(lighthearted music)
- [Amina] Women are like olive trees.
With a little bit of care and attention,
they give you a lot.
Without any care or attention,
they will persist, and continue growing.
We are all very resilient,
very resourceful,
very bountiful, and always wise. (laughs)
Yeah, I have a very fond
attachment to the olive tree,
it's a part of my being.
(gentle, calming music)
- [Jess] So nice here.
- [Rachel] They're so welcoming.
- So warm, also so beautiful.
- We are here in Amman,
Jordan in the Middle East,
and we are surrounded
by this ancient glory.
- My preconceptions of
women in the Middle East,
modesty is really big here.
In the West, we're so accustomed to
"Oh, if you're beautiful
you need to show it,
"you need to flaunt it."
- I wouldn't say I know a
lot about Jordanian culture,
or Jordanian beauty, but
for me as a Black person,
I'm always aware of
traveling to new places,
and you know my thought is always like,
how do they feel about people of color?
Or how do they feel about Black people?
So far everybody's just been fascinated
with my hair. (laughs)
No do your face first.
- True.
- Come on,
that's an accessory.
- We're gonna be meeting Amina.
She is a business woman, she's an artist,
she's a mother, and she created a line
using organic olive oil.
You know, as female entrepreneurs,
there's so many challenges that we face
so I'm curious to see how they manifest.
While we're in Jordan,
I believe we are going
to get our nails done, thank goodness
because these are
a travesty.
- Necessary.
And then we're also going to
take a trip to the Dead Sea
with her which is so
cool because obviously,
Cleopatra and all of that history there.
We're also gonna go to
her farm, and see where
she makes all her products.
- [Jess] So looking forward to
what she has in store for us.
Okay Rach, I think I'm done.
Are you ready for like, the big reveal?
- Oh my gosh, 'kay wait.
- Drumroll.
- Go.
- Ah!
- Cute, right?
(laughs) Hey.
(lighthearted music)
- Woo, Amman looks good on me girl.
(lighthearted music)
- The anticipation is buildin' up.
- Just got to Amina's,
and she has these beautiful flowers
that smell really lovely,
and we're going in
to meet her right now.
- Hello?
- Hi Amina,
it's nice to meet you.
- Hi, nice to meet you,
nice to meet you.
- I'm Jessica.
- Welcome to Jordan.
- Thank you.
- Hi Amina,
so nice to meet you.
- Hi.
- Smells so good.
- We should go back here, this
is our display wall products.
So we have all sorts of skin care products
that started off with the humble soap,
this was the first,
the first product that
I did for my daughter
when was three, now she's 21. (laughs)
- Oh, wow.
- Yeah.
- We wanna learn all your secrets.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I know
teach me please.
- [Amina] So excited to share
all I have with you. (laughs)
- [Rachel] Tell us about your childhood,
and running around the olive groves.
- Yeah, we used to go every weekend.
It's a farm that my grandfather
planted with olive trees
in the 40s.
- Wow.
- We were free to run
around as far as we wanted,
and as long as we came back before sunset,
that was it.
- Amina, where did the inspiration
for your business come from?
- My children had
sensitivities and eczema,
and skin conditions.
And I became aware of
the dangers of chemicals
found in regular skin care products.
Living on an olive farm, and
producing my own olive oil
gave me the inspiration
to try to make products
based on olive oil to provide
for their skincare needs
in an natural, and safe way.
If you had asked me what I'd
be doing 20 years from now,
I would have never imagined that I'd be
in the cosmetic industry
producing skin care products.
(distant chattering)
- [Rachel] Should we pick our color first?
- [Woman] Yeah.
- Ooh, this is good.
- I'm always the same.
- Yeah.
- [Jess] Maybe I should spice it up.
- [Amina] Yeah, I think you should.
- So green, always green.
I like how Jordan is all one,
it's like monochromatic,
a lot of sand color.
I feel like I should get that color.
- Yeah.
My parents are, my father is Jordanian,
and my mother is, she
likes to put it Jordanian,
but originally Swedish. (laughs)
'Cause she's been living
here for now many many years,
so I come from very different backgrounds.
I struggled a bit when I was a teenager
you know, with identity.
I didn't feel I really fit in here,
and I didn't really feel
I fit in Sweden, you know?
- I know what you mean
about bring biracial though.
I think that a lot of mixed
people struggle with that.
Like you don't fit into either one,
did you feel like you had
to like, be more Jordanian?
- Everybody assumes even 'til
now that I'm a foreigner.
But you can pick and
choose for both cultures,
aspects that you like,
and not have to fit into other aspects
that you might not like.
So I thought that was
for me, very liberating.
(playful music)
- Thick black, long hair,
yes.
- (laughs) Yeah.
But doesn't include us, so.
- I love scrubs.
I always use honey, and lemon, and oats.
(playful music)
- So we are on our way to the Dead Sea
with Amina, and Rach,
and we got Sarah in the back.
- Okay, we have a lot of
resorts in the Dead Sea,
but I would like you to experience
what I call a wild beach.
First, an experience to
see as it is in nature.
The light is different,
the colors are different,
and they're, it's just
something very surreal.
- I'm so excited.
- Sounds are even different
there, everything's--
- Sounds?
- Yeah, you feel different.
- [Rachel] How is the Dead
Sea good for your skin?
- I have a range of Dead Sea products,
we use a lot of ingredients.
The water as well as the mud,
it's rich in minerals.
Lots of magnesium, and lots of salts.
- You know what I love about Jordan
that is not really talked
about much in the media?
There's so many powerful woman here,
no?
- Yeah,
that's true, many woman here work,
and have their own income.
Not everything is what
you see it as you know,
so you might assume that
just because a woman is,
looks traditional and is covered up,
that she is weak and
has no mind of her own,
but she isn't.
- Yeah.
It's so beautiful.
- Yeah.
- She's so hospitable,
and so thoughtful of her
to take us somewhere that wasn't touristy.
And this place she took us was so barren.
Like, you had to know
like a local to go there.
- Look at this color!
I felt like I was in
like in another planet.
You look to one side, you
have all these salt formations
that looked like ice.
Everything looked like
so geometrically aligned.
- It was sacred geometry.
- It was insane.
It is time for my twirl of the Dead Sea.
And how did you feel
about when we lathered
all the mud on?
- Oh my goodness.
- That was my favorite.
- I felt really--
(Rachel singing)
- Like a beauty warrior?
("Undertow" by Rae Spoon)
♪ I'm waiting in suspense ♪
♪ I should've told you what I meant ♪
- [Rachel] Yeah, like I felt powerful.
- [Jess] Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
- I don't know, I guess
something about the minerals,
like and just, it's so soft,
and then just self touch
is always really nice,
it's a nice ritual that you
just lather yourself up.
("Undertow" by Rae Spoon)
♪ It's the undertow ♪
♪ It's gonna pull pull pull ♪
♪ You down below ♪
♪ It's the undertow ♪
- Look at my height.
- Finally.
- The Dead Sea
made Jess grow.
- Yeah. (laughs)
- It's magical, come
check it out shorties.
It does to show her duality.
It's the nice like
resort, and like the mud,
and the tourists.
But what's also nice is just to see it
in it's natural state.
How it exists with nature, and that says
so much about her and her duality.
- And you're left with that glow.
Glow, glow, glow, glow.
It was really, really nice.
- Okay, actually what
makes me feel powerful is
I don't believe that power is tangible.
I think that power is an illusion.
- Everyone feels most
powerful when they achieve
the things they wanted to.
Everyone respects you.
- People believe what they see.
So even if it's not
always what you're feeling
on the inside, as long as you can embody
what you want to be
even if it's difficult,
then you can become very powerful.
Just pop in your earphones,
and listen to Big Papa, you know? (laughs)
Power walk down the street.
(gentle, somber music)
- Whoa.
- Welcome to my space.
- Oh my.
- Careful there's paint
everywhere. (laughs)
Yeah, this is my latest painting.
It's not really finished yet.
Most of my paintings are olive trees.
And they're many of them,
especially the large ones,
not the small ones, are
based on my silhouette.
So I stand like this, and
depending on how I feel,
I trace myself.
- [Jess] It's like self portrait?
- Yeah, yeah, the majority
- That's so cool.
- [Amina] of them are
self portraits, yeah.
I was just thinking about
it, that it's very unusual.
I usually communicate
here, but not using words.
- [Jess] How do you manage the logistics
of running a business, being
an artist, you know, a family?
- Initially I was you know,
just work, work, work.
And you know, when you
have your own business
you tend to sleep it, eat it, dream it.
You know, I wake up at
three o'clock in the morning
and oh, I forgot to do
that, and that's it.
You know, you're switched on,
you can't go back to sleep again.
Then I realized you know, to keep going,
and to be able to sustain this,
I needed to you know, find my balance.
I have to dedicate one day where I just
don't go to the factory, and
I dedicate it to painting.
(gentle, somber music)
(birds chirping)
- [Rachel] It's so nice to see
that you've done everything
in a company, and so you
know how everything works.
- I had to learn, (laughs)
I had to figure it out.
'Cause it was just me in the
facility, in the factories.
We are happy to have you,
- Thank you.
- and the extra hands,
but you have to work.
You have to work for the olives,
and the oil.
- I will work for olives,
and stay.
- (laughs) Okay, excellent.
- Hello, Jessica, nice to meet you.
(speaking foreign language)
Nice to meet you.
- [Amina] We have to get dressed, yeah.
Using skin care products
and having it in a factory
is totally different than the studio.
And there is a very big difference
in the way that I keep my factory,
and the way my studio is.
And I am so surprised at myself though,
'cause you wouldn't think
it's the same person.
- [Rachel] Okay, ready?
- [Amina] Ooh, ooh, that's nice. (laughs)
- I like these, they're very profesh.
- [Amina] I've since now
maybe four, five years
exclusively only hire woman.
- [Jess] Staying kind of in the middle?
- Yeah, stay in the middle,
and then just pull light.
You weigh through so you don't get the,
as women, I think the best thing
we can do for each other
is to support each other,
and work together.
So I think for me,
empowering women is the most
important thing 'cause through empowering,
women around me, they'll be empowered,
so women in general are empowered,
and I think the world would
be a much better place.
We all face our days in the same way.
So yeah, it's very important.
I like it when ladies get
excited about machines,
it's something very satisfying.
- I know that smell from two minutes ago
when we were inside, wow.
It feels so good.
(lighthearted music)
(speaking foreign language)
- [Jess] They're calling me Honey.
- You have women from the Jerash camp
working with you every year,
what does that relationship
specifically mean to you?
- It means a lot because I think women
who come from you know,
in situations like them, like refugees.
They've probably been
born into being refugees,
and they're going to be refugees
for the rest of their lives.
They feel marginalized,
they don't feel seen.
- I think a lot of marginalized people
are usually people of color,
and they look like me.
- I think women in general
are very resilient and resourceful.
So whatever cultural limitations,
or expectations, or you know,
things they're allowed to do,
and not to do, they
find a way around that.
(lighthearted music)
- Gosh!
- (mumbles) Sit there, yeah.
- This is a dream.
- Oh my gosh,
look at this.
- Wow.
- And fresh olive oil.
- [Rachel] (gasps) From your land.
- A lot of people think
that beauty is oh you know,
I have this little magic potion,
let me open it up, and that's it.
No, it means caring for yourself,
caring for others.
Providing a safe space for
you to express yourself,
and for others to express themselves.
(distant chattering)
- Yeah, try those with,
and these are the
different types of olives
you need to taste.
Different--
- My mouth is watering.
- [Rachel] I know, I'm
like so ready for this.
Do you think that you're beautiful?
- It's a process, its not,
what I was when I was 15, 16,
20, 25, 30, 35, I'm not the same person.
You know, I look back at you
know, chapters in my life
like chapters in a book.
There's an introduction,
there's the main body, and
then there's a conclusion.
- [Rachel] Is there a
conclusion, you know?
- The best conclusion
that can be is you being
accepting of yourself,
and totally accepting it
without you know, being worried about
what others are saying, and you know,
wanting to please others.
Just that's, I think the
ultimate conclusion. (laughs)
(birds chirping)
- Thanks for watching Beauty Mark.
- If you like what you saw,
subscribe for more.
- Subscribe for more.
(laughs) I said it.
- You did it.
Okay, you're leaving me.
- Oh, sorry, sorry, I got
really excited. (laughs)
