On Thursday 1 May, makeup artist Keely and I made a trip to Selfridges after my dad had informed me that there was a pop-up “tattoo shop” after seeing a tweet:
We were a little disappointed when we discovered that the tattoo shop wasn’t a tattoo shop at all… there was Henna, and there was transfers, but no actual tattoos… (just tattoo imagery on the walls). Annoying considering that their website states that a tattoo and piercing shop exists on their ground floor – selfridges.com – this, in fact, was a pop-shop over a year ago.
The Tattoo Shop (the one with the henna) has popped up as part of The Beauty Project at Selfridges. The aim of The Beauty Project is to promote that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes – its aim to shatter some of the misconceptions that exist about what beauty is. Everyone is beautiful, young, old, fat, thin, and, of course, tattooed. Their un-retouched advertising campaign captures eight unknown stars chosen to represent all definitions of beauty.
Great idea in theory, but I can’t help but feel a little disappointed that on its opening night, the “tattooed” people at the event weren’t really tattooed at all – they had fake tattoos on.
But should I really complain? Is it a good thing that a huge company like Selfridges is trying to promote diversity – even if I think they could have done in a slightly better way?
What do you think of the #beautyproject? Do you think it is diverse enough?
The non-tattooed “tattooed” servers at the event:
