It was the late-early-aughts and I was buried under piles of products packaged in shades of soft pink. As the Beauty Director of Allure, I was used to it. Every year in the leadup to October, the number of beauty brands purporting to support breast cancer awareness grew like weeds in a rainstorm. And some were weeds—high-priced goods preying on consumers’ desire to “shop for the cause,” with mere pennies (or nothing) going to that cause. 

What began as one extraordinary woman’s quest to raise funds for breast cancer research—of course I’m speaking of Evelyn Lauder—had morphed into what’s now known as pinkwashing. 

Beyond duping consumers, pinkwashing can shift the focus from action to awareness, and even form incorrect perceptions of the disease, according to studies.

Today, mental health is the battle cry du jour. Every beauty company and its sister seems to be promoting some version of emotional wellbeing.

On one hand, this is great news. Particularly post-pandemic, as most of us are searching for better mental health. 

But given the beauty industry’s controversial pinkwashing history, as well as its thorny legacy of promoting grossly unrealistic beauty standards—one 2010 New York Times article summarized the findings of a then-new study with, “Beauty products make women feel ugly”—I can’t help but wonder, Carrie Bradshaw-style: 

Is mental health going the way of pinkwashing? 

We’re at that fork in the road right now. Which way will we go? 

Beauty has the power to do good. It’s an industry well-positioned to help with mental health, because people have always used beauty products in ritualistic, almost meditative ways. As vessels of relaxation. As moments of joy.

And self-care has never been more widespread. Creating structure around skin and hair routines became a simple (and lockdown-friendly) way to make things feel just the tiniest bit less dire during the pandemic. 

I believe that beauty and lifestyle products can even be mental health management tools. Not cures, but copes. It’s one of the premises of my new mental-health-meets-lifestyle media brand, Mental (which I launched after running Women’s Health and sharing with the world that I have OCD). 

There’s also science extolling beauty’s ability to be a positive influence. A study in Applied Sciences confirmed that skin creams can evoke positive emotions. Another, published in Sage Journals, noted the (underappreciated) therapeutic value of makeup. And brand-new research from Frontiers in Psychology shows that getting a salon manicure can increase feelings of happiness and calm. 

 All Vibes Not Helpful

Before we move forward, it’s worth looking back. (You know, the whole history-repeating-itself thing.) Beauty’s knotty history with mental health is no secret. Historically white, skinny, and ableist, the industry has—intentionally or not—made lots of people feel less than. Do away with your wrinkles! Those zits are hideous. How can you possibly show your cellulite in a swimsuit? There are gobs of studies linking beauty’s historical focus on a single ideal to low self-esteem.

“Some people feel that beauty, as an industry overall, can negatively contribute to a person’s mental health,” says Elyse Cohen, VP, Social Impact & Inclusion at Rare Beauty and President of the Rare Impact Fund. “Having been in a makeup chair since age seven, our founder [Selena Gomez] has felt the unrealistic expectations of looking ‘perfect.’”

Dove shocked the world in 2004 when they challenged these unrealistic standards with The Campaign for Real Beauty. “Beauty [then] was dictated by the few. It was marked by a ‘be this’ and ‘look like this’ attitude,” says Leandro Barreto, Senior Vice President, Global Dove Masterbrand. “It trickled down from mainstream media and celebrities. It was being perpetuated in advertising, and by beauty brands.”  

Things still aren’t great. Just this year, Dove’s latest study found that “over half of youth mental health specialists say exposure to harmful beauty content on social media can lead to physical consequences like disordered eating or self-harm,” says Barreto.

Outside of Dove and a few other OGs—including Philosophy, which launched the Hope & Grace Initiative in 2014—most mainstream beauty brands didn’t focus on mental health until the pandemic. When anxiety and depression jumped a whopping 25 percent, people actually began realizing: Wow, it actually is ok to not be ok. 

If art mimics life, so does beauty. It makes sense that brands would start rethinking their causes when the whole world has a mental breakdown at the same time. Not to mention that the rising beauty consumer—Gen Z—is concerned with mental health in a way earlier generations haven’t been (or at least not vocally). In fact, mental health was the top cause Gen Z respondents cited for brands “they shop to support,” according to a study released in June.  

So. Here we are. That proverbial fork. Some companies are doing excellent work already, making thoughtful and impactful contributions that truly help people who are struggling. And they’re thriving because of it. If your brand wants to get involved with mental health, there are a number of key things to think about before jumping into a marketing campaign. Consider this advice from some top voices in the space.

#1: The cause should be authentic to your brand and company DNA. 

Coupling your brand with mental health should never happen on a whim. “Customers will see through it from day one if it’s an afterthought,” Cohen says.

For Rare Beauty, Selena Gomez’s own experiences and openness about her mental health made the cause an easy choice. “Mental health was absolutely identified as the brand’s mission and purpose before we ever launched, and that came from our founder,” says Cohen. “We’re leveraging beauty and makeup to reshape conversations and have positive conversations about mental health. That makeup shouldn’t be used to cover up, but to embrace what makes you unique.” 

Like Rare Beauty, the psychodermatology-based skin brand Selfmade targets a younger audience that wants more info about mental health. And like Gomez, Selfmade’s founder also has lived experience: Stephanie Lee has general anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder, which help inform how she runs her company. “People are tired of brands and companies being performative,” Lee says. “Authenticity is follow-through. Authenticity is doing what you say you will do. Authenticity is making space for other marginalized voices and their lived experiences, and that may not look like the best piece of content or shiniest story to tell but they are the most important.” 

Along with behavioral practitioners, Selfmade’s Emotional Wellbeing Collective is made up of Gen Z stakeholders who help with product development and messaging. The brand has built an emotional component into every touchpoint, from its monthly “Mental Health Deep Dives” (where experts talk through concepts such as rumination and rest) to the psychological questions it poses on its products. For example, the Secure Attachment Comfort Serum+ asks, “What does loving myself look like in action?” Pausing to think through self-reflective Qs can help people self-regulate when they’re feeling anxious.

#2: Donations aren’t the only lever.

“Financial resources are just one part of corporate impact—and donations should reflect the size of the company. But that’s not not what building a brand with a purpose is,” says Cohen. “Make sure there’s investment across the company.” She was hired before Rare Beauty launched. “That in and of itself showed that mental health was embedded cross-functionally within the brand.”

Another example: Concurrent with the debut of Dove’s Real Beauty campaign,  the brand launched its Self-Esteem Project, which has “become the largest provider of self-esteem programming in the world and has reached more than 100 million young people with education to-date,” says Barreto. Dove  also created an initiative that supports the passage of the CROWN Act, legislation aiming to end race-based hair discrimination.

With its focus on BIPOC young people, Selfmade supports small businesses that employ BIPOC people and offer mental health workshops. Their apparel vendor provides priority-access trauma therapy for women transitioning into permanent housing. “We need more brands to ask the folks who are already doing the real and hard work of providing mental health assistance, What do you need to set up for success?” says Lee.

#3: Know what you don’t know. 

In the same way we need women in the C-suite of brands marketed to women, we need people with lived mental health experience in the room of brands targeting mental health. As Cohen puts it, “It’s that ‘not about us without us’ thinking.” You just don’t know what you don’t live.

This is one key reason to have a charity partner—not just for the donation. “These are organizations that are there to provide the latest information,” says Katrina Gay, the former Chief Development Officer of NAMI, a consultant who has worked with Jewel’s Inspired Children Foundation and the Mental Health Coalition, and a member of the Rare Beauty Mental Health Council. “Having a charity partner ensures you have someone with that expertise available to assist you.”

This type of vetting is more important than you might think. One recent study conducted by PlushCare that 84% of TikTok content about mental health is factually incorrect or misleading. “That is terrifying since the audience is mainly young, vulnerable people who are just looking for answers as to why they’re feeling anxious all the time,” Lee says. 

“Without doing the work and diligence to consider facts and science, when brands use mental health as a platform, they risk opening up conversations that they are not suited for, nor able to safely address with their audience. This can cause further behavioral health trauma,” Lee continues. “For this reason,  Selfmade relies on our audience, skin experts, and mental health practitioners of color to help us make our products, brand, and messaging trauma-informed.” 

#4: The biggest or most popular partners aren’t always the right partners.

At Selfmade, Lee thinks about partnerships as an opportunity: Who, as a brand, do you want to lift up as a voice? It may not be the large nationwide groups who get attention due to size and reach.

There are tons of community-based orgs doing great work “where they and your audience live,” Lee explains. “These smaller organizations typically have to do a lot more work to earn grants and funding for the important interventions they do on a daily basis—whether it is providing group programming or actual individual sessions to those who wouldn’t have the access or opportunity.” 

#5: Are you representing the issue accurately and inclusively?

I once consulted with a beauty brand on an upcoming mental health initiative, and many of the influencers they suggested never actually spoke about…mental health. They focused generally on “wellness” or, worse, were spewers of toxic positivity. Most of them were white, and all of them were traditionally beautiful.

Mental health doesn’t have to be a gloomy black-and-white photo with a hand running down a rainy window (in fact, I ban those on Mental). It can be conversational and engaging. But it must be thoughtful. It must not pander. It must not turn the darkest parts into a cutesy slogan.

“My fear is that because every single brand or company is now riding the mental health marketing wave, that the profound and deeply urgent behavioral crisis will become another glossy, ribbon-wearing day,” Lee says. “The oversimplification, Tiktok’ification, and dilution of this deeply rooted crisis can bring a feeling of complacency or turn us down the wrong path.”

#6: Have a specific perspective.

Mental health isn’t a monolith. Where in the space are you going to focus?

Start with the basics: “Make sure that you understand what you mean by mental health,” says Gay, who has also worked with Philosophy, Maybelline New York, and L’Oréal Professionnel on mental health initiatives. “That’s really important because there are a lot of terms. There’s wellness, and emotional wellness. Mental wellness. Mental health.” 

Cohen recommends A) recognizing you can’t do everything, then B) honing in on your place of influence and point of difference. “For some brands, that may be more high-level in that self-care kind of space. For us, it is youth mental health and education.” 

Through the Geneva group chat app, Rare Beauty checks in daily with 1,500 of its most engaged customers in bestie-to-bestie-type convos, which can just as easily touch on the hottest new Netflix show as a mental health concern. These back-and-forths allow the brand to spot pain points and use that to inform future content.

It’s also important to remember that mental health happens on a spectrum. “People who come to you can be anywhere on it,” says Gay. “If you’re only going to take a piece of that, that’s fine, just make sure you don’t ignore that fact, and [give them] a place to go to if there’s a serious issue. You don’t want to be trivial.”

By way of example, Gay shares an experience working with a company that set its focus on two mental health conditions. “But they wanted to do so under the umbrella and be like, These are the people we care about. And it was really hard, because you can’t pick and choose, and some people [with these conditions] die by suicide, so that’s life and death. It’s not just, How am I feeling today?” she says. “They reconciled it, but they had to work to reconcile it.” This included making resources available for the more severe manifestations of the conditions. “I call that the ‘exit arrow’: Here’s where you go if you need more information,” Gay explains.

She cites L’Oréal Professionnel as an example of a brand who did this well. Its new Head Up program provides free mental health education and strategies to its hairdresser community, with the goal of reaching 100,000 hairstylists (as they say, mental health is the top challenge hairdressers experience). Gay says the brand acknowledged they understand the mental health continuum, and “then said, But today we’re going to talk about this. And here’s a place to go to learn more. Then they pointed to a national charity partner in each country.”

#7: Do you walk the walk within your organization? 

What you preach outside the company’s offices should also be what you practice within. “I always tell people your inside should match your outside,” Gay says. One CEO she consulted with was shocked to discover how terrible his company’s mental health benefits were. With another company, the stressful environment was taking a toll on its employee’s mental health—but this was widely unrecognized by the people in charge.

Gay believes this is why a mental health focus must move from the top down. “I advise companies to get a group together internally, and I like to start with the highest up you can get. If it’s not top-down, it will not work, no matter what your cause is,” Gay says. “It’s just not going to work if it’s just the marketing division creating something. Ask your charity partner to be a facilitator to guide and pull together a group.” 

With one brand, Gay came in to lead a discussion about areas in the company culture that needed to be addressed, such as cutting meetings, or closing between Christmas and New Year’s to give people a breather. “What are some of the things you can do to demonstrate and show evidence for yourselves and your employees that you really understand? It’s in your best interest. And everyone’s supported when this happens,” she says.

Lee agrees. “If you do want to talk about mental health as a brand, talk about how you’re addressing your first community’s mental health—a.k.a., your own team and staff,” she recommends. “Use your lived experiences and show the ways that you are taking care of yourselves and each other. That is more powerful than a list of five ways to stop crying.” 

#8: Be very (very) careful how you integrate products.

No naming names, but bad examples abound for how an over-focus on product can trivialize a serious issue—and backfire on a brand. Marketing teams can feel pressure to push product because their butts are on the ROI line. But with a cause attached, product sales are a long-term play. A hard sell in the moment can create a PR crisis. Over time, appreciation of a brand’s messaging usually gets rewarded in revenue.

“What I found works is the soft product ask. The product isn’t the center. It’s the soft ask,” says Gay. “We’re talking about this because it’s important. This leads people to feel affinity for the brand, and they want to support that brand because they relate. When the product comingles with the cause, you have to stop and think, Is this awareness, and what is it, and how do I do this in a way that’s natural?”

This is particularly important for brands who typically contract with influencers to post X number of times in a product-centered way.  It’s crucial to give influencers strict guidelines. And always review their content carefully—and vet it through mental health experts—before it goes live. “You do not want to have them making some kind of snafu,” Gay says.

#9: Do what you say you’ll do—and update people.

Beauty companies have been called out on social media for promising they’ll be taking X measures to address Y issues—and then not following through. Not a good look.

To keep its commitment to raising $100 million for youth mental health, Rare Beauty created the Rare Impact Fund, which supports 25 organizations globally, as a separate fundraising organization (a 5013C). They also share their grant-making process and strategy at rareimpactfund.org. 

“If you’re going to announce that you’re going to be so generous to give, you better be transparent about what you’re going to give—and tell people where they go to apply for a grant from the fund,” Gay stresses. “You’ve got to think about your charity partners, too. For example, if you say 100% of proceeds of a sale of a necklace are going to NAMI, “you better write NAMI a check. You’re required to say we sold 1,800 units, and here’s your check.”

Amy Keller Laird is CEW’s mental health correspondent and the founder of Mental, the first digital media destination for women that blends mental health and lifestyle. Amy is the former Editor-in-Chief of Women’s Health and Beauty Director of Allure. She has OCD, and has been named a Friend of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) for her journalism work around mental health.