For TooD beauty founder and longtime Amagansett resident Shari Siadat, feeling different was always a part of her identity.
Growing up an Iranian-American, Siadat was aware of her “otherness” from a young age thanks to her dark skin and facial hair. “Everyone was homogenous, blonde-haired and blue-eyed,” recalls Siadat. “I first noticed how different I was when I was about five or six years old when I started to get teased about my skin and unibrow.” Unable to process her feelings of shame, Siadat whose Persian name, “Sharareh,” means “single spark of fire” doubled down on fitting in.
“I tweezed my brows for the first time in 8th grade,” says Siadat. “I took out 100 hairs and thought ‘I’m human.’” Siadat’s transformation didn’t end with her unibrow. “I got lasered, waxed, went on diets. I started bleaching my arm hair,” she recalls. “I was always striving to be a ‘better’ version of myself.” After studying at NYU’s Stern School of Business, Siadat worked in pharmaceuticals and met her then-husband, who perfectly fit into her new narrative. They had three daughters, within four years. “I wanted to whitewash everything,” she says of that time. Siadat left the workforce to focus on being a mom. Working as a philanthropist, she found herself thrown into the NYC social scene. “This just perpetuated my insecurities,” says Siadat. “I spent the next four years working out, going to events, getting my hair and makeup done, and basically reinventing myself every single night. My upkeep and reinforcing Eurocentric beauty norms became so important to me.” “But it was a fake confidence,” says Siadat “because I was consumed with hiding my unibrow.”
After the birth of her third child, Siadat decided that enough was enough. “Having my third daughter was very transformational and when I really started to think ‘what does Shari want?’ for the first time. My third daughter really resembled me, with darker skin and a unibrow,” she explains, “and I thought, ‘She is so beautiful. Why can’t I see my own beauty?’ I knew I had a choice to be a guide for my daughters, and it was now or never. ”Mentally drained from years of living a false life, Siadat stopped tweezing her brows in September 2017. Her unibrow grew back in within six weeks; the Instagram account @myfiercebrow followed.
She recalls, “Friends commented that I was a different person and my unibrow growth became news; it was all over the internet and I was signed as a model. ”Siadat leaned into her newfound platform, joining the board of the American Ballet Theater as co-chair of diversity and pitching a children’s book about a unibrow. While the book project is on hold, it gave Siadat the idea for TooD Beauty. “I was a lifelong user of makeup and a lifelong sufferer of shame. That’s how Tood was born,” says Siadat. Non-toxic and gender-neutral, TooD was conceptualized and created out East during the COVID-19 lockdown.
“In summer 2019, I went to a lab in Long Island with the concept,” she explains. “We created eight shades of glitter and ten shades of cream, which debuted at my 40th birthday party in February 2020, and then COVID hit.” Determined to push forward, Siadat packaged the products in her Amagansett kitchen and did launch events over Zoom. The line now includes color creams, soap brows, and makeup remover that actually removes makeup. Now TooD has released the world’s first one-swipe biodegradable glitter in six shades made from eucalyptus cellulose, safe for the environment and the ocean. “As a surfer who cares deeply about nature, it was important to me that the product would be non-toxic and do no damage to ocean life,” she says. The brand’s Paintbrush, to help with glitter application, is also available now.
As for TooD’s mission, Siadat will continue to amplify voices that are rarely heard and show faces that aren’t often seen.“ TooD is short for ‘attitude’ and about knowing that at any time, we can change who we are and how we see things,” she explains. “We are taught that lipstick goes on lips, blush goes on cheeks, but if I want to wear lipstick on the nape of my neck or glitter between my toes, I will.” toodbeauty.com