This thesis argues that through an examination of the variable market successes of Fashion Fair Cosmetics and Fenty Beauty, racial and gender intersectionality continues to negatively impact the experience of black beauty consumers in the US today. Through influential black feminists, including media theorist bell hooks, and critical race and gender theorists Kimberlee Crenshaw, and Patricia Hill Collins, this paper will discuss how black women historically and presently have been marginalized in relation to the needs and interests of white women. Drawing on the notable anthropologist Soyini Madison’s Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance (2022), I utilize a critical ethnography to analyze how one’s racial and gendered background can affect the relationship between beauty brands and consumers and how this impacts the experience of black and brown women as beauty consumers. This paper will also engage with the rise of historic and contemporary social justice activism and current Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs in the wake of Black Lives Matter Movement and the impact that this has had not only on industries but on the experience of black and brown cosmetics consumers. In addition, this paper will note how a speedy and superficial increase in DEI programs across service industries and cosmetics has led to a shallow understanding of the importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in all spaces. Lastly, I will deploy an autoethnographic approach to discuss how social media has strongly impacted and influenced the industry Fashion Fair is relaunching in. The autoethnography will discuss the social media strategies that drive a successful makeup brand in the contemporary beauty industry and, importantly, how contemporary consumers of color experience the beauty industry. This paper will close by speculating on the manner in which the legacy brand Fashion Fair, might in the current practice of Fenty, sharpen its appeal and engage the kind of social media strategies that will successfully reintroduce the brand to a new generation—and thereby more successfully resume its mission to deliver care to long-alienated beauty consumers in the US. / Media Studies & Production

abstract: This dissertation examines a long-term activist effort by American Indian educators and intellectual leaders to work for greater Native access to and control of American higher education. Specifically, the leaders of this effort built a powerful critique of how American systems of higher education served Native individuals and reservation communities throughout much of the twentieth century. They argued for new forms of higher education and leadership training that appropriated some mainstream educational models but that also adapted those models to endorse Native expressions of culture and identity. They sought to move beyond the failures of existing educational programs and to exercise Native control, encouraging intellectual leadership and empowerment on local and national levels. The dissertation begins with Henry Roe Cloud (Winnebago) and his American Indian Institute, a preparatory school founded in 1915 and dedicated to these principles. From there, the words and actions of key leaders such as Elizabeth Roe Cloud (Ojibwe), D’Arcy McNickle (Salish Kootenai), Jack Forbes (Powhatan-Renapé, Delaware-Lenape), and Robert and Ruth Roessel (Navajo), are also examined to reveal a decades-long thread of Native intellectual activism that contributed to the development of American Indian self-determination and directly impacted the philosophical and practical founding of tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) in the 1960s and 1970s. These schools continue to operate in dozens of Native communities. These individuals also contributed to and influenced national organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) and the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC), while maintaining connections to grassroots efforts at Native educational empowerment. The period covered in this history witnessed many forms of Native activism, including groups from the Society of American Indians (SAI) to the American Indian Movement (AIM) and beyond. The focus on “intellectual activism,” however, emphasizes that this particular vein of activism was and is still oriented toward the growth of Native intellectualism and its practical influence in modern American Indian lives. It involves action that is political but also specifically educational, and thus rests on the input of prominent Native intellectuals but also on local educators, administrators, government officials, and students themselves. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation History 2017