YouTube's Beauty Community Has A Bad Reputation But A Bright Future

YouTube’s aesthetics community has a reputation for being one of the most dramatic corners of the world wide web, and with good reason. This year alone, James Charles and Tati Westbrook’s shocking and emotional feud — which started over vitamins — spread far in back of the platform’s thousands of drama streams and infiltrated mainstream publications from People to Forbes. Right after, the launch of Jaclyn Hill’s lipstick collection was shrouded in controversy immediately after consumers found hair-like fibers and other chunky particles in her products. Months later, Shane Dawson’s subscribers flocked to his channel by the millions to watch his series on the making of his Conspiracy eyeshadow palette with makeup mogul Jeffree Star, which promised to explore the shady underbelly of the industry.


But despite all of the tea in 2019, several in the aesthetics community believe it's still a positive space where creators feel empowered and often inspired by their peers.


“There are thousands of people out there making makeup tutorials, having a good time, being accommodating, and giving excellent product reviews that are being overshadowed,” Kristi of RawBeautyKristi told MTV News. Kristi began her aesthetics channel in 2012 soon after a five-year fertility struggle, which she documented on a separate account entirely. Though she didn’t have prior makeup knowledge, she saw what Michelle Phan and Kandee Johnson — veritable YouTube pioneers — were doing and felt compelled to allocate people something a little bit different. “I was a ‘NYC liquid liner for a $1.50’ kind of person, so I wanted to give people affordable makeup tutorials,” she explained. Plus it worked. To date, Kristi has amassed 819K subscribers.


As Kristi’s following grew, so did the sheer volume of users creating and seeking out product reviews, inspirational how-tos, and other beauty-centric videos on YouTube. “There really was no aesthetics community any time If I started,” she mentioned. Yet on the platform today, some of the largest creators are makeup artists, including Star with 16.8 million subscribers, Charles with 16.4 million, NikkieTutorials with 12.4 million, and Westbrook with 9.7 million. The downside? The community extends far in back of those top influencers, and as soon as drama hits, it tends to give the whole circle a bad rap. “That’s as soon as people mention that the aesthetics community is so dramatic,” Kristi mentioned. “But in the event you really zoom out, that isn’t even remotely true.”


Aliyah Bowers, a 20-year-old micro-influencer (someone whose follower span is somewhere between 2,000 and 50,000) with over 3,500 followers on Instagram, has long fancied makeup artists Jackie Aina, Jaclyn Hill, Carli Bybel, and yes, Charles. She recently uploaded an audition video to her account in hopes of being cast in Charles’s new YouTube Original competition series, which has the working title James Charles Instant Influencer. Bowers, who launched her channel around three years prior, feels “it’s such a big opportunity,” she told MTV News. “Being a little influencer, you just never have a lot of possibilities, and also you desire to try as much as you could to get as far as you could go. You never know what can come of it.”


For several new creators, that’s the most thrilling part; anything can take place while you share a video online — including viral fame. 20-year-old aesthetics guru Cohl of Cohlsworld, as an example, amassed 30K Instagram followers in July 2016 right after just one month on the platform. Yet it wasn’t up until 2019 that the former national cheerleading champion started taking social media seriously as a career. Right now managed by fellow YouTuber and industry giant Patrick Starrr, Cohl boasts 386K followers on Instagram, 144K subscribers on YouTube, collabs with major brands like Buxom and Colourpop, and was honored with the Emerging Artist of the Year Award at the American Influencer Awards. His most-viewed video ever is his no-holds-barred review of a lip gloss from Jeffree Star’s eponymous cosmetics line with nearly one million views.


Despite befriending some of the most well-known aesthetics gurus on YouTube, Cohl is still very much aware of the community’s current ecosystem. “The aesthetics community is literally high school,” he mentioned. “Everyone wants a part of the pie, each person wants to be popular, each person wants to be teacher’s pet.” To make sure he doesn’t get caught up in drama, he tries to keep to himself. “I keep my circle very close,” he mentioned. “There can be so much drama and thus much competition that I attempt to stay away from it all.” As for Kristi, her main tip for avoiding conflict is to simply not participate in it — something she recommends to young makeup artists who hope to prepare it in the industry. “I get that comment on my social media all of the time: ‘Is it also late to begin? Is it also dramatic?’ I hate that because it can inhibit people from doing something that they love because they’re afraid of drama,” she mentioned. “You don’t need to be afraid of it. Just don’t engage.”


Fortunately, the rather publicized feuds inside of the community — like Charles and Westbrook’s public spat, or the messiness that ensued in 2018 whenever Gabriel Zamora, Manny MUA, Laura Lee, and Nikita Dragun flipped off Star — aren’t keeping people from exploring YouTube as a possible avenue to success, with over 1.9 billion logged-in users per month. “I don’t let it scare me or stop me from doing what I want to do,” Bowers mentioned. “[People] like to latch onto the newest drama and engage and attack people, however I like concentrate on myself because, at the end of the day, I’m the only one who’s going to get me where I want to go.”


Yet in the current climate, it’s not habitually easy to avoid conflict. For some creators, deciding once to comment on controversial topics and once to stay quiet gets particularly tricky, especially any time it comes to makeup reviews, which is a large piece of the job. Cohl’s “Unbiased Review” series, as an example, gets him “into drama all of the time,” he mentioned. “I just review influencer or aesthetics community launches because I feel like those are the ones that are the most biased. I step away from my friendships and just give my sincere advice about packaging, formula, the launch, everything.” Kristi also takes straightforward product reviews very seriously, saying, “Our job is to help other people know what’s good and what’s not. We’re trying it so they don’t have to spend their money.”


To date, Kristi’s highest-performing video is a perplexing 52-minute-long evaluation of Jaclyn Hill’s hotly contested lipsticks, in which she displays the fuzzy, hole-ridden products under a microscope before trying them out; the review has been viewed over 4.4 million times. However choosing to assess the creation of an industry peer isn't easy. “There are so several things to take into consideration,” she mentioned. “You need to know the history of the brand, the brand owners, and whether or not you feel comfortable supporting them.” Yet her comments about the cosmetics were — like most each person else’s — negative, she insists it’s not personalized. “I really ensure that I’m dead sincere no matter what, even if it’s against one of my peers,” she explained.


Not to say, there’s a whole lot of cash at stake. Per a July 2019 report shared by Business Insider from retail analytics firm Edited, the aesthetics industry is valued at a whopping $532 billion, which can largely be attributed to the “growth of direct-to-consumer aesthetics brands, enabled by social streams, email marketing, and shoppable apps.” The earning power of top influencers is identically staggering; an eas Google search will reveal Star’s net worth to be at least $50 million. And according to Forbes, Huda Kattan of Huda Aesthetics, whose 2010 blog grew into an aesthetics empire of over 140 products, has a net worth even more amazing at a massive $610 million.


And while it could appear glamorous to viewers, the journey to success isn't easy. “It’s a 24-hour job. There’s no sleeping, no days off,” Cohl mentioned, and this pressure is exacerbated any time drama erupts online, noting that “you can certainly feel it.” Kristi agrees, calling these scandals “uncomfortable” for those who make their living on YouTube. “There’s just this sick-to-your-stomach feeling,” she explained. “It’s almost like if something bad were to happen at your office. You’re just like, ‘Oh, God. I work here. This is awkward.’ It’s certainly a tense feeling, and also you just don’t hope to be dragged into it at all.”


That's why several aesthetics influencers feel the public image of the YouTube aesthetics community isn’t 100 percent accurate. “[It] is really being painted as something that I feel like it’s not,” Kristi mentioned, explaining that the drama often has nothing to do with makeup and everything to do with “personal relationships, friendships, egos, numbers, and subscribers.” Still, the negative attention makes her fear for the future of the space as a whole. “I just don’t want it to be discredited by brands or media for something that’s such a tiny segment of it," she mentioned. "And yes, that small part is the most viewed, the most discussed about, but…it really invalidates the rest of the people who are just interested in makeup and having a good time and sharing their artistry.”


Yet Cohl isn't so concerned. Immediately considering that, as long as consumers have access to products, there will be a community. “Beauty will never go out of trend,” he mentioned, sharing that even his grandma watches Jaclyn Hill. “This isn't a fidget spinner. This is people’s everyday lives.” And in the “changing, developing, and constantly growing” ecosystem that exists today — one that’s helped make it OK for “men to wear foundation, contour, and color correctives” — Cohl says it’s “just never going to go away.”


While it’s also soon to tell what the future has in store for YouTube’s most buzzed-about circle, one thing’s for sure: Influencers big and small are optimistic that it will evolve into a constructive and drama-free space. “I just hope for more love, more understanding, and more empathy,” Bowers mentioned. “We have to work on being more of a unit.” For Kristi, it’s about getting back to the community’s roots. “I hope that it [becomes] a place where people can set the negativity and drama aside and just get back to what it is, which is aesthetics, and having a good time with makeup and realizing it’s not that deep.” Identically, Cohl sees all the new talent in the community — namely ZackaryVang, LaviedunPrince, Samual.Rayy, and Japanslayz — and is hopeful that, someday, relevance won’t be decided by news headlines, yet by artistry.


“It’s up to us,” Bowers mentioned, to prepare positive change. “We don’t have to engage in drama. We don’t have to criticize and cancel people.” And yet Cohl is still a little skeptical about whether or not the community will ever quite get to where they want it to go, both he and Kristi are devoted to sustaining the same morals and ambitions as once they first began. “My main objective is have the ability to help my family member and spread kindness and love,” he mentioned. “Integrity over cash, views, all of it,” Kristi added. “If you don’t have that, you don’t have anything.”