CoverGirl is featuring a woman wearing a hijab in its advertising for the first time in the makeup line’s history.
Denver-based Moroccan beauty blogger Nura Afia is featured wearing the traditional head covering in an ad campaign for a new line of mascara that also includes singer Katy Perry and actress Sofia Vergara.
Afia says in a statement released by CoverGirl that she never thought she would see Muslim women represented on this scale after “growing up and being insecure about wearing the hijab.”
CoverGirl says the television and digital ad campaign is the only one in which it currently plans to feature Afia.
Afia has more than 215,000 subscribers to a YouTube channel on which she gives beauty and makeup tips.
“I hope (this campaign) will show Muslim women that brands care about us as consumers and we’re important, especially hijabis,” she added. “We can be featured on TV, can be featured on billboards in Times Square, can be represented.”
Afia’s appointment as a new face of CoverGirl comes just weeks after the iconic brand announced its first cover boy, 17-year-old James Charles, who also has a significant social media following.
“It’s a big accomplishment for all of us,” Afia told CNN. “It means that little girls that grew up like me have something to look up to. I grew up feeling like my hijab would hold me back … It shows that we’re average Americans.”

Source: Arab News