Nadiya Hussain Says She Was Afraid to Speak Up Over Her Skin Being Lightened in Photo Shoots
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Nadiya Hussain is opening up about her journey with makeup.
The television chef and winner of The Great British Baking Show, 37, spoke to Mirror and recalled early magazine shoots and moments where she "sat in a make-up artist's chair and they've visibly made my skin lighter."
"Early on, I remember hearing a lot of tutting, like 'oh I can't get the right shade' and then my skin being lighter in the pictures," Hussain, who won the U.K.'s Great British Bake Off in 2015, said. "If somebody did that to me now, I would say, 'Absolutely no way. That's not okay.' But back then I was scared to rock the boat. It would never happen with my make-up artist, who really knows my skin."
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The TV star and author, who spoke about her new role as a brand ambassador for IT Cosmetics skin care and makeup, elaborated on how difficult it was to find the right shade of foundation before her late 20s, and what it means to find something that now works. "That might seem really small for lots of people but for those of us who cannot find a foundation color, you feel really excluded," she said. "You feel like there's an entire beauty industry that isn't thinking about you, and that you almost don't exist. For me, it's so important to work with a make-up brand that supports diversity."
Finding the right makeup can be a major confidence boost, Hussain shared, but makeup is only that. As she explains, makeup is not a "mask." "We are living in the Kardashian era and it scares me as I don't want my daughter to grow up with this unrealistic idea of beauty," the mother of three shared. "I try so hard to filter that on social media for her, but when she sees it we talk about it. I think it's really important to talk to her about what is real and what isn't."
Hussain's 12-year-old daughter, Maryam, is already a fan of trying new looks, and her mother finds it "wonderful" that she gets to experience a more diverse beauty industry than the one she grew up with. "She'll feel exclusion in other areas, it's a part of growing up in an ethnic minority," she said. "But the fact that she doesn't have to feel it within beauty is, for me, is one less battle she has to fight."
Hussain, who found her own show in the Netflix series Nadiya's Time to Eat, opened up in 2020 about another early career experience where she was rejected from being a hand model due to her skin color. As she recalled, the chef responded to an ad in the paper, before she walked in for the audition when the whole room went silent.
The audition was full of "white faces and white hands," Hussain wrote on Instagram, and a receptionist told her she couldn't audition because she "didn't know" she was Black. The woman then told her that "Black hands don't sell jewelry."
"The blood rushed to my face. I was so embarrassed, I was now a deep shade of burgundy," Hussain remembers. "I never really thought about my hands, till the color of the skin that covered them stopped me from getting a job. When you are a teenager, already a little lost, words like this stick."
