Before Beauty Became Content, It Was Community
Long before beauty culture moved at the speed of product launches, viral routines and endless recommendations, beauty was often woven into ordinary life. It lived in the ways people prepared for the day, gathered with one another and expressed care. Looking back at the moments that shaped my own understanding of beauty, I find myself returning not to perfection or performance, but to presence, culture and the routines worth preserving.
There was a time when beauty lived inside of ordinary moments. It was not performed for strangers or documented for algorithms. It was simply woven into everyday life.
My earliest memories of beauty have nothing to do with buying makeup. They begin with my mom rubbing Palmer’s Cocoa Butter onto my skin before school, making sure I walked out the door cared for before I even understood what that really meant. At the time, it was simply part of the morning. Put on cocoa butter, head to toe. Get dressed. Fix my hair. Gather what I needed for the day.
Children rarely stop to interpret those routines while they are living them. They become part of what home feels like. Only years later do we recognize that the smallest gestures were teaching us something long before anyone thought to explain it.
No one sat me down to define beauty. I learned by watching, and being cared for.
I learned through repetition, through familiarity and through the attention the women in my family gave to themselves and to the people around them. Care was not presented as a reward for finishing everything else. It was built into the rhythm of the day.
That early understanding of beauty had very little to do with correcting a flaw. It was not rooted in the idea that a person needed to become more acceptable before leaving the house.
It was about being tended to, about being prepared for the day, and about moving through life with intention.
The Beauty Shop Was Never Just About Hair And Makeup
My memories continue with summers spent at my aunt’s beauty shop, where I watched her do far more than style hair.
Every client who walked through the door was greeted by name. They were listened to, laughed with and remembered. The appointment may have been written on the calendar as a service, but what happened in that space could never be reduced to a transaction.
Beauty happened there, but community happened first.
The salon was one of the earliest places where I saw how naturally beauty and conversation belonged together. Women came to have their hair washed, styled or completely transformed, but the experience extended well beyond the mirror.
They talked about work, family, faith and whatever life had placed in front of them that week. Good news moved through the room quickly. So did prayer requests. Advice was exchanged, stories were revisited and laughter became communal before anyone could remember who started it.
The beauty shop gave people a reason to gather, but the gathering itself carried the most value.
I did not have the language for that as a child. I simply knew there was energy in the room. There was familiarity. There was the comfort of being somewhere people really saw you, and even noticed when you had been away.
Now, when so much of beauty is experienced through a screen, I think more often about what those physical spaces offered.
They offered presence.
A person could not scroll past the conversation or reduce someone else to a few seconds of content. And the women in the room were not personal brands. They were everyday women: mothers, daughters, aunties, sisters, nieces, cousins, grannies, all carrying full lives. And the salon made room for all of them.
That does not mean every conversation was profound or every appointment became a life changing moment. Because community is not really built through grand moments. It is built through shared, everyday experiences over time. It’s in those moments of returning, and seeing others, truly. It is found in knowing who takes coffee a certain way, who has an important meeting coming up or who needs a little more patience than usual.
The beauty shop taught me that beauty could be social without being performative. And that a woman could enjoy how she looked and still remain rooted in something deeper than appearance. She could leave the shop feeling polished, refreshed or newly confident, but she also left carrying the experience of being truly seen, and known beyond the surface.
That distinction still matters to me.
What I Learned From Watching My Elders Get Ready
On Sundays, I watched my granny get ready for church.
She never rushed through it. There was intention in every step, from choosing what she would wear to applying her makeup and painting her nails before leaving the house, all while making sure I had breakfast and was dressed in my Sunday best, too.
Looking back, I do not believe she was preparing for other people’s approval. She was honoring the day, honoring herself, and honoring the people she would spend it with.
There is a particular kind of beauty in watching someone prepare with care. The process is not dramatic. It does not require an audience. But it is profound.
The right dress is selected. Lip color is applied. A final glance is taken in the mirror.
The power of those memories is not that my granny followed a complicated beauty routine. It is that the routine had a place, and that it belonged to something larger.
She was not becoming a different woman in front of the mirror. She was preparing to enter the day fully herself, and she chose to see herself fully first, before allowing anyone else define who she was.
That is one of the reasons I resist the idea that beauty must either be dismissed as superficial or defended as a form of transformation. Sometimes it is neither. Sometimes it is stewardship, and intention, and a small act of care before serving others for the rest of the day.
It was never about identity or value or worth existing in the routine.
But beauty does not have to carry the burden of proving our worth to have meaning.
It can simply accompany a meaningful life.
How Black Beauty Magazines Expanded What Was Possible
Somewhere in between those moments, I found Jet and Ebony magazines.
I read every issue I could get my hands on.
I admired the photography and fashion, but what stayed with me was something deeper. They celebrated Black beauty in ways that felt expansive. Beauty was not presented as something reserved for one look, one shade or one narrow definition. It reflected culture, creativity, business, family and possibility.
And the women featured in those pages were not one thing.
They were entertainers, entrepreneurs, artists, executives, mothers and leaders. They could wear bold color or timeless neutrals. They could be glamorous without apology and accomplished without treating femininity as something that needed to be minimized.
What stood out most was that beauty existed alongside ambition.
Beauty itself was not the achievement. It was an expression of a full life.
That distinction mattered more than I understood at the time.
Beyond that, representation gave me the chance to see women who looked like people I knew, and it also expanded my imagination. Those magazines communicated that beauty could belong to women with different lives and personalities, and that there was beauty in the differences.
The magazines did not teach me what beauty should look like, they taught me that beauty could tell a story.
They also taught me that the images a culture chooses to elevate matter. When entire groups of women have historically been excluded from dominant beauty narratives, intentional visibility is not shallow. It shapes possibility and reframes the narratives that say that only one look or standard is worthy of attention.
That still informs how I think about beauty and representation today.
Liplove intentionally centers Black women because Black women have too often been asked to wait for inclusion, appear only when socially convenient or see themselves represented as a novelty rather than a distinct part of the world.
When Beauty Culture Began Moving Faster
Today’s beauty industry moves at a pace that would have been difficult to imagine when I was growing up.
Every week brings another launch, another routine or another product described as essential. Beauty advice arrives faster than most people can process it. Recommendations are replaced before the last recommendation has had time to become familiar.
Don’t get me wrong, there is extraordinary creativity in the industry. Founders are developing thoughtful formulas. Makeup artists continue to challenge convention. Creators have made beauty education more accessible and we have more choices than previous generations could have imagined.
That abundance is not inherently negative.
What has changed is the speed and the pressure attached to it.
Beauty no longer unfolds season by season; instead, it refreshes hour by hour.
A product can be everywhere one week and nearly forgotten the next. A tried and true makeup routine becomes something to optimize. A beautiful, uniquely made face is targeted with a collection of separate concerns, each presented with its own solution, treatment or corrective step.
We are encouraged to evaluate ourselves constantly. Is the routine efficient enough? Is the finish current enough? Are the products clean enough, luxurious enough, viral enough or new enough?
The language changes, but the underlying message often remains the same: there is always something else to fix, buy or become.
Over time, beauty quietly turned into another project to manage, another expectation to meet, another category in which a woman is made to feel behind.
That is a very different relationship with beauty from the one I absorbed through the women around me.
They were not unaware of trends, nor were they untouched by beauty standards. No generation exists outside the expectations of its time. But the beauty I remember was not consumed at the speed of a feed.
A lipstick remained in a purse not because it was popular, but because it was preferred by the woman who chose it, no matter what brand was on the label. A moisturizer sat on a dresser because it worked, not because its packaging was ready to be photographed. A routine did not need to become content to be meaningful.
There was always room to like what you liked, be yourself, and honor your own taste.
Creating Beauty That Preserves Values And Identity
When I began blending botanical oils in my kitchen, I was not trying to launch a beauty company.
I was following curiosity.
I wanted to understand ingredients. I wanted products that felt good on my skin. I wanted to create something thoughtful instead of disposable.
The more I learned, the more interested I became in formulas that could do more without asking women to buy more. I was drawn to plant oils, botanical ingredients and products that felt sensorial but practical.
What began with oils eventually became skincare, lip color, cheek color and multipurpose makeup that found its way into the routines of women I had never met.
Liplove grew slowly.
It did not begin with a large launch strategy, a trend forecast or a perfect plan for entering the beauty industry. It grew through relationships, experimentation and loyal customers who returned because they found products that worked for them.
Many of those women have purchased for years.
Some have gone through more than twenty bottles of the same formula.
That kind of loyalty matters to me because it reflects a different kind of beauty business, one that is not built entirely around constant novelty.
Liplove was never created around the idea that women need more products.
It was created around the belief that the products we choose should deserve the space they occupy in our lives.
That principle influences how I formulate.
It is also why multipurpose beauty makes so much sense to me. A color that can be worn on the lips, cheeks and face offers versatility without turning simplicity into another aesthetic rule. The point is not to own as little as possible or perform a minimalist lifestyle.
The point is freedom.
A product should adapt to the woman using it.
She may want a quick touch of color before work, a fuller look for an evening out or something small enough to keep in her bag. She may love bold makeup, barely there makeup or move between both depending on the day.
Multipurpose does not have to mean muted.
Organic and botanical do not have to mean beige.
Thoughtful beauty does not have to disappear into the background.
Beauty That Belongs to Everyday Life
There is a reason I continue returning to the idea of everyday beauty.
Not because every day feels extraordinary, but because most of life is not lived during milestone moments.
It is lived through ordinary days.
Before work.
Getting ready for church.
On the way to dinner with friends.
Between responsibilities.
During seasons when life feels expansive and seasons when it feels routine.
Those moments deserve beauty too, not because they need to be made more impressive, but because they already make up the substance of our lives.
An everyday makeup routine does not have to mean a prescribed set of steps. It can be one product or several. It can take three minutes or twenty. What matters is that it belongs to the life being lived rather than demanding that life reorganize itself around it.
The best routines are often the ones that become instinctive.
The face oil reached for at night.
The color applied without checking whether it is still trending.
The product packed for every trip because it works across different settings.
These choices become small forms of continuity.
They remind us that not everything meaningful needs to be reinvented.
Because there is something restorative about using beauty as an expression rather than evaluation.
The Beauty Worth Keeping
When I think about Liplove now, I do not think only about makeup.
I think about my mom.
My aunt.
My granny.
I think about Jet and Ebony and the visual language that showed me beauty could exist alongside culture, purpose and ambition.
I think about the women who quietly demonstrated that caring for yourself and caring for other people were not opposing acts.
Their routines were not always named.
Their wisdom was not packaged as advice.
They simply lived in a way that revealed something worth remembering.
Beauty is relational.
It can be inherited without becoming restrictive. It can honor history while still leaving room for experimentation. It can be visible without becoming performative. It can make space for women who have been excluded without narrowing the invitation to everyone else.
Most importantly, beauty can return to being part of life rather than another standard hovering above it.
It’s like those moments my granny was getting ready on Sunday mornings.
The room was not rushed.
Nothing about the moment asked for attention.
It simply carried quiet intention.
Looking back, those mornings were not about teaching me how to apply makeup. They were teaching me that caring for yourself can be one way of preparing to care well for the people you will encounter throughout the day.
That is the beauty lesson I have carried with me the longest.
Not perfection, or constant reinvention, or the belief that a woman must become someone else before she is ready to be seen.
Just the understanding that beauty can be an act of gratitude, an expression of identity and a statement of love.
