Milk Makeup Drama
- cassidystephenson9
- Oct 6, 2021
- 2 min read
Milk Makeup has been vocal about their support of the black community in the midst of protests nationwide. They even collaborated with Snitchery to donate an undisclosed amount to Black Visions Collective. On June 5, Milk Makeup participated in the Pull Up or Shut Up Challenge, like many other beauty brands.
“We take full accountability for not having enough Black team members and hold ourselves to the promise of being a more diverse company”, read their Instagram post.
Edelawit Hussien, a former creative producer at Milk Makeup between 2017 and 2018, responded to Milk’s post. Edelawit explained that she’d joined “Milk Makeup because of its pillars of inclusivity, diversity, and unity, but it stands for none of that.”
Edelawit detailed the microaggressions towards her and other employees by Milk’s team in an Instagram post. Edelawit highlights that she was not spoken to in the same way as white employees.
She states that a Milk Makeup executive even cornered her in an elevator, yelling that she needed to be “more cooperative and accepting of new team members.” That executive has since moved on to Gaga’s makeup brand Haus Labs.
Other former Milk employees responded to Edelwait, sharing their own traumatic experiences with Milk Makeup anonymously. Milk’s director of social media was consistently mentioned for his racially insensitive and disrespectful behavior towards employees and models for photoshoots.
According to an anonymous employee, the social media director would “literally bully his POC team members out of their jobs.” Edelawit demanded both the president of human resources and social media director be fired.
Since Edelawit’s response to Milk, the brand posted a letter on June 7 from co-founder Mazdack Rassi. Mazdack stated that he does not tolerate the behavior of his staff as described by former employees and is “deeply saddened by it.”
On June 8, Edelawit had a phone conversation with Mazdack. Edlawit posted a list on her Instagram story of talking points for her conversation with Mazdack on how Milk should take future action, it included the firing of problematic employees, a plan on how they will hire more black employees, resources on “dismantling systemic racism”, and 5 other requests.
On June 16, Milk Makeup announced 5 commitments in the aftermath of their phone call with Edelawit.
To achieve a team that is composed of at least 15% Black representation and employed in higher positions like Vice President.
For all of the company’s employees to undergo diversity and inclusion training
For 50% of the creators they feature on their Instagram page to be from Black, Indigenous, or People of Color communities.
Milk pledges a $50,000 donation each year to non-profits that benefit the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities and will match any donation a Milk Makeup team member makes.
Milk Makeup promises to share their progress by December 31, 2020 and will update their followers twice a year on the previously mentioned commitments.
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