The world of makeup has changed a lot in the past years with the rise of the internet and influencers.

Social media influencers and YouTubers have changed how makeup is marketed to the consumer. People such as James Charles, Jeffree Star, and Nikkietutorials have become as big as traditional movie stars.

Many people now buy makeup based on what their favorite influencers are raving about at the moment. This has changed how brands market to the consumer. Brands will now pay influencers to talk about their product or send their product to them for free as a way for their product to be talked about.

With this new model, brands are releasing more and more makeup trying to get something to become popular. This makes the consumer feel like they constantly have to buy products in order to keep up with the trends. This has propelled the beauty industry into growing like crazy. According to Business Insider, the beauty industry is worth $532 billion dollars.

Currently one of the largest things being talked about is Shane Dawson’s video series called The Secret Life of Jeffree Star. Shane Dawson has been recording his own experience of being in the makeup world and what it’s like creating a product.

Shane has exposed how much money and backstage pressure there is in the beauty industry talking about how much brands make for selling makeup. Shane also talked about how brands take advantage of influencers in his series.

The series has been getting millions of views and his beauty launch is the most anticipated beauty launch of the year.

With all this money in the industry, there is bound to be some drama in the community. The beauty community has been called toxic with all of the drama that surrounds it. Many of the influencers have beef with each other. There always seems to be some sort of drama happening. Some people have made entire YouTube drama channels dedicated to reporting on the beauty community.

Ask anyone who follows the community and they’ll know all about Jeffree Star vs Kat Von D or Laura Lee’s infamous apology video. The beauty community lives and breathes of the drama of backstabbing friends in order to drive sales and destroy their competition.

One of the largest scandals ever, happened earlier this year. It was the Tati and James Charles drama. For those who don’t know, Tati and James had a close mentor kind of relationship before the drama started.

On April 22, James posted an ad for Sugar Bear Hair, a direct competitor to Tati’s brand, Halo Beauty. Tati went on Instagram stories crying about what James had done. James later posted an apology on Instagram to Tati and it seemed like the incident was over.

Then on May 10, Tati uploaded a 40-minute video on YouTube that has since been deleted, calling out James for not supporting her and claimed that James tried to force straight men to have sex with him. Tati provided no evidence when stating this. The situation resulted in James losing millions of subscribers in a few short days and being blasted all over the Internet.

Regardless of if you’re team Tati, team James or you don’t care about the situation at all, this shows how ready the beauty community is to bandwagon together against someone further propelling cancel culture.

This also has an impression on young viewers of these channels possibly making them second guess their own friendships and create a sense that drama is needed in their own lives.

The beauty community also is full of plastic surgery, FaceTune and unrealistic beauty standards that can have negative impacts on viewers. It’s one thing to see a model in a magazine with these beauty standards, but seeing your favorite influencers who you look up to getting plastic surgery can make their viewers feel they have to live up to this standard as well.

This could lead to eating disorders and other harmful psychological effects, especially on younger kids’ brains, which are still developing. They are likely to feel insecure about their own bodies and feel a need to change them in order to fit the beauty standard.

The beauty industry needs to change or risk negatively influencing its followers. It’s overabundance of drama and unrealistic beauty standards creates a harmful environment for the consumers and the influencers themselves.