The Somali café has four tables outside. Two women at the corner one, both in hijab, one in a purple abaya that catches the light. The other keeps lifting her tea, putting it down without drinking. "Walahi, it's too sweet today."

EADEM named a face mist after Mami Wata and the internet split wide open. Fear, pride, confusion, celebration all at once. Beneath the noise lives a question worth sitting with: what shifts when a spirit shaped by centuries of movement and memory shows up on a beauty shelf? This piece offers clarity, context, and cultural literacy.

Before the shutter clicks, a negotiation happens. For over a century, that negotiation was rigged. Film emulsion was calibrated for white skin. The "Shirley cards" that cinematographers used to calibrate skin tones and lighting featured only Caucasian models until well into the 1970s.