Skillr Profile: Daneisha Whitaker

Daneisha Whitaker is an Esthetician sharing her makeup skills on the SKILLR App. Here, she discusses her passion for makeup, Black representation in the beauty industry and so much more. 

Mariama Hutson: You can just start by telling me a little bit about yourself and about your skill that's in the app.

Daneisha Whitaker: Okay. Well, my name is Daneisha, some people call me D. Currently I'm a esthetician. I've been an esthetician for about three years. Well, currently I work at European Wax Center, which is really one of the top companies for body waxing. I've had my own shop as well. And I've also done traveling, which I still do that sometime as well. So it's a lot of things I do like facials, of course, body waxing. I'm really into makeup and teaching people makeup, that type of thing.

Mariama Hutson: Is makeup what your skill is under in the app?

Daneisha Whitaker: Yes, makeup artist.

Mariama Hutson: Okay. Yeah, cause I think we don't really have a skin, but I've talked to some of the makeup artists and I've asked them about dark spots and things like that so I know. I don't know, do you have to be a esthetician to do makeup? Is that part of the licensing?

Daneisha Whitaker: No, you can actually just be a makeup artist and just do just makeup, but you wouldn't have to have a license to tie with it.

Mariama Hutson: Okay. How did you get started with makeup?

Daneisha Whitaker: It's always been kind of something I wanted to learn cause my mom used to always wear it. But I also had bad skin growing up so I never dabbled in it enough because I was scared that it would just make my skin worse. But once I got into aesthetician school and learned about skincare, the dos and the don'ts, then I got into makeup pretty heavily, watching YouTube channels every day, doing it on my sister, doing it on my friends, going to the grocery store just putting on makeup to practice on myself. So yeah, basically just skin really made me curious about makeup.

Mariama Hutson: Get into makeup. So I guess what type of makeup do you do? Is it mostly for photo shoots, for people's events? What area of makeup?

Daneisha Whitaker: Lately, it's been mostly photo shoots because people want those professional looking pictures. So it's more of glam, which I'm trying to now get more on the natural side because you really don't need to cake all that makeup on unless you're doing a photo shoot. So getting more into the natural flow of things now.

Mariama Hutson: Okay. What advice would you give to someone who wants to get started in the makeup industry?

Daneisha Whitaker: I would say makeup is really not a right or wrong way to do it. When you first start out, you will look a mess probably, the process of makeup...

Mariama Hutson: I'm at the startup point cause baby...

Daneisha Whitaker: It's like, what am I doing? When you first start out, you look crazy but once you do all those steps and put it together, the overall look is amazing. So I would say when you first start it now and it looks crazy, just keep going, just keep going, keep lending, and it will probably turn out to look amazing.

Mariama Hutson: Yeah. I'm at the startup point trying to gather my life. I feel like I've been watching YouTube videos for two years and I still don't... In quarantine, I was like, okay, I'm really about to learn how to do makeup. Till this day, I don't know what I'm doing and I don't watched a lot of videos.

Daneisha Whitaker: And the thing with those videos, some people are just using way too much product. And I don't know if they do that just for the video because in the real life, you are not putting that much product on your face.

Mariama Hutson: Yeah. And that's why I think something like SKILLR is important because I can just hit you up like, okay, what do I need to do right now? How can I do this eye?

Daneisha Whitaker: And your shades and what color would look good with your skin tone? That type of thing.

Mariama Hutson: What interests you about SKILLR?

Daneisha Whitaker: It's so many people that hit me up, how you do this or how you do that or what products should I buy? And I love to tell people you don't have to buy expensive makeup, I go to Dollar Store to get most of my stuff. So if I could just help people, teach them on what products you should buy and how you should use them, even down to the brushes, they play a big part. If you want a more detail is a certain brush that you should use than a fluffy brush. So if I could help you out with those little things, then that'll change everything you've been doing, it'll make everything look better than what you've been doing.

And you're probably doing what you need to do with applying makeup, you're just using the wrong brushes. Something like that, yeah, I can help out. And it doesn't take a lot of time for me to just tell you no, you're using the wrong brush or the right. So you don't have to spend a lot of money and that's what I like about it. It's like, what's a dollar a minute? It's basically you're spending the amount that you can spend. So I can only spend 10 minutes with you on this call then okay, I'll spit out everything you need in 10 minutes and you're good so that's kind of what I like about it. I get to set my own schedule, you kind of get to set your own schedule and we help each other out that way.

Mariama Hutson:

Yeah. Okay, I'm trying to see how to word this, what are your favorite Black-owned makeup brands, if you have any?

Daneisha Whitaker: Black-owned, Fenty. Fenty is definitely one of my favorites and it's more on the expensive side, it is but Rihanna did her thing.

Mariama Hutson: You're going to say it's worth it.

Daneisha Whitaker: Yes, it is worth it, definitely.

Mariama Hutson:

Do you feel like there is enough representation of Black women in the makeup space?

Daneisha Whitaker: I don't know, especially the darker, darker skin tones. I don't see a lot of people dark like that around me, my immediate people. So I may have had one aunt and I did her makeup and it was just completely different. So it's completely different because the colors don't really show up well on your skin so you have to figure out their tones and you don't want them looking like Casper. So yeah, I don't think it's enough of that because they are hard to match their skin tone and bring out their features in a way that they want it to be brought out.

Mariama Hutson: What do you think can be done to help more different shades of black skin get the representation that they deserve?

Daneisha Whitaker: Just seeing more of Black excellence, just seeing more people doing makeup on darker skin and seeing more people, I guess, showing products on what they use on their darker skin and what not to use or products to stay away from. I think that would help out.

Mariama Hutson: Okay. This year, the theme for Black History Month is Black health and wellness, what kind of comes to mind for you when you think of that?

Daneisha Whitaker: Black health and wellness, I honestly think about food, the things that we shouldn't be eating, cause it plays a part in pretty much everything. The way that we feel, our skin, mentally it could play a part as well. And also just getting into that environment where we feel safe and coming together and lifting each other up and not being so separated because there's the light-skinned, dark-skinned thing, it is just so dumb to me. We shouldn't separate each other like that and just, yeah, help each other out overall and just positive vibes and lift each other up, that kind of thing. That's what I think about.

Mariama Hutson: Yeah. You brought up something that nobody has brought up yet as far as the food and how much that goes into just overall health. And that kind of even has me thinking about not saying that all Black people are in lower-income communities, but the majority of Black people are in these lower-income communities and the type of food options that are available in those communities aren't that good for you at all.

Daneisha Whitaker: No, at all. I stay in, I don't know if you heard of Tarboro, probably not. It's this really small community, I'll say mostly African American people and there's nothing to eat here. I would have to drive pretty much an hour to Greenville, which is, I would say majority Caucasian people live there. It's a lot of schools and they have all the fancy restaurants, health food, healthy shakes, things like that. But I would have to definitely travel outside of my town to way outside of my town just to try those foods. And here it's really just garbage, fast food is... Oh man, it's terrible. But I started taking notice of that, what I eat, I feel better, I even think better. I'm more active and yeah, it definitely plays a big part.

Mariama Hutson: Yeah, that brain food as well. And I think even just investing in the food in these communities would do wonders, putting some other options, that could take us 10 steps ahead right there.

Daneisha Whitaker: Exactly, yeah.

Mariama Hutson: Yeah, that's crazy. Do you work out?

Daneisha Whitaker: Yeah. I want to do it more, but yeah, I do.

Mariama Hutson: Yeah, that's me too. I've been trying to make it there. It's tough sometimes. And even the food situation, I know sometimes people are like, the healthier food is more expensive, which I can kind of see that in some scenarios. But in other scenarios, I feel like it's pretty much the same. You might spend a little bit more, but I think investing in those healthier options definitely will help in the long term.

Daneisha Whitaker: Yeah, definitely.

Mariama Hutson: The long run. Well, let me see, I guess I'll go to my questions. I might have just disappeared for a second. Oh, how are you celebrating Black History Month?

Daneisha Whitaker:

I'm buying from Black-owned businesses that are close to me. So it's just pretty much people I know from social media. I'm wearing my, I think it says melanated here.

Mariama Hutson: I love the shirt.

Daneisha Whitaker: Thank you. I bought a lot of Black History Month shirts and I said, I'm just going to wear one every week. And doing this too I was like, oh yeah, I got to be a part of that. So just trying to celebrate Black any way that I can.

Mariama Hutson: That's great and I love your shirt.

Daneisha Whitaker: Thank you.

Mariama Hutson: Did you get 30 shirts? Well, 28 I guess, 28 shirts.

Daneisha Whitaker: Yeah, I did. I got about 20, I started ordering it November, December. I was like, I'm going to be ready this year.

Mariama Hutson: Okay, no, I love that. I'm about to do that next year. I'm stealing your idea. Well, how do you think something like SKILLR and skill-sharing can benefit our community?

Daneisha Whitaker: Like I said, it'll help a lot of people with anything. There's so much on the app that you can learn right from your phone or driving the car or whatever, whenever you have the time to do it, just to learn some extra skills in life. And people, I learned so much from other people, small things and it changes everything really just to have those people to give you that little small advice. It'll make everything pretty much come together for you. So I think that is a pretty awesome app. I think I have a guitar, so I wanted to learn stuff about it and I see that it's music up there as well. So trying to find someone up there that can teach me a couple things because learning by watching YouTube videos is completely different than just having that one on one with someone. 

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