These beauty “trends” that are seen as new when claimed by white mainstream media tend to be very basic techniques for people of color, too. For example, the clean girl aesthetic, for whatever reason, has had TikTok in a chokehold, despite just being no-makeup-makeup and a slicked-back bun. Take a walk in any Black or Latinx neighborhood and I assure you there will be several folks walking around with their slicked-back bun, hoops, and “brownie glazed lips.”  

Just because something is new to you doesn’t mean it hasn’t been used, seen, or done before. It just means you don’t know about it. Also, for the love of God, not everything is or needs to be a trend with a flashy new name! I am thoroughly exhausted from constantly seeing basic beauty “trends” that are things I have been doing or have seen others doing for decades. If you’re only interested in things because they are trendy, then you may have some larger internal issues to tackle. 

The urge to deem everything a trend is how we end up with these situations wherein people of color’s inventions become appropriated or, at the very least, borrowed without credit or knowledge of origins.