Charles’s meteoric rise to the top of this exclusive club has been uniquely defined by seemingly endless
scandals. In February 2017 he was forced to apologise after a tweet in which he joked about getting Ebola
while on a school trip to Africa. Just a few months later, fellow beauty influencer Thomas Halbert posted
screenshots of conversations which seemed to discredit the ringlight story that led to Charles’s fame,
suggesting he actually photoshopped his “poppin” highlight. In April 2019 he caught flak yet again after
saying in a video that he was not “full gay” because he had been “into” trans guys, suggesting that they did
not count as men for the purpose of identifying his sexuality.
The following month he was widely ridiculed for posting on Instagram that his invitation to the Met Gala
was “a step in the right direction for influencer representation in the media” and that he was glad to be the
“catalyst”.
While his comments were somewhat tone-deaf and self-aggrandising as someone with such huge privilege,
it’s true that the media and fashion industry tend to ignore social media influencers in favour of covering
more traditional celebrities, leading to a disconnect between the reality of their huge impact and lack of
awareness among the masses.
This was epitomised in January when Charles made an appearance at a shopping centre in Birmingham and
thousands of fans brought the city centre to a standstill, much to the surprise of officials who clearly failed
to understand the scope of his influence and plan accordingly.
Charles’s wish to be acknowledged by the mainstream would soon be granted, but in a cruel twist of fate it
would not be for his success, but for the projected death of his career.
The first video: he started out by filming
makeup tutorials and posting them on
YouTube (James Charles/YouTube)The cancelling of James Charles
Tati Westbrook is a 37-year-old beauty YouTuber. She has been on the platform since 2010, and for much of
that time was posting five videos a week, mostly focusing on product reviews and tutorials. Over almost a
decade, she amassed more than 6 million subscribers and is widely respected on the platform for her
perceived authenticity (unlike most influencers, she rarely accepts brand sponsorships) and ability to stay
out of the drama despite her public friendships with controversial figures such as Jeffree Star. Newsweek
referred to her as “a progenitor of YouTube’s beauty scene” and indeed that is how she was broadly
perceived among the community.
So people were inclined to not only listen, but also blindly believe her allegations when she posted her now-
infamous 43-minute video entitled “Bye Sister” – the title being a reference to Charles’s trademark term
for his subscribers (“Hi sisters!”), his friends (“I’m doing a collaboration with sister Jeffree Star!”), and
pretty much any word in his vocabulary (he’s going to put on a “sister winged liner”, his day is “sister