How Issa Rae & ‘Insecure’ Highlight That Being A Little Basic Can Still Be Beautiful

Awkward black girls everywhere rejoiced when Issa Rae’s show Insecure hit HBO screens in 2016. Coming on the heels of her wildly popular YouTube series The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl, which opened doors for her to create Insecure, the HBO series perfectly captured the struggles of a 20-something life: Dating via apps, sporadically running into exes, having to deal with annoying and nosey co-workers, the list goes on. Of course, a plethora of shows touch on issues like this, but what sets Insecure apart is its commitment to being 100 percent real. Like many people IRL, the characters on the show don’t always (i.e. never seem to) do the “right” thing.

But, the realness isn’t just limited to the language or situations the characters find themselves tangled up in. Thanks to Issa Rae, black women like myself, who lean more towards the minimal side of the beauty and fashion spectrum, now have a simple and quirky heroine to look up to. At the Fast Company Innovation Festival on Oct. 23, Rae described her character and her own style as “regular” and “basic.” That’s why she was surprised when it not only grabbed the attention of Insecure fans, but also the attention of beauty giant CoverGirl, which recently named her one of the new faces of the brand.

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Rae stars in the CoverGirl’s new “I Am What I Makeup” campaign alongside Ayesha Curry, Massy Airas, and more. At the festival, she spoke with CoverGirl Senior Vice President Ukonwa Ojo about how the partnership came to be. According to Rae, the brand’s commitment to diversity at both the executive and consumer levels sealed the deal for her.

“To see who’s making some of the decisions behind-the-scenes is part of what drew me to this. When you see black women and women of color [working on the campaign] and you’re having conversations with them, knowing, ‘OK, you …

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