At 18, Elaine landed on the cover of Vogue. It was exciting – but it also made her uneasy.

“It made me feel it sounds silly, but it made me feel uncomfortable because I've grown up with my family, where beauty wasn’t a thing. It's what's inside and what you do for your family and your community that reflects who you are. So when they were plucking my eyebrows for the first time. I didn't understand why having bushy eyebrows was not part of being beautiful…so I had to learn a lot pretty quickly.”

Years later, a younger Aboriginal makeup artist shared something new with Elaine.

“I learn a lot from Kaydee, another Aboriginal makeup artist who's in New York now. I remember when I first came out of retirement and she was honoured and cried when she met me to do my makeup… we can learn from our young ones, and they can be patient with us, but I think you’ve got to take a leap to actually put yourself forward. As you know, we're not a hierarchical culture, and we always put our community, our family, and our children first.”

She’s given so much to her community. Now, at 50, beauty also means accepting care and wisdom from the next generation, putting herself first, and stepping into a new era: “It’s my turn to be me.”

“I think I feel beautiful when I accept that I need to put myself first. I think that's the first thing, we’ve kind of got to get over that hurdle of: I'm 50, but I still think I need to be responsible for my family and my community. So I'm being a little bit selfish now and going me, me, me. I am strong. I am Blak and I am beautiful…”

For Elaine, beauty isn’t about appearance – it’s about culture and pride.

“Growing up, it was still a bit iffy to call yourself Aboriginal and be proud of it. And I think we need to acknowledge that there is beauty within us right from the beginning. And still, sometimes you may not identify as Aboriginal because you've just been told not to by the generation before you. But I think the beauty is in our young people coming through… they're proud they are Blak. They will tell the whole world.”

Elaine rejects the single story about how First Nations people “should” look.

“When you say First Nations, most people, including the young generation who are not First Nations, just expect to see a dark person, because that's what is being portrayed. I think beauty comes in all shades and hair colours. I’ve got a daughter who's a ranga. I've got a son who's got porcelain skin. I think that's our beauty, it’s that we don't define our beauty through the colour of our skin. We define beauty in who we are, where we come from and how connected we are to our people.”

Elaine and Sasha both see beauty in what others might dismiss.

“...if you feel good and beautiful internally, that’s going to glow, and I want to see our beauty! We’ve got elders, and if you look into their eyes, you can see the storylines by looking at their faces. And it doesn’t need to be masked. [They] have gone through all of this to give me something. Now, my lines and beauty get passed on to the next generation.

When asked about her own beauty icon, Elaine didn’t point to glossy magazines or celebrities. She named Auntie Robin – a stolen-generation survivor, fierce and unyielding.

“She had these piercing blue eyes, and she was a feisty one—she would go to the park all the time, sit with family and stick up for her people. She was rough, but soft-hearted when it came to me and the rest of us. And she was the epitome of beauty to me.”

When asked what she’d tell her younger self – and the new wave of First Nations models – Elaine didn’t hesitate.

“I would have said embrace it more…when I went to LA to model, no one had even heard of Aboriginal people in Australia. At 18, I thought, ‘How can I educate the world when I can’t even educate Australia?’ They were so used to just the blonde hair, blue eyes back in the 90s, and if I had felt my beauty within and been stronger back then, I might have challenged it a little bit more.” 

Elaine also spoke about the harder side of beauty – the times she felt unseen in mainstream spaces.

“Even walking into a store that is culturally safe, and people keep saying, ‘what does that mean?’ It’s small stuff like that acknowledgment on their front door, or how they made me feel in Darwin… The girls were amazing. First and foremost, they said, ‘May I ask your nationality?’ And they said, ‘So we're gonna try a different foundation for you…’ They helped me through that the entire time. And that's the first time a brand has done that. Because sometimes, when I get my makeup done, I look at it when I go to the bathroom, and I just want to cry.”

Elaine George nee Tanaka is a proud Arakwal woman from the Bundjalung nation in northern NSW. Elaine has a background in Child Protection. She has worked in many roles including Team leader, SCAN Core Member, Children's Court Representative, Murri Court, RE Child Protection work, and Critical Friend on Panels. She is currently the Cultural Practice Lead at Key Assets Australia in Brisbane, QLD.

In 2023, Elaine featured on episode one of Documentary released The Way We Wore, a three-part documentary series of Australian fashion featured on Netflix + Stan. She is the Ambassador and Model Mentor for BlakList – Next Gen program. She has recently been recognised as IMG Changemaker in 2024.