Hailey Bieber’s Brownie Glazed Lip Trend Is Appropriation
Hailey Bieber faced criticism around the weekend just after a TikTok movie she created about “brownie glazed lips” was identified as out for appropriating a makeup procedure favored by Latinas and Black and brown ladies considering that the ’90s.
In Bieber’s unique video clip, which has received 2.9 million views considering the fact that she posted it on Aug. 23, the design wears brown lip liner with a clear glossy lip remedy from her splendor brand Rhode, captioning the write-up “ready for all the drop points which includes brownie glazed lips.”
The use of brown lip liner and apparent gloss has long been favored by females with darker pores and skin tones, and Bieber doesn’t declare to have invented the lip combo in the video—but her write-up led to an inflow of largely white TikTok end users recreating the seem on the system and crediting Bieber as their inspiration. As the pattern took off, critics derided the framing of a attractiveness procedure extensive practiced by women of coloration as getting been “started” by a white movie star. The controversy achieved a boiling position around the weekend, when the topic started to development on Twitter. Just one online video in specific, in which creator Victoria Lyn referred to the attractiveness craze as “Hailey Bieber’s go-to fall lip combo,” was cited multiple occasions by other creators arguing that branding the strategy “brownie glazed lips” is problematic and intended to assistance market Bieber’s cosmetics.
Browse additional: Cornrows and Cultural Appropriation: The Truth About Racial Identity Theft
Twitter users underscored the longevity of the magnificence development and how it was well-known with ladies of colour very long in advance of Bieber posted about it they also pointed out how the racism inherent in beauty ideals means that Bieber is becoming celebrated for performing the very same point that gals of color have been criticized for.
Some of Bieber’s supporters designed the situation that her mom is Brazilian and could have been the supply of the model’s inspiration. But the glimpse has traditionally been connected with the unique aesthetics of cholas, a subculture of initial and next technology Mexican Us citizens, as properly as Black and brown women of all ages, who typically turned to brown brow and eye liners and distinct lip gloss to create a nude lip color when the sector lacked shade options to match their pores and skin tones.
Read through extra: ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ Is Ending. But Their Exploitation of Black Women’s Aesthetics Carries on
The controversy surrounding Bieber’s “brownie glazed lips” is barely new—it’s component of a larger discussion about cultural appropriation in attractiveness procedures, especially when it will come to so-known as developments that are popularized on platforms like TikTok and touted by influencers and famous people. On TikTok, the most evident illustration of this may perhaps be the “clean girl aesthetic,” which is characterised by slicked-again hair, gold hoops and other jewelry, minimalist make-up, and acrylic nails. These are all aesthetic features that Latinas and Black women of all ages have very long sported, now rebranded as “model off-duty” looks influenced by women of all ages like Bieber and Bella Hadid.
The implications prolong much further than TikTok. Even though natural beauty benchmarks are consistently shifting, the idealization of whiteness in magnificence stays. Aesthetic tendencies practiced by girls of shade, like wearing braids, wigs, and elaborate acrylic nail artwork, have continuously been stigmatized right up until white gals have tried them, out of the blue generating them cool or edgy. Kylie Jenner claimed she “started wigs,” and Kim Kardashian referred to her Fulani braids “Bo Derek braids.” The “brownie glazed lips” controversy exhibits how simply appropriation can transpire and how, irrespective of whether intentional or not, it comes at the price of females of colour. In a TikTok online video posted on Friday, Latina creator @benulus said she frequently wears a darkish liner and gloss combo in her videos and will get criticized for it, arguing that the appearances of white ladies are hardly ever scrutinized in the exact same way that individuals of ladies of shade are.
“A white woman does it—it’s heading to turn into a trend. It is likely to be praised,” she said in her movie. “I’m so flattered that Hailey Bieber often receives encouraged by my neighborhood, a POC local community. But because she does it now, all the people today that instructed me that these lips are ugly are accurately the ones that are likely to drop guiding that trend.”
Far more Must-Examine Tales From TIME