
Melissa Butler Sparks Innovation & Beauty Ingenuity With New Complexion-Based Launch

Melissa Butler is a makeup pioneer. In 2012, when her beauty brand, The Lip Bar, was first launched, it was rare to find lip products bold enough to represent daring makeup enthusiasts, yet subtle enough to complement the range of skin tones for Black and brown customers. For The Lip Bar, the mission was clear: challenge the status quo within the industry and increase visibility for Black women to be seen and understood as their own standard of beauty.
When she first launched her widely popular lipstick line, Melissa was building her plane in the sky at a time where most of the conversations around diversity and inclusion within the beauty industry were still just faint chatter. In 2015, Melissa was coming off of the public "redirection" of her, now viral, Shark Tank appearance. What some have deemed as a moment of rejection, ultimately proved to be a lesson in preparation for life's turning points, "When we had all the love and excitement from Shark Tank, I didn't know what to do with it. We didn't have the proper email flows, we weren't running any ads. I didn't know how to monetize it."
(photo: The Lip Bar)
"When we had all the love and excitement from Shark Tank, I didn't know what to do with it. We didn't have the proper email flows, we weren't running any ads. I didn't know how to monetize it."
Although Shark Tank served as an opportunity to generate awareness for the brand, it's not what Melissa attributes to The Lip Bar's initial growth. While on the show, she experienced harsh criticism from the panel of investors who weren't keen to the vision of her brand. In just five years since the episode aired, the foresight of The Lip Bar's collection of vibrant lipstick colors has proven to be a classic example of innovation before its time. But everything comes back around, and in true full-circle fashion, the brand was able to remain nimble while challenging trends and setting new markers for beauty ingenuity.
Now, Melissa continues to revolutionize the beauty world with the newest addition to her expanding "Fast Face" product line, the Quick Conceal, Caffeine Concealer. In a world where many brands are exploring the diversification of their complexion products with 20-50 shade rollouts, this 6-shade collection of brightening concealers challenges the notion of whether more is actually beneficial for the customer.
(photo: The Lip Bar)
"Everyone is probably going to think we're crazy for launching 6 concealers," Melissa jokingly shares about The Lip Bar's push to simplify the color-matching process for its customers. "The reality is that a lot of brands are launching 20+ shades of concealer but we've learned that it becomes more intimidating for the customer." At its core, The Lip Bar is all about streamlining the makeup process and eliminating the guesswork. Melissa's approach to complexion is all about understanding what universally works for each complexion family so her customers can get their desired look with no expertise needed.
Now more than ever, the attention has been brought to what brands are actually doing to create lasting change for their underrepresented customers. "I'm understanding that in time, things change, the customer's needs change. My job as the leader of the organization is to make sure that I'm always serving the customer." As universal beauty standards advance to be challenged and reimagined, Melissa continues to lead by making space for Black women in the beauty space to be seen as their whole and authentically beautiful selves.
"I'm understanding that in time, things change, the customer's needs change. My job as the leader of the organization is to make sure that I'm always serving the customer."
The inspiration within the formulation.
When she began formulating ingredients for The Lip Bar's newest and highly-requested concealer, Melissa stayed true to the brand's vegan and cruelty-free methodology by infusing avocado and macadamia oils for hydration and caffeine to awaken the under-eye area. "People take caffeine in the morning as religion because that's going to be the one thing that gets them through the day. This concealer is going to awaken your morning and beauty routine because of the caffeine and its brightening effects."
(photo: The Lip Bar)
As an on-the-go entrepreneur, Melissa understands the importance of creating products that make life easier for her customers. The Lip Bar's "Fast Face" philosophy and complexion-based shopping has informed their launches, making the Caffeine Concealer the perfect addition to amp up your morning routines. "It's close to your complexion to provide coverage for whatever blemishes you might have and blends into the skin for a buildable, sheer to medium coverage. "
On what it’s like being a Black business owner in the age of collective uprising.
June was a busy month for The Lip Bar. In fact, according to Melissa, "It was one of the best months for us in The Lip Bar's history." However, the hypervisibility that The Lip Bar and that many other Black-owned brands launched a wider conversation around why "Buying Black" is less of a momentary trend and more of a long-term fight for economic liberation. "I don't want charity dollars. I want life-long customers."
(photo: The Lip Bar)
(photo: The Lip Bar)
"I don't want charity dollars. I want life-long customers."
In the age of social media, our collective attention span is constantly being pulled in different directions, so much that it has become increasingly important to differentiate trends from long-lasting movements. After witnessing the hypervisibility of Black-owned brands peak during the month of June, Melissa saw the need for a space where Black-owned businesses could be easily accessed in order to drive economic empowerment within the Black community. This motivated Melissa to co-found The BLK Pact, a dictionary of Black-owned businesses for people to pledge their allegiance to, reducing the economic deficiency and growing the economic empowerment within the Black community.
This initiative informs individuals on not just how to support Black-owned businesses, but what's at stake if they don't. "There's some alarming statistics out there, one of which says by 2053, the median household wealth could reach zero for Black households. So I know how important it is to make sure that we're focusing on supporting Black-owned businesses, but more importantly, it can't be a trend."
Conversations around diversity and inclusion are being reshaped to go beyond just making products to meet a quota. The goal is for the support of Black-owned businesses to be woven into the fabric of our community and to build awareness through information sharing. "I want to make sure we're going in with intention and longevity in mind. That has been the most helpful and has inspired people to continue on that journey."
To purchase your own Quick Conceal, Caffeine Concealer, click here. And for more of Melissa, follow her on Instagram @melissarbutler.
Featured image courtesy of The Lip Bar.
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Aley Arion is a writer and digital storyteller from the South, currently living in sunny Los Angeles. Her site, yagirlaley.com, serves as a digital diary to document personal essays, cultural commentary, and her insights into the Black Millennial experience. Follow her at @yagirlaley on all platforms!
'Black Girl Magic' Poet Mahogany L. Browne Talks Banned Books And The Power Of The Creative Pivot
You know you’re dealing with a truly talented and profound voice of a generation when the powers that be attempt to silence it. As a poet, educator, and cultural curator, Mahogany L. Browne has carved out a powerful space in the world of literature and beyond.
From penning the viral poem, “Black Girl Magic,” to writing Woke: A Young Poet’s Call To Justice (a book once banned from a Boston school library), to becoming the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize winner and a poet-in-residence at Lincoln Center—her path exemplifies resilience, reinvention, and unapologetic artistry. She's published more than 40 works and paid the bills with her craft, a divine dream for many creatives seeking release, autonomy, and freedom in a tough economic climate.
A Goddard College graduate, who earned an MFA from Pratt Institute and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Marymount Manhattan College, Mahogany offers unapologetic realness with a side of grace and empowerment. "I started touring locally. I started creating chat books so that those poems will go in the hands of the people who were sitting in the rooms," she shared.
"And then I started facilitating poetry workshops, so I used my chat books as curriculum. And that, in turn, allowed me to further invest in my art and show the community and people who were hiring me that it wasn't just a one-off, that it's not just, you know, a fly by night—that I am invested in this art as much as I am invested in your community, in your children's learning, in our growth."
Mahogany has a special way of moving audiences, and her superpower sparks shifts in perspective, post-performance introspection, and strengthening of community bonds, especially among Black women. (One can undeniably recognize her gift for arousal of the spirit and mind merely from her listening to her insights from the other side of a Google Hangout call. I can only imagine the soul-stirring, top-tier sensory encounter when watching her perform in person.)
In this chat with xoNecole, Mahogany reflects on sustaining a creative career, the aftermath of writing a banned book, and using poetry for both healing, community-building, and activism.
Anthony Artis
xoNecole: What are three key things that have laid the foundation for a sustainable creative career for you?
Mahogany L Browne: What has helped me is that I'm willing to go in being an expert at knowing poetry and knowing the way in which art can change the landscape of our lives, not just as a poet, but also as a poetry facilitator. How you move through classes, those things are mastered, right? So when I go into another space that's maybe tech-heavy, I don't mind learning and being, you know, a student of the wonder of how we can make this magic, work together.
Two, you’ve got to know how to pivot. Sometimes we say, ‘Alright, this is what my life is going to be. I'm going to be a New York Times best-selling author. I'm going to, you know, have an album that's Grammy-nominated. And then, say you get dropped from your record label. That doesn't mean you can't make an album anymore. You can also still create an album that can be submitted to the Grammys. So, what does a pivot look like as an artist who doesn't have an institution behind them? Pivot being a student of the wonder.
Relationships also really help. How do I serve the community? And in turn, that tells me how the community can show up. For me, I have long-standing ties with a community that will outlast my one life. So, what does it mean to create space where these relationships can develop, can be nurtured, can be rooted, can be cultivated? Creating space—it happens through relationships.
xoN: With today’s economic challenges, what does your current creative process look like, and what are you working on?
MB: I’m always thinking five years ahead. I just reviewed the pages for two children’s books and recently released a YA novel. I’m drafting an adult fiction manuscript now.
Anything I create is founded with the root of poetry, but it can exist in captions. It can exist in commercials. It can exist as a musical. So that's where I’m at now.
xoN: You started performing "Black Girl Magic" in 2013, had an acclaimed performance of it via PBS and the work went on to viral success shortly after. Talk more about the inspiration. And what do you think about the continued relevance more than a decade later?
MB: I wrote it as a rally cry for the mothers who had been keeping themselves truly in harm's way by, you know, being a part of the community right after the death of their child or their loved one. They are usually mothers of victims of police brutality—and just seeing how they showed up in these community spaces, they are devout to the cause but obviously still grieving.
"I wanted this poem to be just a space of reclamation, of joy and of you, of your light, of your shine, of your brilliance, in any which way in which you fashion. Every room you enter is the room you deserve to be in. What does it mean to have a poem like that that exists?"
And the first time I did the poem, the Weeping that occurred, right? It was like this blood-letting of sorts. The next time I performed it, I'm moved to tears because I'm seeing how it's affecting other women who have just been waiting to hear, ‘You belong. You deserve. You are good. We see you. Thank you, despite everything that they said to make you regret being born in this beautiful brown, dark-skinned, light-skinned, but Black body.’
Black women are the backbone—period. Point blank. And so, that that poem became a necessity, not just to the fortitude of Black women in the community, but like you know, in service of healing the Black women.
xoN: One of your books was banned at a school in Boston, and it was later reinstated due to parental and activist support. What was that experience like?
MB: Well, I think it happened because they were racist. That's it. Point blank. The reversal of it was empowering, right? I realized, oh, I thought we just had to sit here and be on a banned book list. But no, parents are actually the leaders of this charge.
So to see that, the parents said, ‘Nah, we're not gonna let you take this book out of my baby’s school just because it's a Black kid on the front saying, ‘Woke’ and they're talking about being a global citizen. They're talking about accountability. They're talking about accessibility. They're talking about allyship, and you don't want them to have compassion or empathy or have even an understanding, right? So no, we rebuke that, and we want this book here anyway.’ To see that happen in that way. I was, like, reaffirmed. Absolutely.
xoN: You recently organized the Black Girl Magic Ball at the Lincoln Center in New York. Honorees included author and entrepreneur Rachel Cargle and National Black Theater CEO Sade Lythcott. What impact did it have and what expanded legacy do you hope to leave with your creative works?
MB: I was really interested in not celebrating just the book, but celebrating the community that made the book possible. And so I gave out five awards to women doing that thing, like, what does it mean to be a Black girl in this world?
I just thought it was gonna be an amazing time. Everybody's gonna dress up—we're gonna celebrate each other. And boom, I then realized that it responded to like a gaping hole. There was a missing thing for Black girls of all walks of life, all ages, right?
"It's very intergenerational. That was intentional to come together and celebrate just being us."
You have all these instances where just being you is either the butt of a joke or it's diminished and not worthy of a specific title in these larger institutions. So what does it mean to just to be loved up on and celebrated?
It felt like a self-care project at first. You know, for the first couple of years, folks were coming and they were getting that sisterhood. They were getting that tribe work that they were missing in their everyday lives.
I love the Black Girl Magic Ball because we got us. If I go out with a bang, they'll remember that Mahogany worked her a** off to make sure all the Black girls everywhere knew that she was the light. We are the blueprint.
For more information on Mahogany L. Browne, her work, and her future projects, visit her website or follow her on IG @mobrowne.
Featured image by Anthony Artis
There Are Three Main Types Of Dependency. Here's The One To Strive For.
Relational building is a core part of caring for our mental health. We are wired for connection, and community care is fundamental to managing our well-being. Living disconnected from others and having poor quality relationships severely impacts our wellness in debilitating ways, but signs that we are disconnected can be difficult to assess since our society tends to honor independence over interdependence and applauds people for their strength in getting things done alone rather than seeking and asking for help.
In my work as a former therapist, this culture of hyper-independence usually impacts a particular group, and that seems to be Black women. The “Strong Black Woman'' trope has plagued Black women for years. There was a time when this trope was seen as a badge of honor to highlight Black women’s emotional resilience in the face of adversity and conflict, but as mental health in the Black community rises, more Black women have come to realize that this badge of honor was actually a coping mechanism in response to having their emotional needs go unmet, whether it be at work, from their romantic partners, in their friendships or even on a societal level from having to deal with both interpersonal and structural racism.
The Three Types of Dependency Explained
In the clinical world, the “Strong Black Woman” trope is what we would call counter-dependence. In life, there are three main types of dependency that some people experience, and only one that we should be striving for. Here’s a breakdown:
1. Codependency:
Codependency is a term that is more mainstream and is often used to define people who have poor relational boundaries and become enmeshed in their relationships. There are some codependents who will place their autonomy in the hands of others and become attached to certain people to meet their needs for them because they have poor self-efficacy and autonomy. On the other end, there are codependents who may enable this attachment by abandoning their needs to meet the needs of someone else, which results in chronic people-pleasing out of fear that they will be rejected, abandoned, or deemed useless in their relationships.
People with codependent traits struggle with their self-esteem and, most importantly, confidence, which is why they continuously seek validation from others because they struggle with validating themselves and feeling secure in who they are.
2. Counter-dependency:
People who are counter-dependent are often polar opposites of those with codependent traits. This form of dependence actually isn’t dependent at all, people who are counter-dependent fear closeness, connection, and vulnerability and because of that, they remain hyper-independent with an avoidance mindset. On the surface, they appear strong, self-sufficient, and are usually the person everyone relies on. They don’t tell people 'no,' they go above and beyond for others, but when it is time for those behaviors to be reciprocated, they may freeze, shut down and immediately withdraw and disconnect from their relationships due to their fear of intimacy, closeness and ultimately being seen.
At the root of this behavior, is a person who has been wounded by consistently being let down by others and not having their emotional needs met. Many adults with counter-dependent traits were often emotionally neglected in childhood from being parentified, which is when children are expected to take on adult-like tasks to make up for a missing caregiver, or, they are expected to tend to their parents' feelings due to the adults in their lives being emotionally immature. When you are raised in an environment where there is a lot of unpredictability, you may struggle with trusting people and knowing who you can depend on, so it creates a dynamic of keeping people at a distance to avoid being hurt.
3. Interdependence:
This is the form of dependency we all must strive for because it is the healthiest form of dependency and promotes our mental health. We cannot do life alone, hence why we all seek connections in some capacity whether it be through dating or building friendships. Since birth, we have been wired to depend on others to help us meet our needs, but as we grow older, we learn to build agency and autonomy so that we have a healthy dose of self-sufficiency with a healthy dose of reliance on others. All relationships require compromise, so as we build and lean on others, we are able to determine what is ours to carry, and what belongs to others, and we also learn to assess who in our lives has earned our respect and trust enough to help us carry those burdens when it becomes too heavy.
Being a “Strong Black Woman” is the quickest way to burn out, and it can be one of the reasons why you may feel exhausted if you struggle with counter-dependency.
Pay attention to these habits to assess if you are counter-dependent:
- You tend to struggle with forming romantic relationships because you often pull away when things get too serious or when it’s time to become vulnerable
- You have a lot of surface-level relationships and no one to talk to about personal matters that truly impact you
- You feel lonely often, despite having what you might call a circle of friends
- Asking for help and letting your guard down feels emotionally debilitating
- You struggle with being vulnerable and letting people know the real you
- You are everyone's place of refuge in times of need, but you don’t know where to go when you yourself are seeking refuge
- You struggle with letting go of control in your romantic relationships, and it causes conflict
- You tend to do a lot of things alone and don’t invite people into your life
There is help for counter-dependence. We no longer need to tie Strong and Black Woman in a sentence anymore. Black women have permission to just be, to just exist, to take up space and be soft, delicate, and even fragile if that is where you are in life.
Getting help for counter-dependence is something that requires deep work, you won’t be able to breathwork yourself out of this habit. Since counter-dependence is rooted in avoidant attachment styles and poor emotional regulation, the guidance of a professional will always be your best method of care if you want things to change.
When seeking help from a therapist, consider searching through these popular therapy directories:
Consider these things when thinking of starting therapy to help you with making a decision, as well as learning to be vulnerable:
- What do I need from a therapist in order to feel safe being vulnerable and disclosing my business to them?
- Am I ready and willing to commit to at least weekly or bi-weekly therapy services?
- Am I ready and willing to let my guard down and not appear strong to a stranger?
- What habits have I formed that I am realizing are hurting me? (Start there and express this to your therapist.)
Remember this: you have permission to just be. You don’t have to be strong in order to be worthy, you are worthy as you are. Learn to be okay with existing as you are and allow people to care for you just as much as you invest in caring for others.
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Featured image by Shutterstock
Originally published on May 30, 2022