Celebrities crushing in the beauty industry, or crushing the beauty industry? Graphic by Charlotte Hargrove.
CHARLOTTE HARGROVE | OPINION COLUMNIST | chargrove@butler.edu
The beauty industry is huge, including customers of all ages and identities. What makes a specific makeup or beauty brand so appealing: the quality or the person behind the brand? Well, with more and more celebrities realizing the profit connected to the beauty industry, they are coming out with their own brands. The countless options of beauty brands are becoming overwhelming. From my personal experience, some of these celebrity-run brands are “overhyped” and not worth the price tags — but there are a few worth the money.
Hailey Bieber’s brand Rhode is one of the brands worth the hype. With natural ingredients and skin-healthy products, Rhode proves that some celebrities might just know what they are doing.
Sophomore marketing major Megan Dang described her experience with Rhode beauty.
“I like how whenever [Hailey Bieber] uses the product on her skin I could see the difference,” Dang said. “Even if I don’t really know her [cosmetic past], whenever I tested [the products] on myself it gave me the exact same outcome as it did for her.”
One other brand that students note is worth it is Selena Gomez’s beauty brand Rare Beauty. While very popular among young adults, the brand focuses on feeling good about the beauty you come with.
First-year journalism major Desiree Stubbs noted her loyalty to the brand.
“I’m so loyal to Rare Beauty that I haven’t really tried any other [celebrity brands].” Stubbs said.
First-year criminology and psychology combined major Genesis Washington discussed her views on the quality of celebrity products.
“I feel like a lot of [celebrity brands] do give out quality stuff,” Washington said. “They’re not trying to cheat you out with the packaging, that’s a big thing for me.”
While there are definitely a good amount of celebrity beauty brands that live up to the name there are also some that do not. Kylie Cosmetics is one of those brands. With Kylie Jenner’s marketing surrounding herself, the claims of the quality of the product tend to go out the window. With this Jenner having thousands of dollars worth of plastic surgery and botox, marketing the product on her seems unrealistic, and unrelatable to the consumer.
“I’m not a huge fan of Kylie Cosmetics,” Dang said. “I just feel like she got so much work done. I don’t know if I fully trust [the brand].”
When it comes to beauty brands as a whole, social media plays a large role in advertising and enticing consumers to buy their products. Through social media, I believe that beauty consumers would be extremely less likely to buy from a specific brand if it weren’t for the exaggerated social media marketing.
“I think [social media] has a lot to do with [willingness to buy a product],” Stubbs said. “There’s this [influencer] on TikTok who uses [Fenty Beauty products] and she has the same textured hair as me and so I think seeing how it works with her hair influences me to buy it.”
While beauty products are one of the biggest leaders in female overconsumption, needing a range of products feels like an addition to a collection.
“I have too many lip glosses and blushes,” Washington said. “I like to buy liquid and powder [blushes] and I [know] that it’s just so unnecessary, but I just have to have it.”
While I definitely consume a large amount of beauty products, the importance of being able to point out quality brands versus overhyped brands plays a huge role. So next time you are influenced by a product, pay for the quality, not the person behind the marketing scheme.
