Physicians Formula Butter Highlighter Swatches Instagram Sparks Controversy Online

There's no doubt that in 2018, the beauty industry has made some great progress towards becoming more inclusive. Brands like Fenty Beauty and Jouer have gotten it right, with expansive shade ranges featured in their lines. Because of this, it's arguably even more frustrating when a brand misses the mark.

As Allure reported, such was the case for Physicians Formula, whose campaign for their new, limited-edition Butter Highlighter quickly backfired on social media due to a very noticeable lack of diversity with its model casting. On Monday, the brand shared two images to Instagram featuring swatches of the "Light/Medium" and "Medium/Deep" shades of the highlighter on five different arms — and all five arms featured models with lighter skin tones. Sure, there was a slight difference in the skin tones (the one on the bottom was slightly more tan than the one on the top) but many people felt the campaign excluded people of color, and alienated a significant portion of Physicians Formula's fanbase.

Understandably, the comments section on the post lit up with people who were took offense to the snafu. "Shame on you for continuing to ignore POC," wrote one user. Others called out the fact that these shades wouldn't work on darker skin tones, which is problematic in itself. "This is complete nonsense. These will look ashy on anyone darker than medium skin tone 😒," a commenter said.

Physicians Formula begun responding to the comments, writing (and re-writing multiple times), "Hey beauty, we hear ya! We acknowledge that this post fell short of delivering our promise to represent all our fans. We sincerely apologize and will continue to create content that is inclusive of all of our fans moving forward."

"Our recent Instagram post for our new Butter Highlighter shades fell short of delivering our promise to represent all our fans," wrote Alice Chen, Vice President of Marketing Physicians Formula in response to Teen Vogue's request for comment. "For that, we sincerely apologize. This was an oversight and not indicative of the brand, the brand holders, the future of the brand, nor even of our daily social voice. We know personally how important it is to create products for all, and we strive towards this goal every day. We will continue to work to voice this goal in our social platforms in more transparency moving forward. It is our goal and commitment to project our personal expressions to our brand and our product offerings. We are continuing to build out our shade ranges and product assortments. "

Instances like these are a reminder that shade inclusivity extends way beyond foundation and concealer; just last month, Becca added a new shade called Chocolate Geode, formulated specifically for darker skin tones to its lineup of Shimmering Skin Perfectors, making it the most diverse range of highlighters on the market. (We even photographed it on *Teen Vogue* editors as visual proof of its makeup magic.) Hopefully, more brands will follow suit, because no one deserves to be excluded from the conversation.

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