Increasingly isolated and more online than ever, understanding the Gen Z paradox is integral to appealing to them, in line with Ziad Ahmed, chief executive officer and founding father of the Gen Z-centric Juv Consulting.

Ahmed, alongside Faith Andrews-O’Neal, Juv’s director of the Live, said tapping into Gen Z necessitates understanding the nuances of the cohort. In the beginning, that starts with beauty’s role of their lives. “Eighty-two percent of Gen Z respondents say that fashion is very important in establishing our identities,” Ahmed said. “We all know that fashion and wonder are powerful vehicles of self-expression for a generation that’s trying to differentiate ourselves.”

Ahmed posited that while Gen Z is maturing, it’s also solidifying — and difficult — its generational values. “So lots of us coming out of the pandemic are difficult and interrogating our identities, asking ourselves how we discover and the way we would like to portray ourselves on the earth,” he said. “So lots of us are pondering of ourselves as a brand.”

Social media, which has played a critical role in the event of Gen Z, is a double-edged sword. “We expect of social media as Gen Z’s first language,” Ahmed said. “We’re social media natives. My connectivity to so many individuals changes the best way I interface with myself and on the earth, and whether or not I’m loud or I’m quiet, social media is at all times there.”

As Ahmed put it, a disconnect between businesses and consumers has also led to a strained relationship between the 2 parties. “As business leaders and marketers, we’ve told young folks that they will be perfect in the event that they buy the best products and in the event that they do the best things, they will have all of it. We’re grappling with a mental health crisis due to a lot content and comparison of ourselves to others,” he said. “What’s beautiful to us is truth and honesty, what cuts through Gen Z’s bulls–t filter is individuals who speak with clarity and with authenticity. What is gorgeous to Gen Z is truth.”

A part of that, Andrews-O’Neal said, is representing wider swaths of consumers. “I grew up in a world of fashion magazines where nobody looked like me, and at the identical time, I needed to fight the urge to consider that I used to be thus far outside of beauty standards, thought that wasn’t validated by mainstream media.”

Andrews-O’Neal turned to the blogging site Tumblr, where the rhetoric around beauty also excluded her. “It was an era of individuals saying that nothing tastes pretty much as good as skinny feels, or Jennifer Lawrence was being berated for liking pizza.” That modified, though, when she was in highschool and Rihanna launched Fenty. “It was the primary time I had seen anyone that looked anything like me represented,” said Andrews-O’Neal.

That epitomizes her mission, in addition to the bedrock of Juv. “When I feel of the longer term of beauty, it boils all the way down to this concept that all of us, no matter how we discover, need to be seen and heard and held and felt.”