Last week, I started to talk about the makeup bubble that’s encased YouTube in the form of hundreds of videos on makeup hauls, tutorials on “looks,” best/worst makeup buys, etc. I also brought up the fact that the words “guru” and “makeup artist” have been carelessly slapped on a lot of YouTubers, who have done mainly tutorial videos on themselves rather than others. There are exceptions, of course, but they make up a small number.
More likely than not, if I search for a makeup tutorial on YouTube, the video will feature a “beauty guru” that demonstrates how to achieve a certain look using themselves as a model instead of another person. And I’ll be brutally honest: I’m not impressed. They leave me wanting for the days when I grew up watching Ricky Reyes showcase his hairstylist skills on TV. You could give him any length or type of hair and he’d somehow make it work.
Granted, Ricky Reyes spent years honing his skill set as a hairstylist and on people of varying hair types. I don’t know how long prominent YouTube makeup “gurus” have been doing makeup and if they’ve ever done makeup on others (Lisa Eldridge and NikkieTutorials are the only ones I’ve seen), so comparing the two would seem unfair, right?
