WHITEVILLE, N.C. — Outside of home remedies, an Indian-American woman says finding skin care products that work for her in the United States is a difficult task.

What You Need To Know

  • Aulsi Patel says a white-centric skin care industry makes it difficult to find products that work for her

  • She wants blogs, social media platforms and the medical field to be more inclusive

  • She uses traditional Indian skin care regimens to fill in the gaps

Tulsi Patel just completed her first year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She said she remembers getting her first pimple when she was about 12.

To that, her mom, Ketana Patel, made a remedy with a homemade mask. Ketana Patel says she has been mixing up skin care products for decades.

"I started probably when I was a teenager," said Ketana Patel. "My grandma used to do that for me, so that's how I learned."

One mask uses homemade yogurt as a base for the lactic acid, adds turmeric powder as an antiseptic, chickpea flour for exfoliation and nutrients, and rose water for redness and breakouts.

These are traditional strategies the Patels come back to, especially as Tulsi Patel struggles to find products that work for her on the shelves.

"You know when you walk into a drug store, you see all these brands that are like 'this will help your rosacea, this will help your sun spots,' but there wasn't anything for hyperpigmentation and that's because it's a concern that's mostly among people of color," said Tulsi Patel.

It's a pattern she says she noticed happening online as well.

"This [product] went viral on so many social media platforms, and people were raving about," Tulsi Patel said. "And at the time, I didn't notice that a lot of the people were white, so I didn't think that it would only help white skin. So I ordered it and it was just absolutely terrible. My skin broke out, it was just way too abrasive." 

She says she noticed in the comments how other people of color had the same issues with the product.

She says now she searches internationally for skin care products that work for her, using brands like Papa Recipe Bombee Honey and iUNIK out of Korea.

What initially drove Tulsi Patel to products for white skin has left her with questions.

"How are social media platforms forming their algorithms to only support some skin care bloggers and not others? And how is that impacting people from like a really young age," Tulsi Patel said.

Tulsi Patel wants brands, bloggers, and medical professionals to be more aware of her skin type, to be able to get a more equitable experience no matter where she gets her products. 

"I think just having a more inclusive environment online is the biggest step because that's forming young people's opinions," Tulsi Patel said. "And, you don't want them to feel excluded from the beginning."