WHY YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE’S BEAUTY CAMPAIGN

A few days ago celebrated author, feminist and fashion icon Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was announced as the face of British brand Boot’s new beauty campaign. The campaign launched last Friday and according to Huffington Post UK it will include both print and digital components as well as television ads.

While glossy advertisements with Adichie’s beautiful smile are nice to look at, the campaign is so much more than that.

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Elle writer, Chaedria Labouvier, recently wrote a piece about the new Boot’s campaign saying, “Adichie’s new gig is a statement that real women, serious women—the kind who write critically acclaimed novels and give TED Talks with outsize effects on politics and pop culture—also care about beauty and fashion.”

Labouvier goes on to say that, “it’s empowering to see Adichie dismantle the double standards that deny the complexity (which is to say, the humanity) of womanhood.”

And herein lies the beautiful harmony that Adichie not only embodies but exudes: there’s more than one way to be womanly. Boot’s made a radical decision to ask Adichie to be their new covergirl and it hits us like a breath of fresh air.

Beauty is complicated—it’s political. As Khaled Hosseini writes in his book And the Mountains Echoed, “beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.”

Historically, beauty favors those who are predominantly white, thin and young. So when we see one of the biggest British brands with a dark-skinned Black woman writer who writes about all things feminism, colonialism and Nigeria on their advertisements we can’t help but smile.

In her essay We Should All Be Feminists, Adichie writes, “I like politics and history and am happiest when having a good argument about ideas. I am girly. I am happily girly. I like high heels and trying on lipsticks…. I wear them because I like them and because I feel good in them.”

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