When Thin Lips Became Fashionable: A Study in Beauty, Power, and Erasure

When thin lips became a global trend, it exposed the hypocrisy at the heart of beauty culture. What was once mocked, criminalized, and pathologized on Black women: full lips, textured hair, melanin-rich skin is now repackaged as fashionable when adopted by white celebrities and sold back to the world through billion-dollar industries. From lip injections to tanning salons to perms that imitate tightly coiled textures, capitalism thrives on erasure: it extracts from Blackness, renames it as “self-expression,” and profits, while those who inherit these features naturally continue to face punishment and stigma.

This blog from Beautélanin Skincare calls out the cycle of appropriation, erasure, and profit, while reclaiming what is ours. We refuse to use Eurocentric language in skin analysis, such as “textured skin” or “normal skin,” because our skin does not exist to be measured against their charts. Enlarged pores are not defects. Uneven tone is not disfigurement. Scars are not shame. Our melanin is a warrior, and no warrior emerges from battle without scars.

At Beautélanin, our philosophy is clear: survival is beauty. We honor what has been pathologized. We restore what has been erased. We teach that what the beauty industry calls flaws are actually living archives: signs of resilience, inheritance, and legacy. While others sell low self-esteem as confidence, we center Blackness, truth, and dignity as the real standard. Because what the world calls a trend, we call inheritance.