L'Oréal Model Amena Khan Is the First to Wear a Hijab in a Mainstream Hair Ad
From banning Photoshop to casting diverse faces and launching inclusive shade ranges, beauty brands are shifting the way they speak to shoppers. They’re finally trying to speak to all of us. While some folks have questioned the motivation behind the diversification of beauty campaigns—especially after brands tried capitalizing on the success of what’s being called “The Fenty Effect”—this latest ad gets it right. For its new Elvive campaign, L’Oréal Paris UK brought on British beauty blogger Amena Khan as one of its new faces.
Even in a time when exciting, unique women are scoring beauty contracts left and right—shout-out to Maye Musk and Ayesha Curry—the decision to cast Khan, who wears a headscarf, isn’t only history-making (she’s the first hijab-wearing woman to be featured in a major mainstream hair ad), it’s also a step toward correcting a common misconception.
“How many brands are doing things like this? Not many. They’re literally putting a girl in a headscarf—whose hair you can’t see—in a hair campaign. Because what they’re really valuing through the campaign is the voices that we have,” Khan told British Vogue this week. “You have to wonder—why is it presumed that women who don’t show their hair don’t look after it? The opposite of that would be that everyone that does show their hair only looks after it for the sake of showing it to others. And that mind-set strips us of our autonomy and our sense of independence. Hair is a big part of self-care.”
In an industry where the definition of what it means to be beautiful has been markedly thin, this is a huge deal. Not only is L’Oréal saying to women and girls who wear hijab that they’re seen—the theme of the campaign is self-worth over self-doubt—but that how they are seen doesn’t define who they are. As Khan pointed out to Vogue, whether or not her hair is visible in public, how it looks and feels still matters to her: “For me, my hair is an extension of my femininity. I love styling my hair, I love putting products in it, and I love it to smell nice. It’s an expression of who I am.”
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