If you are even remotely involved in the beauty community on YouTube, you know that the community has been up in flames recently.
Currently, some of the top influencers include Jeffree Star, Laura Lee and Manny MUA — they were even a "squad" at one point. There has been some tension since Jeffree broke ties with Manny and Laura, but a tweet by Gabriel Zamora, who is friends with Manny, Laura and Nikita Dragun, surfaced, bashing Jeffree. And it brought a lot of baggage with it.
Laura Lee, Nikita Dragun, Gabriel Zamora and Manny MUA.https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1404171-jeffree-star
In the reply thread to this tweet, other Twitter users pulled up screenshots of racist tweets from Gabriel, Nikita and Laura. This caused an uproar because Gabriel had been going after Jeffree for being a racist when he also had racist tendencies in the past.
http://www.clevver.com/gabriel-zamora-apologizes-r...
With Laura, she had more obvious racist tweets, even ones that told men of color to pull up their pants so that they could "run from the police faster." Nikita's were mostly distasteful, talking about how some children deserved to be abused.
https://trendingallday.com/beauty-vlogger-laura-le...
https://www.reddit.com/r/BeautyGuruChatter/comment...
Before this scandal surfaced, Laura and Manny both had over five million subscribers, Nikita had over one million and Gabriel was only in the hundred thousands. Since then, all of their numbers have taken drastic plunges, the most obvious plunge being Laura Lee, who has lost over 600,000 subscribers.
This is the main thing: I do not care if these racist comments or issues were yesterday, six years ago or ten years ago. The main thing is that although people make these mistakes, at least try to appear slightly sorry.
There have been a few videos posted from the four of these influencers, as well as written statements from all of them. But none of their statements appear even slightly sincere. Manny got off easy because, as a man of color, he knows that these struggles with discrimination exist. However, the other three needed more explanation and apology than they gave.
https://trendingallday.com/laura-lee-is-getting-dr...
You can say that you're sorry all that you want, but until you mean it, it does not matter. What matters are the actions you take following such incidents.
Laura Lee, you can say that you want to contribute to foundations because to the obvious racism you "used to" have, but are you going to actually do it? Nikita, are you going to ignore it forever? Gabriel and Manny, are you going to expose your friends to save yourselves?
Influencers are held to higher expectations because, as mentioned before, two of these influencers had over five million subscribers. That means that five million people have them under a microscope. Their moves matter because there are most likely more than just their subscriber count watching.
Is this the death of the beauty influencer world? I surely think so, and I will be at the funeral.
