Rare Beauty, a cosmetics brand founded by actress Selena Gomez, is about breaking down unrealistic standards of perfection. The goal of this line of cosmetics is to produce makeup that makes you feel good about yourself, one that won't hide what makes you unique. Rare Beauty is about being who you truly are and bringing out the best in you, not making you look like someone else.
In Selena's words, "I think Rare Beauty can be more than a beauty brand — it can make an impact. I want us all to stop comparing ourselves to each other and just start embracing our own uniqueness. Being rare is about being comfortable with yourself. I've stopped trying to be perfect. I just want to be me."
As you can see, the mission of this company is to help everyone celebrate their individuality by redefining what beautiful means. They want to promote self-acceptance and give people the tools they need to feel less alone in the world.
Furthermore, their vision is to create a safe, welcoming space in beauty and support mental well-being regardless of age, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, cultural background, physical or mental ability, and ideology.
The Rare Beauty mantra:
We believe in the beauty of imperfections.
We nurture a caring, respectful community.
We create meaningful connections and relationships.
We champion authenticity and positivity.
We lead with transparency to build trust.
We believe there is power in being vulnerable.
So, movie actress Selena Gomez joined the beauty industry with a project of her own. Rare Beauty is the makeup brand she conceptualized, formulated, and curated. Of course, much of the initial success of the line had to do with Selena's star power and the pretty packaging. Although, people who use her products report these do exactly what they say they will, and more.
The company is best known for being easy to use and having shade-inclusive products in modern packaging. The headquarters are in El Segundo, CA and the prices range between $14 and 29 USD per piece. The actress also launched the Rare Impact Fund alongside Rare Beauty. Her goal is to raise $100 million for mental health services for all over the next 10 years.
Her most popular products are the Liquid Touch Weightless Foundation, the subject of this article, as well as the Liquid Touch Weightless Foundation, the Soft Pinch Liquid Blush, the Lip Souffle Matte Lip Cream, the Vulnerable Glossy Lip Balm, the Liquid Highlighter, the Gratitude Dewy Lip Balm, the Liquid Touch Brightening Concealer, the Rare Beauty Stay, and the Optimist Pore Diffusing Primer, among others.
It sounds like another celebrity brand, right? Maybe, but Selena seems to be pouring her entire soul into her products as she wanted to create an inclusive beauty brand. For instance, there are 48 foundation and concealer tones in her product palette and she's personally supervised the formulation of each product with ease of use in mind.
She wanted the texture of her entire line to be flexible and for every single person to be able to find their perfect color. The cool part about the products is you don't have to be a makeup artist to use them or identify the perfect tone for you.
The prices are fair and buying the products sort of makes you feel good as part of the proceedings goes towards the $100 million that Gomez pledged to raise for mental health services over the next 10 years.
She's interested in this subject as she's struggled openly with anxiety and depression so the time she's taken for herself reflects in the products she releases. The one thing that's definitely reflected in Rare Beauty products is Selena's honest intention. She's identified a gap and filled it with a rare beauty product.
Photo source: sephora.com
Rare Beauty Foundation Review
Liquid Touch Weightless Foundation
This is a Rare Beauty review of a product that sells for $29.00 and, as we said above, is available in 48 shades. The Liquid Touch Weightless Foundation is one of the most diverse shade ranges on the market and its consistency is like that of a serum or oil, yet it doesn't compromise the pigment.
You can easily apply it with your fingers; in fact, Selena prefers to use them instead of the Liquid Touch Foundation brush of the Rare Beauty Liquid Touch. The product is customizable, just as the rest of the Rare Beauty line. You can dab on a few dots for a cream-like result or build up the coverage with several tones.
Furthermore, you can apply the formula as-is for a matte finish on oily skin or mist your dry skin before and after you apply it if you prefer a dewy look. The formula is weightless either way so it lives up to its promise. The packaging is quite beautiful. There's a smaller hole below the main mouth of the jar inside the tube to pull the excess product off of the doe-foot applicator as you unscrew it. It's there to prevent waste.
In short, this innovative breathable foundation combines the weightless feel of a serum with buildable medium coverage and is suitable for either a normal or a combination skin type. The liquid formulation is a botanical blend of lotus, gardenia, and water lily so it helps soothe, calm, and nourish your skin. The list of ingredients also contains a large list of hard to pronounce substances.
The fluid texture of this makeup product makes it easy to blend and to build up layers with it to even out your skin tone and smooth the appearance of your pores. There's no clogging or caking and the mess-free, doe-foot applicator lets you apply a dot at a time — often all you need to cover your entire face.
Photo source: sephora.com
Selena Gomez Compromise with Mental Health Issues
The Rare Beauty Fund
As per the Rare Beauty website, Selena wants her fans and customers to know that mental health is personal to her. That figuring out how to manage her own mental health hasn't always been easy but it's something she's constantly working on and hopes she can help others work on it too.
She adds that there are times when her highs are really high but then her lows often bring her down for weeks at a time. She was relieved when she found out that she suffers from mental health issues in many ways because she can finally understand what's happening to her.
She's finally realized she could get help and all she needed was the right treatment. And while taking care of her mental health requires work, just like taking care of her physical health, she's happy when she takes care of herself. Not only that, she feels healthier and more in control of her thoughts and emotions.
Now that she knows more about mental health problems, she wishes someone had talked to her about it when she was younger. She could've learned and understood what was going on with her sooner and do something about it. This is precisely why she launched the Rare Impact brand along with the Rare Impact Fund.
She shares her story hoping she can use her brand as a platform to talk about and connect more people to resources that support mental health. Also, she highly encourages others to get the help they need and wants to bring more mental health services to educational settings.
Photo source: sephora.com
"Your Words Matter" Campaign
The Rare Beauty website has a section in which Selena encourages you to speak up. She wants you to know that the words you use have more power than you may realize. Regardless of whether you're sharing a personal story or simply responding to someone else, you must be mindful of your word choice. This is because what you say can not only increase the stigma around mental health but also have an impact on those around you.
The campaign is entitled "Your Words Matter" and is an educational campaign promoted by Rare Impact. It aims to inspire and offer guidance on how to share and respond when talking about mental health. Rare Beauty will use this platform to share resources, showcase expert insights, and bring awareness to the power and influence of your words.
Furthermore, the company is launching the first limited edition of "Your Words Matter" Crewneck Sweatshirt in celebration of this important initiative. It's designed as a daily reminder that your words do, in fact, matter. A hundred percent of the net proceeds of this crewneck support the Rare Impact Fund to expand mental health services for young people.
Body Dysmorphia, a Common Mental Problem
What exactly is beauty? Is it truly skin deep? If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, why are there so many people telling you how imperfect you are and trying to dictate the way you should look. You'll be happier, sexier, more popular, more confident, they say.
Of course, you may have also learned that putting yourself down is a great way to get attention. Just speak about your own unattractiveness and someone will quickly respond how beautiful you are in your own special way. Others will add that it's who you are on the inside that matters. Although the meanest ones might say you have the type of beauty only a mother can love.
Most of these reassurances are seemingly well-intentioned but pointless when you truly believe you're not as beautiful as you should be, according to the marketers who want to sell you products.
Have you noticed how everyone has a say in all the things you should do to be more attractive? You surely have if you're a woman. "You should take care of your appearance; do it for yourself if you don't care about what people think of you," they say. So what's there to do if you're happy with the way you are? Well, ignore them, of course.
If only people with body dysmorphia could do just that. The condition is more prevalent these days as we're conditioned to judge others based on their appearance. It's all a marketing trick for you to spend your hard-earned money on products and procedures in an effort to hold onto their beauty or change the way you look.
Photo source: sephora.com
Celebrities Are People Too
Conventional beauty does seem to make life easier for the beautiful people you see on TV and all over the fashion magazines. People with body dysmorphia constantly compare themselves to these "stars" and it think it's so unfair that they can have it all. Thus, they lose confidence and their self-worth decreases.
As you know, beauty is a prized commodity, and stories like Snow White, "the fairest of them all," tell you how happy she ends up after marrying a prince she barely knows and who "fell in love" with her due to her striking beauty.
Images of celebrities and influencers are similar, carefully constructed fiction. Thus, anyone with low self-esteem must recognize the burden of societal expectations. They must address any persistent feelings of ugliness or dissatisfaction with their appearance. The standards of beauty set by the cosmetic industry are only attainable through hours of grooming and a careful selection of clothing, and photoshop techniques.
It's unfair for the regular Jane to compare herself with such images. She must realize that such seemingly gorgeous people are more ordinary than she thinks. Especially without the many hours of preparation to look the way they do.
You don't believe it? Think of the photos taken by ill-intentioned paparazzi. The magazines they sell them to make a lot of money with photos of celebrities venturing out in everyday clothes. Their captions are often rather mean and insulting. Why? Because these make regular people who feel bad about themselves feel good to know the celebrities whose looks they worship are kind of average. It's a strange frame of mind …
However, most beautiful celebrities admit to once feeling ugly and continuously change things about themselves. Such disclosures highlight the fact that no matter how attractive you are or to what standards of perfection you adhere, the pressure is on. Someone, somewhere, somehow will find fault with anyone's appearance at some point. Keep in mind that you're unique and your body belongs to you alone. You don't have to do anything to please anyone and you don't have to be conventionally beautiful.
Photo source: sephora.com
Celebrity Products and Endorsements
Celebrities create brand identities that define their brands through images, associations, desirable traits, and personality. Furthermore, social media empowers people and drives the growth of the celebrity industry through their on- and off-stage performances.
So, a celebrity brand describes high-profile people who profit from their fame in the form of brand equity. There was a time when celebrities merely endorsed products but recently, the most popular way of doing it is through the launch of their product lines. They already have a brand, after all: their name and image.
The power of celebrities drives a multi-million-dollar industry but also increases their brand value. But it enhances their relationships with fan-consumers as well by getting into the right social justice niche, as in the case of Selena Gomez mentioned above.
The Celebrity as a Human Brand
Think about it, the rich and famous place their image at the service of the cosmetic industry either through endorsement agreements or products with their own name that often become their main source of income.
A brand extension is different from an endorsement strategy. The product in the first has the name and involvement of a given celebrity. An endorsement is just about being paid for promoting someone else's brand. The first business model is riskier but more profitable and entitles more opportunities for publicity. Furthermore, this model gives more credit to the celebrity and makes them seem more authentic.
Of course, this authenticity has a positive relationship with the value of the products they offer and it might explain their fan's willingness to spend money on their products. It's a way to get closer to them as these consumers perceive this brand extension as similar to the original — the celebrity, that is.
Photo source: sephora.com
Natural Beauty
Millions of #nomakeup posts have recently appeared across online platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. These posts are often started by celebrities or influencers who claim to be free of makeup and thus, all-natural. The trend definitely reflects a growing interest in natural beauty. The kind that's fresh and effortless, untouched by human intervention.
This rising trend hasn't led to an overall decline in cosmetics sales though. In fact, a spike in sales across certain cosmetics categories like concealer, mascara, and other products has been associated with this movement. What's happening is the trend has mainly encouraged people to use cosmetics covertly for a low-effort appearance.
So, people these days just want a low-effort look to enhance how others perceive their attractiveness. These consumers are just responding to the latest trend that calls them to look natural. They won't forego their appearance-enhancement practices, merely construct an aesthetic that looks natural.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to be beautiful and you most likely are. Both natural and artificial enhancements can be attractive to some and not so appealing to others.
We as a society should learn to appreciate real natural beauty as opposed to appreciating a given trait only because a person spent lots of money on them. It seems to be just what Selena Gomez had in mind when she started Rare Beauty. Cheers to a brand with such standards!
