Beauty Influencer Golloria Has Only Scratched The Surface

In a recent TikTok, Golloria George gets dolled up, putting Fenty Beauty’s new lip liners to the test as she sings and dances along to GloRilla’s summer smash “TGIF.” That 37-second GRWM video has 14 million views.

For the longest time, the BeautyTok fave, who has nearly 2 million followers on TikTok, didn’t consider herself a “makeup girl” due to the lack of representation across foundation shades for her and other dark-skinned women.

“I am from South Sudan, and we have some of the darkest people in the world. Experiencing life as a dark-skinned woman was a little tough,” George tells Elite Daily. “There was always a lot of rampant colorism, but I kind of got used to minimizing it.”

George, now 23, came to the U.S. as a 5-year-old refugee whose family fell on hard times after being displaced. Still, she graduated from college, where she majored in psychology.

“I think it really hit me when I entered college,” she says about her struggle to find products that suited her melanin-rich complexion. “Everyone’s going outside and having fun; all your friends are wearing makeup and there’s just nothing that works for you.”

When George started creating content in 2022, her goal was to shine a light on some of those experiences while championing beauty inclusivity. She filmed her earliest videos in between studying for school and working double shifts at two hotels.

George’s The Darkest Shade TikTok series is inspired by fellow South Sudanese digital creator Nyma Tang’s YouTube series of the same name. The series consists of George swatching the darkest shades offered by makeup brands to see how they look on real-life people as a way of holding companies accountable. Some shades are instant hits while others miss the mark.

“I saw there was such a huge group of people who are feeling the exact same way I’m feeling,” she says. “I found community in this, and here we are two years later.”

In 2022, a clip of George’s reaction to Fenty Beauty’s Match Stix Contour Skinstick in the caviar shade (the darkest in the collection) became her first to go viral with nearly 4 million views. So blown away by the spot-on match and ultra-creamy formula, George burst into the "Rum-pum-pum-pum" refrain from Rihanna’s 2010 “Man Down.”

"The caviar shade was a moment of, ‘They're finally seeing us,’" she says. "Even if it was just one product, it had never really been done so it was a big deal."

Interviewing Rihanna on the red carpet at a Fenty Beauty’s Soft’lit Naturally Luminous Longwear Foundation launch event this April marked a full-circle moment for the TikTok star.

“To be in front of the one person that made you feel so seen in the beauty space, I can go to sleep happy for the rest of my life,” she jokes. “Rihanna is so for inclusivity, and Fenty Beauty will always have my support.”

If there was a person who was not supposed to beat the odds, it was not supposed to be me.

Getting to meet Rihanna IRL, plus getting accepted into Sephora Squad (a yearlong, paid partnership with the popular beauty retailer), where she met Black beauty founders, including Danessa Myricks, speaks to George’s determination to come out on top.

“I’m still kind of adjusting; it’s hard to go from one extreme to a whole other extreme,” she says of her meteoric rise on TikTok. “If there was a person who was not supposed to beat the odds, it was not supposed to be me… We were really just trying to survive.”

Earlier this year, George’s TikTok video calling out the darkest shade of Youthforia’s Date Night Skin Tint Serum foundation set the beauty industry ablaze. In the clip, she wore 600 Deep on the left side of her face and black paint on the right side.

“Which side of my face is the black face paint or the Youthforia foundation? You can’t tell,” she said in the viral clip, which has been viewed 42 million times and sparked a wider conversation about how dark-skinned consumers are often an afterthought for cosmetic companies.

At the time of the backlash, cosmetic chemist Javon Ford confirmed that YouthForia's 600 Deep shade only contained a pigment known as black iron oxide instead of multiple pigments to resemble a human shade and undertones, hence why the foundation mimicked what George described as “tar in a bottle.”

For a company to actually take accountability, come back, and do it correctly, that’s what we want. I definitely do believe in redemption.

“It finally feels like people are listening,” George says about her mega viral clip. She’s begun offering shade consulting for beauty brands, too. “They're probably listening by force a little bit, but they're listening,” she says. “For a company to actually take accountability, come back, and do it correctly, that’s what we want. I definitely do believe in redemption.”

But she notes that shade inclusivity only scratches the surface when it comes to enforcing real change in the beauty industry. “I'm typically swatching a lot of foundations, but we haven't even touched blush, bronzer, contour,” she says. “Products need to be inclusive across the board, and that’s when you are truly an inclusive brand. How I know a brand is really standing to their ethos is if I go into a store, try any single one of their products, and it would work for me.”

But it doesn’t end there. “It’s also having Black people on your team, hiring Black creators for content and campaigns,” she says. “We're fighting to see an internal systemic change as well.”

Amid her visible efforts to champion true diversity and inclusivity across store shelves and boardrooms, George is busy making moves behind the scenes, too. She teased some of what’s next, saying to expect “something that has to do with makeup” and to see her “on a runway.” Sometimes, she wishes she could slow down a bit, but it’s all part of her why, which she says is far bigger than herself.

“It's showing other South Sudanese girls they can do it too, showing other refugees that regardless of where you come from or how hard you struggled,” she says, “you’re capable of doing anything you put your mind to and existing unapologetically for yourself.”