American cosmetic companies are censoring their packaging to avoid offending Middle Eastern customers.
Consumers in the Middle East have shared product photographs on social networking sites such as Reddit featuring Bahama Mama Bronzing Powder, a product originally manufactured by San Francisco-based cosmetics company theBalm. They images show a demure, fully clothed version of the brand’s original illustration, which showed a woman wearing a bikini top and a Hawaiian-style raffia skirt.
Similarly, consumers have drawn attention to beauty brand Too Faced, founded by American entrepreneurs Jerrod Blandino and Jeremy Johnson, which also censors its products despite stating on the brand’s website that their “vision was to create a makeup line that would celebrate individuality and inject joy back into an industry that had become rigidly led by rules, not fun.”
Too Faced retails its ‘Better Than Sex’ mascara as ‘Better Than Love’ for Middle Eastern customers.
According to the organizers of the Beautyworld Middle East event and its research partner Euromonitor International, women in the United Arab Emirates are estimated to spend more on beauty products than women in the UK and France.