Last year was a tough one for YouTube beauty guru and makeup artist Jeffree Star when a video of him saying extremely racist comments resurfaced. Don’t believe me? He said he wanted to lighten a black woman’s skin by throwing battery acid on her so that her foundation would match her complexion. Yikes.
It seems impossible that any kind of apology could win back the hearts of his YouTube subscribers, but Star tried anyway.
“I do not know who that person was,” Star said in his defense in a video titled RACISM. “The person that said those horrible vile things, that person was depression, that person was just angry at the world, that person felt like they were not accepted, that person was seeking attention.”
He was forgiven by many … but not by all. Several other beauty gurus — Gabriel Zamora, Manny MUA, Nikita Dragun and Laura Lee — recently posted a photo of themselves flipping off the camera with the caption “b*tch is bitter because without him we’re doing better.”
Star stans were correct in assuming this post was a dig at the gang’s ex-beauty bestie. Zamora later confirmed this by tossing just a bit more shade Star’s way: “Imagine stanning a racist? I could never.”
“Every time I was around him, he would constantly say racist things about black people but would validate it by saying, ‘I’ve had so much black d*ck I can’t be racist,’” Zamora tweeted. “Once I realized it was REAL racism, I realized I couldn’t be friends with him.”
This, of course, sent Star’s fans into a frenzy. They went on the hunt for receipts that revealed the hypocrisy of the beauty gang. And they delivered.
One of Zamora’s tweets showed him using the; N-word; an old snapchat of Manny resurfaced with the caption “When your Uber driver doesn’t speak English”; Dragun tweeted about child abuse and pedophiles as well as blatant racism.
“Imagine being black? I could never,” reads one of Dragun’s old tweets.
But the brunt of the hypocrisy scandal landed right on Lee’s body-glittered shoulders.
“Tip for all black people if you pull ur pants up you can run from the police faster..” Lee tweeted in 2012.
Another old tweet reads, “Ni**as in Paris? Whaaaat I thought they couldn’t afford to leave Compton!”
All members of the “we’re doing better” clique have lost a substantial amount of followers, but Lee has also lost partnerships with makeup chain Ulta Beauty, the beauty subscription service Boxycharm, DIFF Eyewear and Morphe cosmetics.
Lee posted a lengthy apology in which she acknowledges that she isn’t perfect and that she deeply offended many people. When her “I’m sorry” was called out for seeming insincere, Lee posted a 5-minute video entitled “My Apology.”
The video begins with Lee saying “It’s so hard… It’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.” I assume she means crafting a genuine apology, but imagine how much her strife would be lessened if she just … wasn’t racist in the first place. What a concept.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrWxrtBq15w
I fully support Lee’s partnerships in pulling out of their deals with such a problematic figure, but I still don’t understand how Star bounced back from his equally racist scandal. Maybe the fans are the hypocrites in the end. I think it’s time to pull up some more receipts.
