Opinion: What the Beauty Community Needs to Always Remember
The beauty community must not lose sight of what it is all about.
To me, the beauty community is a place where I can express my creativity freely with no rules–a place to meet and connect with people, regardless of gender or anything else, and bond over the craft of makeup. From experimenting with different colors, to helping each other shade match, to taking normal makeup looks to the next level, expression is the most important part of the beauty community, and the freedom to do so as well.
For the beauty community to thrive, I think it’s important to remember this: do not take yourself so seriously. When did the beauty community become less about makeup tutorials and more about influencer drama? Let’s give less attention to the drama, and more attention to independent artists. Let’s give less attention to meaningless posts on social media and more to exchanging blending techniques.
I’m not saying influencers are bad to have. I think it’s important to have people to look up to and support, especially during times like these. I think for some influencers, it has become less about makeup and more about drama and scandals. I think for the community as a whole, it has become more of influencers and less of really connecting with each other. We all have one love, and it’s makeup.
The beauty community is about self love, self expression and lifting each other up. The moment I see bright highlighter on someone’s cheekbones is the same moment I go up and compliment them. The more we nurture and support each other, the healthier the community will be.
We have to support each other or no such community can exist. That being said, we have to support brands that have a wide range of shades like Fenty Beauty. We have to support brands that represent all genders in makeup. We need to give less attention to viral influencers who used to be about makeup, and give more attention and give a voice to independent artists trying to share their love and talent with the community.
Sure, there are brands that we love and support but we cannot let the beauty community become a brand itself, where anything that looks different or is not usual cannot be apart of the community. The whole point of makeup is to show off our differences and diversity. To brand it as a celebrity influencer or an Instagram influencer is missing the entire point and dimming the light of the values mentioned before.
The more we give platforms to lesser known artists, the more fresh and ever changing the beauty community will be. The beauty community was never about drama, never about “tea spilling”, never about shutting someone out because their makeup style is different from someone else’s.
We must remember why we are all here in the first place: to have fun with makeup and connect with each other–to support and bring out the best in ourselves, and each other. The beauty community is only a community if we hold close our one love that unifies us: makeup.