The two most subscribed beauty channels on YouTube are both by males

[Hithere12]

The top two beauty channels are James Charles (13mil subs) and Jeffry Star (14mil subs). There’s been a big controversy with James Charles recently and Jeffry Starr overtook him as most subscribed.

I mean seriously? Surely MAKEUP as a category should be favouring women?

Most of the people who follow this content are women. I think we need to acknowledge that woman are guilty of being sexist and favouring men over women, and assuming they know more Because they are men. These two channels are not even good at makeup. It’s way too over the top for woman because men naturally need more makeup if they’re trying to look “feminine”. It was just a shock to me that the top two are BOTH men when overall there are way more female beauty channels.

Sorry, but isn't it just as sexist to say women should be dominating the world of cosmetics, as a man saying men should be dominating the world of say, mechanics ?
Or perhaps the millions of women that watch these men never got the memo 🤔

I think that James Charles gets heaps of praise purely for being a boy wearing makeup, because quite frankly his makeup is crap and he depends upon FaceTune to make it look somewhat decent. He doesn't seem to be aware that he has pink undertones and his foundation is far to yellow for him for a start.

I do love John McLean and think he's genuinely talented and unique and produces great content.

Talk about wanting to reinforce stereotypes. Explain to me why makeup is an inherently female endeavour, OP.

This is a thing?

I'd never heard of James Charles or Tati Westbrook until someone on FWR posted about the downfall of James Charles at the hands of Tati.

What a drama- actually no it was tedious in the extreme- from both of them. Tati has 10m subscribers.

Yep can’t get worked up about this at all. I stopped watching them as it was bad for my bank balance

What a drama- actually no it was tedious in the extreme- from both of them. Tati has 10m subscribers

She had 5.6mil when she released the video. She’s gained 4.4mil in about 5 days

@StillLostinEdinburgh What on earth is a fillum?!

I think considering that they both ( but especially JC with his sister merch) engage with their audience and make huge amount of money while using female language -sister, girl, bitch etc. I don't think we can pretend like they aren't trying to use the 'sisterhood'. I do loath men using the word bitch with a passion though.

I think male beauty influencers, unlike the female ones, get to be more direct rather than use simpering voices all too often and don't have to play the game softly softly gently gently.

I think you have a point OP as evidenced by the fact that so few of the most subscribed and viewed YouTube channels are owned by women despite women making up a large share of the YouTube audience. It seems that despite YouTube predominantly being consumed by relatively young people it has followed a similar pattern to more traditional media where people prefer to watch men.

Those saying that it's refreshing to see men take the lead in the beauty arena should note that women are not enjoying as much success with traditionally male dominated genres such as gaming.

@Pota
Talk about wanting to reinforce stereotypes. Explain to me why makeup is an inherently female endeavour, OP
It's not about reinforcing stereotypes but it's about understanding why we continue to appear to have a preference towards consuming content created and fronted by men.

If you were to look at the most subscribed YouTube channels at the moment then you would see that quite a few are gaming channels. For whatever reason most gamers are currently male so one could reasonably expect that more men would be interested in this topic, start channels and upload relevant videos. This hypothesis holds true and the top gaming channels are all owned by men. Conversely females are currently the ones who overwhelmingly purchase, use and have an interest in make-up. This isn't about analysing why women would do this, but appreciating that at present this is an interest dominated by women so why are women not leading this community?

Okay that’s a better explanation. But it’s the followers who are determining the popularity of these people so why are women following them? Also as someone said, they might be bought followers. I have never heard of either of them and I don’t see them getting promoted on beauty sites etc. in the way that female beauty bloggers do.

@Pota
But it’s the followers who are determining the popularity of these people so why are women following them?
I think that's the million dollar question. I don't have the answer but would love to know the reason why this has happened here and happens so often in other genres and media.

FWIW I think this is quite an important issue because it's about representation. If women can't even lead in areas where women form the vast majority of the audience then what chance do they have when the audience is more split or weighted more towards men. Ideally men and women would be seen as individuals that could have a presence in any genre they were interested in but the current situation means that men dominate everything and women are left with the scraps .

Are eyes popping out and lips receding?

Actually I think their make-up tutorials look a bit too drag queeny. I'm more interested in ones for more specific problems like mature skin and eyeliner for hooded eyes. I think women have more insight into this.

MummyParanoia - it's a reference to his accent. He's from one of the outer isles, Orkney I think. So quite a neutral accent, Scottish but with some words a wee bit Irish. Hence 'fillum'. Nothing as common as a video .