James Charles – From sandbox to make-up table

Let’s rewind a few years first. To be more precise, let’s go back to the year 1999 – on May 23rd, James Charles Dickinson, born in Bethlehem, New York, saw the light of day.

At the tender age of only twelve, he came out as gay. To support his love for make-up, his father built him a glam room in the basement of the house. The official launch of his YouTube channel followed in 2015.

He received worldwide attention when he spread the word on Twitter that he had a ring light with him during his prom so that the highlight on his face would look good in the photos. This was followed by his collaboration with Covergirl and his famous appearance on the US-American Ellen Show.

Since his high school graduation in 2017, the king of make-up has been concentrating full-time on his work as a YouTuber, make-up make-up artist and influencer. His net worth was estimated at 12 million US dollars in 2019. Charles has also won several awards for his channel, opened several stores in collaboration with Morphe, and made up Australian rapper Iggy Azaela for her music video for “Sally Walker”. Just as long as the list of his successes is the list of his scandals.

• 1999: James Charles is born in New York City
• 2011: Public Outing
• 2015: Launch of his YouTube channel
• 2017: High school graduation and start of his professional YouTube career

We have summarized for you the three most blatant controversies about James Charles. Here you can find one of his most popular videos of the beauty icon:

Quick Facts: This is how many subscribers he has

• Name: James Charles
• Born: 23 May 1999
• Active since: 02.12.2015
• Subscribers: 18.8 million
• Total hits: 2.16 billion
• Net worth: $12 million dollars

The biggest controversies: Ebola jokes and betrayal of friendship

The Ebola Tweet

On 16 February 2017, James Charles pulled out his mobile phone on his way to South Africa to spread the following joke on Twitter:

“‘I can’t believe we’re going to Africa today omg what if we get Ebola.’ ‘James we’re fine we could’ve gotten it at chipotle last year'”

Criticism quickly came from Twitter users. The then 17-year-old YouTuber quickly apologized and deleted the tweet.

Discreditation of transsexual men

On April 12, 2019, Charles also spoke about his sexuality during a collab with Vlogger Jeff Witteck. They discussed the Kinsey scale, a measuring instrument used in sexology to determine an individual’s sexual orientation. Charles said that he saw himself on a 5.5 – that is, in the middle. He gave the following reasons for this: “I mean… there have been girls in the past that I’ve considered very, very beautiful. There were also transsexuals in the past whom I was really, really keen on for a moment. His fans found his statement insulting as it discredited transsexual men as “real men”. Again an apology from James Charles followed quickly.

The loss of one million subscribers…

How did James Charles a million subscriptions on his channel?

Long Story Short: On April 22, 2019, Charles published a recommendation for the Sugar Bear Hair product on Instagram. The background: The company had helped him with security problems during the California Coachella Festival. As the company’s direct competitor to Sugar Bear Hair, beauty guru Tati Westbrook expressed her displeasure on YouTube and accused Charles of betraying her friendship: Instead of promoting Sugar Bear Hair’s products, he should have promoted her company as a good friend of hers. She also accused him of disgusting sexual expressions at private events. The situation escalated quickly and YouTube stars like Nikkita Dragun and Jeffree Star joined in.

This led to another (probably unwanted) record for James Charles: After the publication of the first accusation video by Westbrook, he lost more than one million subscribers. And this only within one hour! There has never been anything like this in the history of YouTubes. When the Feud finally ended in Charles’ favor, his subscriber numbers recovered and made him the most famous Beauty YouTuber of all time.

Check out the last video he posted regarding the scandal here. Random fact: It is also the video with the most clicks on his channel:

Jeffree Star: A story full of glitter, drugs and rock’n’roll

The icon of the beauty community was born in Los Angeles in 1985 as Jeffree Lynn Steininger Jr. After the suicide of his father, it was mainly his mother Marra Shubyann Lindstrom Steininger who raised him. Already at school Jeffree Star had a lot of fun with make-up and earned his money as a musician, model and also if necessary as an unknown make-up artist for the stars of Hollywood. He got to know them on weekends in the hippest clubs in the city, which he visited regularly despite his young age and thanks to a fake ID.

Looking closely at his career, you wouldn’t expect that the shrill Jeffree Star would one day become a make-up mogul. In the beginning, working with brush and powder was simply a secondary income. His real dream? To become a musician. So in 2009 Star released his first and so far only studio album. Although he was signed by the label Konvict Muzik shortly afterwards, he left the label a few years later.

In November 2014, the former musician and now famous YouTuber officially became a businessman: The company Jeffree Star Cosmetics was born. He is currently considered one of the best-paid YouTubers of all time and, according to Forbes, he recently earned a whopping 18 million dollars – and that through YouTube alone.

• 1985: Jeffree Star is born in Los Angeles
• 2006: Launch of the YouTube channel
• 2009: Release of his first album
• 2010: Contract with Konvtict Muzik
• 2014: Launch of Jeffree Star Cosmetics

How the beauty icon lives today, you can see here in the video:

Quick Facts: Crass net worth

• Name: Jeffree Star
• Born: 15 November 1985
• Active since: 15.02.2006
• Subscribers: 18.1 million
• Total hits: 2.16 billion
• Net worth: $75 million dollars

Biggest Controversies: Jealousy and Online Bullying

Jeffree Star has been involved in the most blatant scandals in the YouTube world from the very beginning. From racism to drug use to online bullying, he has left nothing out.

Kat von D: Two giants of American pop culture clash

For years the tattoo goddess Kat of D and Jeffree Star together made the Hollywood Hills unsafe. But suddenly there was a merciless break: In 2016, D unexpectedly posted a photo of stars with a big ‘no’ on his face and declared on Instagram that she didn’t want any more contact with him because of his drug use, racism and bullying. Of course this didn’t leave Star sitting on her hands and accused D of envy of the success of his successful make-up collection. After a long back and forth, the feud remains unsolved until today and so both Star and von D have not commented on it since then.

Nikkita Dragun, Laura Lee and Manny MUA: An old Feud escalates

Similar to the friendship with Kat von D, other relationships crumbled in the course of his career. At the beginning of his career, Jeffree belonged to a group of aspiring newcomers to the YouTube sphere: Laura Lee, Manny MUA, Nikkita Dragon and Gabriel Zamora. In 2017 Star published a series of tweets about an ex-boyfriend / ex-girlfriend and described the personality of Beauty YouTuberess Laura Lee as ‘vicious’. The friendship broke up and the whole clique distanced themselves from Star.

Rumors about failed investments and business friendships were spreading. Although Jeffree Star was always portrayed as a culprit by the YouTube community, there were never any official statements. The feud was almost forgotten when YouTube legend Shane Dawson published a documentary series about the life of Jeffree Star.

A few days later Stars former friend Zamora posted a photo with Laura Lee, Manny MUA and Nikkita Dragun with the title:

“B*tch is bitter because without him we’re doing better”

But the many new fans that Jeffree Star had gained thanks to the sympathetic documentary series quickly came to his support: In order to take revenge, they published old, racist tweets from the past Dragon, Lee, Manny and Zamora. They publicly apologized for their racist statements at the time and are still partly struggling with the effects of the scandal today.

Star was also criticized for racist statements in the past, for which he apologizes in the following video from 2018: