On April 29, a new episode of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex's podcast Confessions of a Female Founder was released, and with it came a new revelation. In speaking to Jamie Kern Lima, the founder of IT Cosmetics, they got into a discussion about beauty that lead to an interesting bit of insight from the duchess.
We all know that well before Meghan met Prince Harry, she was an actress. Not only that but she was a case girl for Deal or No Deal. But this also meant that she was auditioning for things such as commercials and advertisements. However, it seems as if her freckles meant that she could not do any beauty advertisements.
According to US Weekly, on her podcast, she shared with Lima that "I remember my commercial agent could not submit me for beauty or skincare ads because I had freckles." It seems that she was being turned away from roles and ads because at the time her freckles were no "a sign of beauty."
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex was turned away from advertisements because of her freckles
All things considered, this actually comes as no surprise to me. As someone who grew up in the 90s, I can clearly remember a lot of the advertisements and as someone with freckles, I didn't see that reflected in ads for beauty or skin care. Honestly, we all know that there were a lot of issues with ads and commercials back in the day (yes I feel old typing that), and there were a lot of ideas and beauty standards that made no sense.
So while we absolutely expect people to try to discredit Duchess Meghan for sharing her truth about how she was turned down for having freckles, I absolutely believe her. And you probably do too. Because we all know that for years, it was hard to find diversity in advertising. It can still be hard to find true diversity in advertising and commercials.
With Duchess Meghan pointing out that her freckles were a reason she was turned away from certain work, it likely makes sense that she would praise IT Cosmetics for how they chose to approach their own advertisements.
Obviously, in her talk with Jamie Kern Lima the discussion turned to IT Cosmetics, and specifically their use of more diverse models.
"That was such new thinking then. When you were bringing that to market that was so [unheard of]. Now it may seem more normalized. People listening now will be like ‘Well yeah of course,’ It was not an of course. It was a revolutionary way to think about makeup and beauty at the time."Meghan, Duchess of Sussex
We love that Duchess Meghan is speaking out about things like beauty standards, even the older ones that people seem to forget about. It is a reminder of how far we have come, while also making it clear that we still have a long way to go.