Youthforia Scandal & Why Dark Skin Deserves Better

When Golloria George woke up to an influx of Instagram comments urging her to try Youthforia’s Date Night Skin Tint Serum foundation in its darkest shade, she initially planned to ignore it. The 23-year-old Sudanese-American content creator built her platform by testing makeup brands’ darkest shades. It’s both a fun resource for dark-skinned makeup lovers who’ve felt neglected by popular brands and a reminder that the beauty industry’s colorism problem runs deep even in 2024. So, when beauty brand Youthforia unveiled its expanded shade range earlier this month — sparking “the worst foundation shade scandal ever seen” — George knew testing this product on her skin tone would not go well. And she was right. “I’m from South Sudan, and South Sudan has some of the darkest people in the world. And so I’ve seen dark [skin tones]” she tells Unbothered over Zoom. “When I put it on my face, I knew that this would not work for me, or anybody else who is darker than me because [the foundation shade] was literally just black.” A pure black foundation. As TikTok creator, Wumi Afuye, expressed on the app last month, “You are going to feel like you are being hate-crimed.”