hello and welcome to my easy to understand Guide to the Sephora advert black beauty is beauty this video is going to focus on media language and representation and is going to be particularly relevant for you if you are studying a QA a-level media studies as it appears as a set product on that specification for exams from 2024 onwards the scene is established within a salon at the beginning here and we get a split screen showing kind of past versus present creating these binary opposites perhaps for old versus new but also helping to draw similarities between old and new as well and this split screen has been deliberately chosen to draw parallels between black history and things that have been invented by black people and modern Beauty modern beauty products and tools so for example the hair brush here celebrates Lydia Newman who was a black female who invented the hairbrush there are also mentions of things like cut creases and beat faces which is a kind of um slang term used within particularly within Black Culture um to refer to kind of extreme contoured faces they use the phrase these icons and they're kind of referring here the archive footage of black fashion icons just to really reiterate the fact that black people black culture black history is responsible for so many iconic Beauty looks and Trends today I've spoken in my videos lots of times before about black hair and how typically in in videos in the media black hair is often underrepresented it's often westernized the intricacies of how it's done and what tools are needed and the different products that are needed and the different looks that can be achieved are often not mentioned in the media at all whereas in this advert they actually mention things like baby hairs within the advert um they talk about laid edges as well we see close-ups of these so there's a real focus on things that many black audiences are going to be able to relate to but also just helping to include and represent those black issues the image of the mother and doing her child's hair it talks about my mother's love we get this very warm light here it's very cozy it feels very loving and appreciative and then that's fired closely by a lot of shots of smiling dancing people these are very positive images that help to challenge some of the more negative stereotypes about black communities that are often represented in the media there's a scene here where a woman is kind of making her own shea butter um and it even says doing it yourself within the lyrics um and she's kind of mixing it up potions and stuff and it kind of helps to represent this idea that actually there's a lot of products out there that black women had to invent themselves because they just weren't made by companies there were no products that they needed that were actually marketed specifically for them and so many black women had to actually kind of come up with their own potions mixes they had to do their own um gels and creams because the products just simply weren't there for them and so many black women were actually responsible for creating these products as well as things like the mixing of products cut creases contouring I also mentioned things like acrylic nails uh glitter extensions a lot of these products people uh you know in modern audiences just have no idea that they came from black history there's some images here where the um words of the advert say the uh the Styles we can't wait to post and we see a picture um we actually see picture in picture as though somebody is vlogging or posting online on their social media and this perhaps reflects the context of the fact that so many people are online now we get a lot of Beauty vloggers Online in particular but it perhaps also reflects this idea that there is a certain amount of cultural appropriation or misrepresentation online where a lot of beauty vloggers or influencers um celebrities often take credit for ideas for Styles as though they've created them themselves without actually crediting the very real history in particular of minorities that were involved in creating those looks and Trends the editing here really helps to emphasize this idea of cultural Appropriations so we see what appears to be a white woman doing a cut crease on her eyelid and then this Cuts straight to some black drag queens doing very similar cut creases and extreme contouring and is this editing technique that helps show actually this is where that Trend came from you know this very much was established in the drag queen community so within the lgbtq community but also within the black community as well this also perhaps suggests that lgbtq communities are often also denied credit for trends that they create the diversity within the video is obvious there are people who are younger older male female thinner larger so it's it's quite diverse it's quite inclusive and perhaps that's the message of the advert is about inclusivity and the 12 picture split screen helps to emphasize that the sheer amount of people that have been affected the number of people who have been involved in the creation of Trends it shows um you know it's trying to attract a wide audience and engage a number of people from all different backgrounds as well as inclusivity in terms of ethnicity within the advert size body shape age there's also inclusivity of gender and sexuality as well so for example we see drag queens in the montages we see um male presenting uh characters within the video putting on makeup as well so um it's it's really all about everyone enjoying makeup and all people being able to enjoy makeup and appreciate the history of these Trends and tools and perhaps reflects this rise in more diverse gender representations in the media perhaps more acceptance particularly within the beauty industries that there are more male Beauty influencers and vloggers so perhaps that's why they've chosen to include uh male characters drag queens Etc as well at the end of the advert it says join Sephora in supporting and celebrating Black Beauty the idea of the phrase join Sephora suggests that Sephora is at the front as a brand there at the front of this fight for equality um so it's presenting the brand as being very included and part of and not just part of but leading this campaign and this is obviously something they want to do to promote their brand particularly because in the past they've had some issues and controversies in the media for perhaps some racial discrimination within their stores so this is a very deliberate Choice by the brand by the who made the advert to present to the company as being interested and able to and willing to fight for uh ethnic diversity and equal equality the fact that the word black is capitalized at the beginning as well it's this idea of black power and importance and dominance as an advert it's quite unconventional most adverts Focus very much on particular products or a particular brand so for example they would show the Sephora logo or they would show products that are sold within Sephora stores or they would show a Sephora store this advert doesn't really show those things at all so the focus is very much more on the message rather than the product so that's that makes us quite unconventional there's lots of images that are relatable within this advert so the images of people in their own homes their bedrooms hair salons it makes it feel like this is quite relatable and familiar to an audience and perhaps suggests that Sephora is a very relatable familiar brand as well when the advert Was Made It was obviously put onto YouTube which is a great way of targeting an audience it was also put onto the Oprah Winfrey channel and the BET channel so it's that's Black Entertainment Television in America and this is there to specifically Target black audience season in particular black American audiences where Sephora the brand was primarily based more recently Sephora has moved to the UK as well but when the advert came out this was primarily for an American audience it's really useful if you're studying this advert to watch the extended version on YouTube by Sephora that shows the kind of context behind the advert and there's also a link to their website as well which gives more context and this explains that Sephora was researching something called search engine bias which means that when people were searching for things like Black Beauty Asian beauty British Beauty American Beauty um you know they were finding different search results so for example somebody searching uh Korean beauty was seeing images of Korean models beauty products Etc the history of Korean beauty somebody searching French Beauty was seeing those answers but somebody searching Black Beauty was actually finding images of horse is because black beauty is a very old book and film and and the idea that there was very little in the search engines about beauty and black history um and so um it kind of felt that black audiences were getting very biased search results whereby their history was being erased so Sephora decided to start the campaign um and uh again you know we could be very cynical and say that this is all about creating kind of um a great reputation for the brand but also they did use a hashtag which was Black Beauty um and they wanted to start this trend they got audiences tagging photos of themselves or videos anytime they found a video with a black influencer or black Trends black tools Etc online they would tag it with black beauty in an attempt to actually manipulate the search engine results the research that they found When They carried out these surveys and questionnaires and they did research online found that only three percent of Beauty Brands were actually black owned um they found that 78 of Shoppers found that they don't see enough Brands made for people from different ethnic backgrounds um and that two out of five Shoppers actually experienced racism discrimination based on their skin color in stores and so there's a very legitimate reason why Sephora have decided to create this campaign with these representations the director of the video is a lady called Garrett Bradley who's actually won several Awards She's a black female director she used deliberately a black female crew and production companies as well and again that perhaps might explain why the representations in particular of black women are very much more inclusive and positive than they are perhaps in other media products so that was my easy to understand Guide to the Sephora black beauty is beauty advert don't forget to subscribe to my channel for more videos that are going to be relevant for you and if you do have any comments or questions videos that you would like that I don't already have just leave a little comment below and I'll see what I can do