problem that is stemming from some sort of, you know, we can say environmental, whatever, you know.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna go into that, but my point is like it needs to be addressed in a very, very like real way, you know.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like we can't just sit and talk about it anymore and just you know, so it's it's very, very like, you know, important to discuss this.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I love everything you said, and you're a very brave woman.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: I will say that, you know, and very strong, obviously, for taking on so much.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: So well, I appreciate your kind words, and it's really when when we recognize that there are issues that are greater than ourselves, then it's just something that really creates this um inducement of the of the need for action and the need for change.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I I invite everybody to get to that place, yeah.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to ask you, Jennifer, because I'm very um I'm very interested in in brands that like launch and then they start like initiatives that you know are I guess better for the planet and better for everything around us.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: How do you feel about that?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like with your what you're saying here, I mean, everything.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're saying is embedded in the root of your cause.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I see this versus somebody else who just picked up a cause and went with it later on, I kind of have a problem with that.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: That person.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm like looking at what you're doing, and I'm like, there's no excuse why you can't be doing this.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you feel about that?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, there um and it's very interesting that you say that and recognize it because sometimes it's more apparent than than other times.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and certainly over my career, I've definitely come into contact with and have worked for companies that are like, uh, we need to have a goodwill cause because people like that.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it's, you know, they'll have more of an inclination to want to buy from us because, you know, because we're giving to charity.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: So which charity should we pick?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and and and and it's it and it's not really born from the soul of the brand.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's more like, let's do this as a marketing tactic or let's just do it as an afterthought.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, granted, you know, good can come of it in that, you know, if they are truly providing, you know, funds and resources to a charity that and helping to make a difference, then then that is good.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: But the intention um, unfortunately, is a little bit tainted.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, and and I'm not like you know putting myself on a pedestal or anything, but I do think that for those companies that do think about purpose first and mission first, and believe that, you know, the the the role of their company or their brand or whatever they're doing is to make the world a better place or to to to you know help consumers in a specific way and they're able to align with um you know give back programs or or something that is really inherently fundamental in terms of being passionate about or something that really kind of is intrinsically, you know, part of the brand.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Tom's shoes is one that I I think is a is a classic um example of the one-for-one program where you know they pretty much founded themselves on, you know, oh we'll make shoes.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we sell one, we give one to you know a child in in Africa.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's and it's ingrained in in the DNA and the culture of the brand at that time.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: So and it's meaningful.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so to me, um, I you know, I I embrace and celebrate, you know, brands that really, you know, put purpose first and mission first rather than you know thinking about the the way that they can capitalize uh on you know on goodwill or some or or PR afterwards.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how do you feel about like research, for example?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've proposed this idea before and I'm always curious how you know people really think about it, because I think a lot of skincare companies right now are putting a lot of like money into things, but it's like I've always wondered why don't you put it into like medical research?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or like something like a collective cause, I guess what is what I'm talking about.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like I I just I wonder why that initiative can't be like, you know what I mean?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like what basically expanded to where brands can now say, well, now I'm gonna take real part in this.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like it just needs to be a you know a concerted effort.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I can answer that in a couple of different ways.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one is that some do use their funds um in terms of their charitable contributions to uh to help enable, you know, research facilities, or you know, may it could be for like a cancer-related cause or for breast cancer research or you know, things like that.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so they may not necessarily fundamentally themselves be involved in that research, but they may um use it as an offshoot to to um you know provide contribution or some sort of um public good.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in other respects, um it could be that because beauty is not considered a drug and is classified as cosmetic, that um the research that some uh companies might be doing might be in from you know from an ingredient standpoint to see if it's going to make a difference to the skin.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so, yeah, and so they'll they'll certainly be researching molecules or new technologies or ways to make you know different ingredients more bioavailable or to make ingredients more stable or to, you know, that sort of thing happens all the time.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the outright um kind of entrenching a particular brand and tying it to some medical research, you're right, that doesn't often happen, and it could be because there is this kind of divide between what you know beauty psychographically is for, um, and then what you know that's that um kind of medical aspect is about.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: It might seem to be a little bit disparate if it was so heavily enmeshed in uh in with the brand.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah, I completely agree.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's that's an excellent point.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, I urge everyone out there to, you know, because I I know a lot of people who who want to start a skincare line or a beauty line, and it's like it's a beautiful, beautiful thing, and it's a beautiful thing to want to be an entrepreneur, but it's like, you know, at this point, I think every move that we make as humanity has to count and it has to mean something, and we just can't be doing the things that are idle anymore.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I like I wonder like if that also ties into saturation.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do you like how do you feel about that?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like the saturation of the markets, like you know, like the beauty and skincare, everything like that people are consuming.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do you think there is like a solution to it, or is it just something we're gonna have to live with forever?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's an interesting question.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly I think that it it it it definitely can be answered in two ways.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: One is that there are a lot of companies and brands and entrepreneurs that are getting into beauty because they see the size of the prize, they see the size of the market and they're thinking, oh gosh, you know, I want a piece of that.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're doing it for for money reasons, or they think that it's gonna be just fun.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: They don't realize that like how how much work is really involved in putting together a cosmetics line.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh boy, it's it's it's definitely not what you think when you first come in and uh, you know, and thinking that it's a cakewalk.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's a lot of a lot of work involved.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so there is a lot of um a lot of manufacturing.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's there's oversaturation um of products that are Me Too, um, and that don't necessarily contribute so much value to the marketplace.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so you end up kind of devaluing like a you know, a lot of the the products that are made today in cosmetics.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's also this churn that I had mentioned before that we have to kind of stop ourselves from kind of getting into this spiral of just like constantly churning out products for the sake of churning out products and for the sake of new and um obsoleting old, um, you know, getting to a place where uh there's more intention in the design, um, there's more meaning and um and regeneration in the way things are.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then on the other side is the consumer's responsibility.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: If the consumer continues to buy, buy, buy at these rates and has shoeboxes filled with stuff in their bathrooms that they're not even using because they just are like, you know, hoarding them and they just like have this obsession of buying, but it's it's kind of like a bit wasteful because they're not even using them, then we have to kind of train the consumers to not buy as much.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so then the the the demand will cause the supply to start kind of edging out.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: And we also have to start uh thinking about consumers being more um intelligent about what they are buying, so not necessarily going for the free or the cheapest or the you know the things that are are um you know kind of being too harmful for the planet.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: We have to really think about voting with our dollars for companies and brands and products that are going to leave the world in a better place than it was yesterday.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't agree more.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's some, yeah, I fully, fully agree with you.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that vision and that, you know, that ingenuity, it it really comes from someone's heart.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a lot of, you know, the saturations I see is just like almost like a it's like a factory that's you know what I mean.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you're turning out the same puppet over and over and over again.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like, you know, for a consumer from the consumer standpoint, I find it to be interesting because you're right, we are becoming more intelligent, but at the same time, we're still feeding the monster, you know what I mean?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like we still, you know, spend our dollars.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I think you know, we have to just be more thoughtful, right?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: So what's new for the human beauty movement?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: What's you know, like what's next?
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: What's next?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I'm really excited that um, you know, we launched last year uh in the middle of COVID.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was supposed to launch uh like at the beginning, uh, and unfortunately everything kind of got shut down.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so I actually scaled back and postponed launch because and and did things in a in a in a quieter, more conservative way because I wanted to just make sure, again, with intention, that I wasn't just putting a whole lot of stuff out there that uh didn't necessarily have receptivity from the market.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: So um this year, now that I can kind of see that um that there is acceptance of the brand, people are really loving what it stands for.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the first product that I put out there has already won an award, it's um it's selling, it's getting good word of mouth.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so very methodically.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Congratulations.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: Very methodically and very intentionally, I will be adding um some additional products to the line.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, working on that and you know, helping to really kind of use this opportunity to get more word out and more awareness out about humanist beauty and um and all the good that it's that it is doing.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really what's on the agenda for this year.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: I love it, I love it, and I wish you nothing but the most success.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, I haven't met, I don't think I've met anyone as, you know, I don't want to, I don't know.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard for me to find the words, you know what I mean?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: When someone's really like in tune with their being and who they are and like just being a human being, you know what I mean?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I just I commend you for that.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I honestly I will stand behind whatever you do.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: I can honestly say that as a woman, as you know, as a person of color, as everything, you know, because I bel I really want people like you to just really use your voice and do more because that's what matters, you know.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: This kind of thought matters, everything else is like redundant and it's just like we talked about saturation.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: So everyone listening.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I hope you guys agree.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't, leave us some comments, some feedback, let us know.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions for Jennifer's team or or me or you know, anything, leave it in the in the concept art and yeah, we'll you know, we'll get back to you.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: But thank you so much, Jennifer.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: This was amazing.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was a pleasure.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hey guys, so I hope you love that episode.
• 33:12
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• 33:17
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• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.