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S’pore Influencer Claims Agency Wanted Her to Work for Free As She’s Malay

2022-08-26 , 11:20 am

Whenever you look at locally produced advertisements in Singapore, you are bound to see a fair-skinned or Chinese person, nine out of ten times.

That is just the cruel truth; but because we are so saturated by such content and acclimated to it, we barely notice or question it at all.

Recently, a Singaporean content creator Tina Amir called out a public relations (PR) company for their egregious and racist attitude, after she was allegedly dropped from a Korean skincare brand campaign because she was Malay.

The One Who Started The Fire

The first person to speak about the discriminatory culture in the beauty and fashion industry in Singapore is Karishma Jashini, who goes by the TikTok handle of @theonlykarishma.

In her first video, she spoke about the reality of being a Person-of-Colour (POC) influencer/content creator in Singapore, of how they were often overlooked and denied access to products due to “gatekeeping” by PR agencies.

@theonlykarishma
🚩 WE NEED CHANGE 🚩 #discrimination #beautytok #influencer #creator #influencerproblems #fyp #tiktoksg #sgtiktok #fypシ #xyzbca #racism
♬ original sound – karishma ✨ – karishma ✨

Whenever an international brand wants to advertise its product in another country, the brand will usually approach a local PR agency to let them represent their interests and values in said country.

Karishma then uses Fenty Beauty—a brand well-known for its inclusivity because of its huge spectrum of foundation shades—as an example, stating that in the list of 100 to 200 people who would receive PR packages, only a handful are POCs.

The “handful” comment is not an understatement; she can literally count the number of POCs included with one hand.

“How is that representative of Singapore?” Karishma asked rhetorically, adding that the same situation happens at PR events.

It is like going to a fruit stall and filling your basket with a whole bunch of apples and adding a token orange and mango, and then saying that the basket is a microcosm of the fruit category.

(Hint: it really isn’t.)

There are always only a handful of them that are invited to the PR events, and the influencers from minority races are painfully aware of this sad truth.

That is because the POC content creators know each other well since there are so few of them.

Karishma also compared the PR companies in Singapore and the US, observing that the latter is far more inclusive as the US companies don’t even hesitate to give her free goodie bags and packages, even though she was not a native.

The difference in treatment is honestly shocking.

Told To Work For Free Because of Her Race

In response to Karishma’s video, Tina Amir, who goes by @tinadestruit on TikTok, shared her own appalling experience with one Korean beauty campaign.

@tinadestruit
#stitch with @karishma ✨ Cant believe I actually experienced this but here we go.
♬ original sound – Tina A – Tina A

According to Tina, a PR agency first reached out to her last year and asked if she was interested in participating in a paid campaign for a Korean skincare brand.

Not one to pass up a good opportunity, Tina said yes, she was willing to be a part of it.

However, she got a nasty shock the very next day.

The PR agency told her the company loved her profile, except here’s the deal breaker: they can’t accept Tina because she is Malay.

“Then the company said, ‘Oh, but we can fight for you because you’re a fair Malay,’” said Tina, whose immediate reaction to that racist statement was, “What the hell?”

It would have been less offensive if they said they would fight for Tina because of her unblemished skin and tight pores.

Race and skin colour, traits that are entrenched in our genetic makeup and cannot be changed, should not be the reason why someone is denied an opportunity.

Rightfully offended, Tina left the PR company “on read”, but the agency contacted her again the next day to ask if she would like to be a part of the campaign again.

…but she would not be paid for it.

Tina was expected to work for free, in spite of the fact that the other hired influencers would be paid for their effort and time.

Their crappy justification was that she “did not fit the profile they were looking for”, aka she was not Chinese.

Tina called it “bulls***”.

Naturally, the commenters expressed their shock and disgust at the turn of events, before nagging at Tina to reveal the name of the company.

The Malay influencer refused, stating that she would run the risk of being sued if she did so, but claimed that the company already has a bad reputation anyway.

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Offence vs Opportunity

Another well-known influencer Preeti Nair (Preetipls on TikTok) gives her two cents on the situation, lamenting that she had been talking about this social issue ever since she has established a presence in the beauty and skincare community.

@preetipls
sharing my own experience but will probably get attacked in the comments 🥰 tbh as a rihanna stan this is honestly truly gross and evident that lots of these agencies rather you stfu and do make up 🤪 #minorityrepresentation #tiktoksg
♬ original sound – preetipls 😗 – preetipls 😗

Preeti agreed with Karishma about the lack of representation in the PR package lists, before taking the argument a step further to allege that these PR companies are not doing their due diligence when they are selecting local content creators for the beauty campaigns.

Likewise, Preeti uses the Rihanna and Fenty example to expound on her point: she argued that it is contrary to use a local influencer who is “fat-phobic and all-around problematic as hell” for a brand that prides itself for inclusiveness.

All that does is create an “extremely unsafe space”, which ultimately contradicts everything the founder Rihanna wished for.

Yet, when Preeti tweeted about her shock over the PR company’s decision to include that unnamed toxic person, she was consequently removed from the PR list.

“This just shows that when you speak up about things, you’re constantly going to lose out,” she added.

Additionally, Preeti talked about her experience at PR events, and how uncomfortable it was to be the only Indian that was at the scene.

The whole situation is a dilemma for her; should she stop attending these events to show her affront towards these discriminatory practices, but at the cost of missing out on opportunities that she deserved to have, and to completely cut herself off from events that she loved to attend?

Here’s the better question: why should her own career be impeded by prejudice, when she worked hard to get to her current position?

There is no winning in that situation.

Preeti genuinely hopes that she can witness change in the beauty and healthcare community, whereby more POC influencers are brought into the fold to properly represent Singapore’s diverse make-up.

The Problem Running Deeper

Besides the “gatekeeping” that Karishma alleges that the PR agencies are guilty of, some commenters with inside information revealed that the problem runs deeper.

Apparently, some brands ask PR agencies to use certain types of influencers or non-POC influencers.

@theonlykarishma
Replying to @Susan’s Boil PART 2 🙊
♬ original sound – karishma ✨ – karishma ✨

Karishma acknowledges that the PR companies should be pushing back to ensure diversity, but the brands are also at fault.

She added that users and influencers should be calling out the brands for their discrimination since it is “messed up”.

In fact, it is even scarier, because the supposed “inclusivity” that the brands are advertising will just be PR bait. How would this reflect on the company’s work culture and the products that they are selling then, if they are half-hearted about their stance?

It is not moving forward.

Most of all, Karishma believes that there should be transparency in the community—like how much an influencer is getting paid or how much they are being offered for every campaign, what can influencers expect from a campaign or event, what is the pay range, what kind of expectations do the brands have, so on and so forth.

Karishma is aware that inherent and perpetuated biases are not something that can be solved in a day; it will be a slow and gradual change but starting with transparency and ensuring that there is “no room for misunderstanding” will go a long way in reducing the instances of discrimination.