The Toxicity of Beauty Gurus

Image Courtesy: Pinterest

If you’re a James Charles fan, you may want to take a seat for this. Yet again the infamous James Charles is in the news with another allegation that could possibly cancel him. Charles has been on Youtube since 2015, and over that time he has been under fire for his actions multiple times. In February of 2017, he hit the news for racist tweets over the Ebola Virus in Africa.

After that, there have been many questionable actions from Charles, however, in 2019 is when Charles almost lost it all. 

Tati Westbrook, a close friend to Charles, started her own vitamin company, Halo Beauty Vitamins. James was secretly working against Westbrook’s company by supporting a different hair vitamin brand, Sugar Bear Hair. That’s not where it ends though - in her youtube video, “Bye Sister”, she talks all about the inappropriate actions Charles frequently partakes in. After Westbrook came forward,  Jeffrey Star, Nikita Dragun, and Shane Dawson also came forward with stories about James. He was doing questionable things, such as trying to “manipulate someone’s sexuality”, according to Westbrook. When news broke out about Charles and these allegations, many people started to unfollow him. He ended up losing 2.6 million followers within 3 days. 

Charles has gained many of those followers back, but it took a lot of time for the heat to blow over and for people to forget about the allegations against him. Recently Charles made news headlines again, and not good ones. A 16 year old boy has recently come forward claiming Charles had pressured him into exchanging explicit pictures using Snapchat. Charles did come forward after the news saying he was unaware of the boy’s age. 

Through his platform on YouTube, James Charles is just trying to show the world his passion through make-up and make people feel beautiful. Unfortunately, this message does not seem to be spread by Charles outside of his Youtube channel though. While Youtube and other platforms are becoming overly toxic and with cancel-culture and it is almost becoming impossible for influencers to do anything without being under a microscope, it may not be such a bad thing in Charles’ case. Charles has done many questionable things over the years and there is no excuse for the behavior. When serious allegations are brought up, they cannot be ignored just because he is considered an ‘influencer’. 

Strike Out,

Writer: Quinn Sheehan

Editors: Lauren Cich & Marissa DeMaio

St. Augustine