Source: Brown Girl Jane / Brown Girl Jane
Black women’s relationship with the beauty industry has long been complicated. And as we’ve seen with the Pull Up or Shut Up movement, it’s not enough to see the tide turning in regard to our history of being underserved. We want the companies who invest in making money off of our beauty needs to also invest in us.
Thankfully, when it comes to Black-owned businesses, we already know the importance of using our position to help someone else gain one. That’s why when Brown Girl Jane expanded beyond wellness and entered the beauty space earlier this year, the plant-based CBD wellness brand did so with a philanthropic element from the outset.
“We make it our mission to make sure that we’re giving back to our community and really engaging with our sisters and brothers in a way that is substantial and meaningful,” said Co-Founder and Chief Impact Officer Nia Jones. “That’s always been important, but particularly at times like this when you realize the movement is ongoing. The issues that Black people face have always been very important but now they’re very much in your face. So as we launched GLOW,” she said of the new CBD facial serum that’s been added to their line of tinctures, “we knew we had to make sure we were a part of the solution and give back to our community.”
How Brown Girl Jane is doing that is via a partnership with Tamika Mallory’s social justice organization Until Freedom whose current efforts are heavily focused on seeking justice for Breonna Taylor in particular.
“We knew when we were launching this that we wanted part of the proceeds to go to an organization that was part of the movement and Until Freedom does wonderful work in that space so we made the decision collectively to donate $10 from every sale of GLOW for the month of June to that organization to really make an impact with our dollars,” Jones added.
Source: Brown Girl Jane / Brown Girl Jane
GLOW, in and of itself, is a gift to Black women with its potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory formula made up of 750mg of full Broad Spectrum hemp and Cannabis Sativa Seed oil. “Those together really do some amazing things for your skin, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Malaika Jones Kebede said in an interview for HelloBeautiful. “It’s really like a one, two punch.”
And as Black female business owners in the CBD space who make products for Black women first and foremost, Brown Girl Jane is helping reverse the stigma that’s been placed on cannabis and opening up a world of clean beauty and wellness for its target customer.
“We’re very much aware of our role in being a part of the solution, particularly as it relates to the overcriminalization that the cannabis plant has had on Black folk and the Black community,” Jones said. “It’s a big piece of our ethos and defines everything that we do.”
As such, the efforts to share profits with community organizations didn’t start with GLOW and they won’t stop there either,” Kebede assured, pointing out that Mallory will appear on their twice-weekly IG Show, “You Good, Sis?” hosted by Co-Founder and Chief Brand Officer Tai Beauchamp.
“We like to make everything that we do very comprehensive and substantive and always center sisterhood and community throughout every inch of our business.”
To learn more about CBD and how Black women are beginning to own this space, tune in to a special IG Live with Brown Girl Jane on our Instagram Thursday, July 23, at 3pm.
