Kylie Mudie made a bold claim in her college admissions essay: Beauty isn’t shallow.
“Beauty is what is what gives life its color,” she attests. “And a lot of people equate beauty to perfection or pressure. But I don’t believe that it is, because you can find beauty in anything, and you can find beauty in imperfection.”
For Mudie, then a high school senior, this perspective helped her reflect on the pitfalls of perfectionism and embrace life’s imperfections. In the era of Instagram filters and Photoshop, it’s an empowering outlook that has motivated the South Carolina Honors College junior and McNair scholar throughout her undergraduate career.
This summer, Mudie had a chance to explore her intellectual curiosities even further. The chemistry major from Woodstock, Georgia, spent part of June at Spelman College’s Black Beauty STEMinist Lab Intensive, a ten-day program funded by The Estée Lauder Companies Charitable Foundation. But Mudie wasn’t just learning about the chemistry of skincare products or how to formulate the perfect mousse — she was learning about the women whose research has made the beauty industry more inclusive to all skin types and colors.
“It was empowering to see how far people have come and how far those women have persevered, making a place for us [Black women] in the beauty industry,” says Mudie.
The intensive began with the three-day Black Beauty STEMinist conference. Mudie connected with students from across the country, as well as industry professionals. In addition to appreciating Spelman’s atmosphere — “It’s a competitive culture, but at the same time, they all lift each other up” — Mudie was inspired by stories of how Black women in cosmetic sciences impacted their communities. In one panel, she learned of how a scientist discovered that many widely used hair oils contained a harmful number of hormones.
“A lot of people would pass it off, like, ‘It’s just genetics,’ or, ‘It’s just the way that they are,’ until people started doing research and [realized that what] they’re putting in these products... they don’t have to put on the labels. These products are in all of our hair products and it’s causing us significant harm. It was so interesting to see the real-world impact of research.”
This is just one example of the beauty industry’s oversights. Mudie also noted that, until the creation of Rihanna’s Fenty beauty line, makeup shades for darker skin tones were difficult to find.
“[These women] doing research and making beauty more inclusive and studying Black skin and Black hair more was super interesting to me, and just seeing how much research [that] you would have thought was done forever ago, it wasn’t.”
After the conference, Mudie had the opportunity to make her own impact on the beauty industry. The next week consisted of lectures and labs, and Mudie created a range of products: mascara, scented candles, perfumes, cleansers and lipstick, just to name a few. Each morning, Mudie and her peers learned about the chemistry behind creating these products, then spent the afternoon in the lab. She appreciated the opportunity to apply some of the concepts she’d learned in her organic chemistry classes.
Her favorite creation? “I was so happy when my hair mousse turned out right,” she says. “The test strand was all bouncy and shiny. I was like, ‘Yeah, I did that.’ That one was really fun.”
As Mudie begins her junior year, she’s broadening her interests. She plans to pursue a career in dentistry, which she believes is the ideal combination of her STEM, creative and cosmetic interests. She’s keeping her options open, though, inspired by the stories she heard from seasoned researchers at the STEMinist conference.
One thing she is sure of, though, is that other students could benefit from attending this program. From mentorship to labs to experiencing life at an all-women HBCU, the Black Beauty STEMinist Lab Intensive packs a summer’s worth of experiences into ten days.
“Just connecting to people who are already in their career and hearing their path and hearing their story, and getting that mentorship — it was such an amazing opportunity.”