|
James Charles |
|||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
_(cropped).png)
Charles in 2019 |
|||||||||||||
| Born |
James Charles Dickinson May 23, 1999 (age 21) Albany County, New York, U.S. |
||||||||||||
| Nationality | American | ||||||||||||
| Occupation | YouTuber, makeup, artist, Internet celebrity | ||||||||||||
| Years active | 2016–present | ||||||||||||
| Net worth | US$12 million | ||||||||||||
| YouTube information | |||||||||||||
| Channel | |||||||||||||
| Genre | |||||||||||||
| Subscribers | 18.1 million[1] | ||||||||||||
| Total views | 1.9 billion[1] | ||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
| Updated March 25, 2020 | |||||||||||||
James Charles Dickinson (born May 23, 1999) is an American Internet personality, beauty YouTuber and make-up artist. In 2016, he became the first male ambassador for CoverGirl.
Personal life
Charles is from Bethlehem, New York, and graduated from Bethlehem Central High School in June 2017. He is openly gay.[3][4]
As of 2019, his net worth is estimated to be US$12 million (£9 million).[5][6]
Career
Charles is most known for his YouTube channel focusing on makeup, which he launched on December 1, 2015. It currently has 18.4 million subscribers, making him the #1 most subscribed beauty guru. On May 6, 2019, his channel had 16.6 million subscribers, and on May 11, 2019, he became the first ever YouTube personality to lose over 1 million subscribers in 24 hours.[7]
On October 11, 2016, at the age of seventeen, Charles became the first male spokesmodel for cosmetics brand CoverGirl, working alongside brand ambassador Katy Perry.[8][9][10][11][12][13]
In January 2019, he was invited to Birmingham, England, to open Morphe Cosmetics’ second UK store.[14][15]
In March 2019, Charles did the makeup for Iggy Azalea‘s music video shoot for “Sally Walker”. He also made a cameo appearance in the video.[16]
In April 2020, Charles confirmed that his YouTube series Instant Influencer would premiere on April 24, 2020. The series aims to find the next “beauty influencer“, with Charles set to host.[17]
Controversies
Ebola joke
In February 2017, when Charles was 17,[18] he was criticized after tweeting a joke considered offensive about Africa and Ebola. He later issued an apology saying: “I am extremely sorry for what I said. There are no excuses. No one owes me forgiveness, but I’ve learned a lot from the experience. I hope that the people who might look up to me will be able to learn from my mistakes and not repeat them.”[19][20]
In April 2019, Charles said that he was not fully gay, and a 5.5 on the Kinsey scale, saying that “there have been girls in the past who I’ve thought were very, very beautiful. There’s also been trans guys in the past, too, that I was really, really into for a moment in time.” These comments created controversy, and some claimed they were transphobic.[21] Charles apologized shortly after, releasing a statement saying that his comments were unintentionally transphobic and that he should have chosen different words to convey what he meant.[22]
Tati Westbrook controversy
On May 10, 2019, long-time collaborator Tati Westbrook uploaded a 43-minute long video titled “BYE SISTER …” to her YouTube channel heavily criticizing Charles. In her video, Westbrook accused Charles of disloyalty, “manipulating people’s sexuality”[23][24] and “using… fame, power and money to play with people’s emotions”.[6] After this, Charles set a YouTube record for losing over 1 million subscribers in less than 24 hours. It continued to fall from 16.6 million subscribers around May 6, 2019 to a low point of 13.4 million on May 15, 2019, recovering somewhat in the days that followed. Westbrook’s subscriber count increased by over four million over the same period.[25][26]
Charles later uploaded an 8-minute response video titled “tati”, addressing the issues raised by Westbrook and apologizing to his fans and both her and her husband. This video received mostly negative feedback, with the video becoming one of the 10 most disliked videos in YouTube history.[5][27] On May 18, 2019, Charles made a second, 41-minute, video addressing the comments made by Westbrook, entitled “No More Lies”.[28][29] It presented evidence appearing to refute many of Westbrook’s accusations and led to renewed support for Charles and criticism towards Westbrook. Soon after its posting, Charles regained a million subscribers and Westbrook lost two hundred thousand.[30][31] Westbrook later removed the “Bye Sister” video from her YouTube channel.[32] The saga sparked analysis relating to cancel culture, the alleged toxicity of YouTube’s beauty community, stereotypes of gay men being predatory and profits made from online ‘drama’.[33][34][35]
The week following Charles’ subscriber drop, on May 21, 2019, YouTube announced that they would abbreviate subscriber counts across the platform.[36] While the official announcement made no mention of the Charles vs Westbrook feud, many commentators speculated that it was a direct response to recent community obsession over subscriber counts, as seen in feuds such as this one and PewDiePie vs T-Series.[37]
References
- ^ a b “James Charles Detailed Statistics”. Social Blade. Retrieved April 18, 2020.
- ^ “Meet The First Ever Male CoverGirl, James Charles”. Huffington Post. 2016-10-11. Retrieved 2016-10-13.
- ^ WITW Staff (2015-11-24). “Meet CoverGirl’s 1st ‘cover boy’ — a high school student”. The New York Times. Retrieved 2016-10-13.
- ^ a b “James Charles loses a million subscribers in a week”. 2019-05-12. Retrieved 2019-05-12.
- ^ a b “YouTube star James Charles loses 2m subscribers after row with fellow vlogger”. Sky News. Retrieved 2019-05-12.
- ^ “jamescharles YouTube Stats, Channel Statistics – Socialblade.com”. socialblade.com. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
- ^ Neeti Upadhye. “CoverGirl Features First Male – Video”. The New York Times. 40.755978;-73.990396. Retrieved 2016-10-13.CS1 maint: location (link)
- ^ “CoverGirl Announces Its First Male CoverGirl Spokesmodel”. Cosmopolitan. 2016-09-05. Retrieved 2016-10-13.
- ^ Cady Lang (2016-10-09). “CoverGirl Appoints First Male Spokesperson, James Charles”. Time. Retrieved 2016-10-13.
- ^ “Meet CoverGirl’s first-ever CoverBoy, James Charles”. USA Today. Retrieved 2016-10-13.
- ^ Andrews, Travis M. “CoverGirl’s first CoverBoy: 17-year-old YouTube sensation James Charles”. The Washington Post. Retrieved 2016-10-13.
- ^ Puglise, Nicole (2016-10-11). “CoverGirl names makeup artist James Charles its first cover boy”. The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-05-12.
- ^ editor, Jim Waterson Media (2019-01-27). “Birmingham brought to standstill by YouTuber James Charles”. The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-01-27.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
- ^ “City gridlocked after YouTuber visit”. 2019-01-27. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
- ^ “James Charles Turned Iggy Azaela Into a Drag Queen for Her New Single”. www.out.com. 2019-03-01. Retrieved 2019-05-12.
- ^ Rearick, Lauren (April 1, 2020). “James Charles’ New Reality Show ‘Instant Influencer’ Finally Has A Release Date”. Nylon. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
- ^ Krause, Amanda. “YouTube beauty star James Charles is at war with his former mentor Tati Westbrook. Here’s the story of his controversial past”. INSIDER. Retrieved 2019-07-26.
- ^ “James Charles Responds to Ebola Social Media Controversy”. Teen Vogue. February 17, 2017. Archived from the original on February 18, 2017. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
- ^ Nast, Condé. “James Charles Tweeted About Getting Ebola in Africa and the Internet Is Dragging Him”. Allure. Retrieved 2019-05-11.
- ^ “James Charles Says He’s Not “Full Gay” Because He’s Been Into Trans Men”. Nylon. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
- ^ “James Charles Addresses Ignorant Comment About Transgender Men After Facing Backlash”. Seventeen. Retrieved 2019-04-27.
- ^ “Here’s Everybody Who Has Accused James Charles of “Predatory Behavior““. Distractify. Retrieved 2019-05-15.
- ^ “Don’t ignore James Charles allegedly trying to turn straight men gay”. AsiaOne. Retrieved 2019-05-15.
- ^ Harmeet Kaur. “YouTuber James Charles losing subscribers since feud with Tati Westbrook”. CNN. Retrieved 2019-05-15.
- ^ Harmeet Kaur. “YouTuber James Charles has lost 1 million subscribers since his Tati feud”. CNN. Retrieved 2019-05-12.
- ^ Capon, Laura (2019-05-12). “James Charles has lost 2million YouTube subscribers in 3 days”. Cosmopolitan. Retrieved 2019-05-12.
- ^ Grossman, Lena (2019). “James Charles Speaks Out Amid Tati Westbrook Feud: No More Lies“. E! Online. Retrieved 22 May 2019.
- ^ “James Charles brings out the receipts in his latest video on the Tati Westbrook feud”. CNN.
- ^ Ohlheiser, Abby (2019-05-20). “The new hot thing on YouTube is destroying someone else”. Washington Post. Retrieved 2019-05-27.
- ^ Lunning, Just (2019-05-18). “Tati Westbrook has lost 200,000 subscribers following James Charles’ ‘tell all’ video”. Newsweek. Retrieved 2019-05-27.
- ^ Boan, Daniel (2019-05-21). “A complete timeline of James Charles and Tati Westbrook’s explosive feud that tore their relationship apart”. Business Insider. Retrieved 2019-05-27.
- ^ Tietjen, Alexa (2019-05-25). “James Charles, Tati Westbrook and the Chaos of Cancel Culture”. Women’s Wear Daily.
- ^ Michallon, Michallon (2019-05-22). “Now it’s over, let’s talk about everything that’s wrong with the feud between James Charles and Tati Westbrook”. The Independent. Retrieved 2019-05-27.
- ^ Sands, Mason (2019-05-24). “The James Charles Scandal Was More Than The “Ugly” Beauty Community”. Forbes.
- ^ Google Employee, Jordan (Team YouTube) (21 May 2019). “Early heads up: abbreviated public subscriber counts across YouTube”. YouTube Help. Retrieved 5 November 2019.
- ^ Pesqueda, Neena (22 May 2019). “YouTube Will Soon Only Show Abbreviated Subscriber Counts. Will This Change YouTube Cancel Culture?”. Rogue Rocket. Retrieved 5 November 2019.