In the lead-up to their third-year anniversary party, Malaysia’s Buro 24/7, an online luxury lifestyle portal with a lot of self-possessed glamor, and also questionable grammar, posted a photo to their Instagram account “introducing the full team.”
Netizens were quick to notice that in the baker’s dozen of the Buro team, there seemed to be a glaring lack of diversity: All of the women were Chinese, all of the women were fair-skinned, and all of the women were slim: a decidedly small slice of the demographic pie.
Malaysia is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic nation, primarily comprising of Malay, Chinese, and Indian communities, with many citizens of mixed, or native, ancestry. We range from fair, to brown, and browner. We’re also the fattest nation in Southeast Asia.
You can see why many looked at the photo, and thought – this has to be a joke.
In an age where Edward Enninful was made editor of British Vogue, and put Adwoa Aboah on his first cover, and where Virgil Abloh is head of Louis Vuitton, deciding to make your team an all-Chinese, all-female troupe of similar beauty ideals is an interesting move, Buro.
While some commented simply that it was not a very diverse team, others wondered if searching for representation at a place like Buro was akin to looking for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie: You won’t find it, and may have wasted a couple hours of your life looking.
However, others were quick to come to the defense of the rag, and perhaps hopefully score an invite to their next party, summing up the critique as a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” conundrum. That is to say, Chinese women are not represented enough in Malaysia, yet when Buro makes them their entire team, there is backlash.
Others have said that the women in the photo were simply the best people for the job, and that we should applaud their girl power.
Yeesh. First of all, look, representation isn’t that hard. It means diversity and a reflection of the fabric of our society. Changing perceptions isn’t about swinging the pendulum one way or the other, it’s about showing what it looks like to be a Malaysian. A Malaysian who loves aspirational lifestyle articles recounting parties with yet another tired Gatsby analogy (Ed. Note: Did you even read the book, sis?).
Secondly, whether they’re the best for the job is not for us to judge, but we know from life experience that with a diverse team comes perspective, freshness and new angles on things (see: Gatsby party analogies).
Really, it will help you in the long run, but it’s respectfully Buro’s call on who they hire.
Responding to the backlash, Buro then clarified that while they captioned the photo as the “full team,” in fact it was not the full team.
Maybe someone who doesn’t look like them is working in accounts and didn’t get the memo about the photoshoot. Hard to say.
We’ve reached out to Buro for comment, and will let you know what their take on the brouhaha is.
