logo
episode-header-image
Apr 2022
27m 29s

How to be a beauty influencer

Bbc World Service
About this episode

In the world of social media anyone can feel like a friend and become influential - and the internet is full of women giving tips on how to look your best. Kim talks to two beauty influencers with thousands of followers about why they share their lives online and what they get out of it.

Dimma Umeh is from Nigeria and shares make up tips for women of colour. She's been creating content on her social media channels for eight years and has hundreds of thousands of followers. Her videos go from eyebrow-shaping tutorials and getting ready for a night out in Lagos, to going on a shopping trip and detailing how she's decorated her apartment.

Rammal Mehmud is a photographer turned make-up artist in Pakistan. Based in Islamabad she has an Instagram and YouTube account called Le BeautyAffair. As well as make-up tips she uses her skills as a make-up artist to come up with wildly creative looks – turning herself from The Mona Lisa to Captain Jack Sparrow to a plate of fruit and veg. She says make-up helped get her through a rough patch and she shares content to help others with their confidence and mental health.

Produced by Jane Thurlow

(Image: (L), Dimma Umeh, courtesy Dimma Umeh. (R), Rammal Mehmud, courtesy Rammal Mehmud.)

Up next
Nov 19
Women at the forefront of medical research
<p>After the discovery of a new gene therapy for Huntington's, a devastating brain disease, Datshiane Navanayagam talks to one of the women in the UK who worked on it and a biologist from India who's made recent discoveries that could improve treatment for TB, which still kills o ... Show More
26m 29s
Nov 10
Behind the smiles of artistic swimming
Artistic swimmers are known for making perfect synchronicity look effortless. Datshiane Navanaygam talks to athletes from Spain and Slovakia to reveal why the sport is far tougher than it appears. Silvia Solymosyová from Slovakia was the first artistic swimmer to reach 1 million ... Show More
26m 29s
Nov 3
Female breadwinners
Can women earn more than their partners and still be happy at home? How does a higher income affect family dynamics and the division of household chores? Datshiane Navanayagam talks to an author in the UK and a South African academic who've researched the issues.Dr Bianca Parry i ... Show More
26m 28s
Recommended Episodes
Nov 2019
Le maquillage, une affaire de classe
<p><strong>Être belle sans en avoir l’air, avec un teint éclatant. </strong>Selon certains magazines et certaines publicités, cette beauté dite « naturelle » est devenue une quête sacrée pour de nombreuses femmes. Sauf qu’afficher une peau lisse, épurée, voire immaculée nécessite ... Show More
29m 14s
Oct 2022
20. Do Your Makeup Like A Pro - Red Carpet Secrets, On Set Etiquette, Tips & Tricks w/ Celebrity MUA Tobi Henney [VIDEO]
#20. In this episode I’m joined by Tobi Henney, a celebrity makeup artist to some of the biggest names like Megan Fox, Jessica Alba, Olivia Culpo, Ashley Graham and many more. Tobi is a bicoastal makeup artist who originally hails from Sydney, where she was previously the L'Oréal ... Show More
52m 58s
Jan 2021
Live in Color, Live Tinted: Deepica Mutyala Shares the Story of Her Inclusive Beauty Brand
Deepica Mutyala’s fame began with a video gone viral, only the second one she’d ever published on her YouTube channel, in fact. Her tip to use lipstick to even the tone of under eye circles left over 10 million women astounded that they hadn’t heard of this beauty trick before. A ... Show More
36m 6s
Dec 2022
Beauty Costs: Girls, beauty and advertising
More than ever girls are bombarded by images that have been curated, filtered and touched up. How can we help girls decode those images and understand that ideals of beauty are constructed by society and change across time and place?Shelina Janmohamed is an author and advertising ... Show More
17m 29s
May 2022
Girls, beauty and advertising
More than ever girls are bombarded by images that have been curated, filtered and touched up. How can we help girls decode those images and understand that ideals of beauty are constructed by society and change across time and place? Shelina Janmohamed is an author and advertisin ... Show More
18m 46s
Oct 2023
How to Divorce Yourself from Modern Beauty Standards with Emma Dabiri
<p>Jameela is joined this week by Irish-Nigerian bestselling author Emma Dabiri to find out where & why beauty standards started, how European philosophers created & influenced binary theory and what we can do to disconnect from these beauty standards. They discuss finding the pl ... Show More
1h 13m
Jul 2022
233. Confidence, Individuality + True Beauty with Celebrity Makeup Artist, Mally Roncal
Have you ever wondered what it might be like to travel on someone like Beyonce’s glam squad? Unsurprisingly, reaching such heights in the industry requires hard work, grit, a smart pivot or two and a touch of good luck.Our guest today, the effervescent Mally Roncal, is one of the ... Show More
53 m
Jul 2023
Mona Kattan - How Eastern & Western Values Made One Of The Most Successful Women In Dubai
I started a mini-series at the start of this year called 'Remarkable Women Of The Middle East', and that surprisingly got massive appreciation. So I thought I could do a bit more on this, and bring you the most remarkable of them all. So today my guest is Mona Kattan. Mona is the ... Show More
1h 26m
Jun 2022
The Power of Self-Esteem: Melissa Butler of The Lip Bar & Thread Beauty
Makeup isn’t just about accentuating your cheekbones or plumping up your lip color. For Melissa Butler, former Wall Street worker-turned-beauty-entrepreneur, makeup is more about confidence than anything else. Even so, it took time to build the self-esteem and inner belief that h ... Show More
44m 25s
Feb 2021
Deepica Mutyala on Representation in Beauty and Being a Brand Founder
Deepica Mutyala is a South-Asian beauty entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Live Tinted, a multicultural community about beauty and culture. She is best known for a viral YouTube video in which she covered her dark under eye circles with red lipstick released in 2015. Deepica fou ... Show More
39m 40s