Tuesday, February 28, 2017

A New Generation of (YouTube) Talent




YouTube has been increasing in popularity since its inception, and one of the fastest growing segments were “beauty vlogs.” These are videos that primarily women would make in which they did makeup, hair, and other general beauty and lifestyle videos. Many of the fastest growing beauty vloggers were able to become entrepreneurs and build entire careers out of creating content for the internet.


While you do have your run-of-the-mill videos, a.k.a. the ones that literally everyone does, many beauty vloggers put out really creative content. They create edgy makeup looks that people don’t necessarily watch in order to recreate, but just to appreciate the creativity. Even rather than watching because the video itself is aesthetically pleasing, many viewers watch simply because of the content. Some of my personal favorites are Halloween videos, where beauty vloggers break out the special effects makeup and creativity really comes out.


















I fully believe that makeup artists are just that: artists. People tend to think of makeup as something superficial, but it’s so much more than that, and I think YouTube helps to showcase this because it is so accessible. Watching these vloggers create amazing makeup looks from nothing is incredible. I think that a lot of these beauty vloggers are similar to Martha Graham, in a way. Graham created choreography out of nothing but a vision, and she was groundbreaking in her field. A lot of these beauty vloggers, especially those that started out early on just as YouTube was gaining popularity, were doing something that had not been done before. YouTube gave them a platform for creativity.



Sources:
http://fashionista.com/2014/01/beauty-vloggers
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1zhKbOrvlTDlfbXxTFIKkA/videos?view=54&live_view=500&flow=grid
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG9nVSLp4nQlW79sY5ihRrg
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8v4vz_n2rys6Yxpj8LuOBA
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC0EqtXQ9at6ON_-ZYJaImA
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMpOz2KEfkSdd5JeIJh_fxw

2 comments:

  1. I definitely agree with your statement that makeup is an art. It is a form of individual expression that can is a walking display. The women that create these beauty vlogs have allowed for the increase in accessibility of advanced forms of makeup by using a new medium that was not present in the past. It is definitely a creative product that demonstrates a novel use out of what was already seen in our society.

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  2. A lot of those makeup tutorials are really unbelievable. The Halloween ones especially look so intricate and cool, and the ones that get into the really high-tech special effects are incredible to watch. They're a very particular art-form because they serve a function (which is to recreate the look for some appropriate occasion), yet their popularity, as you mentioned, stems from people's admiration rather than imitation. I think what makes this particular group of individuals so creative is that they are all observing each other, inspiring each other, and building on their own craft by improving what they or someone before them has already done. YouTube celebrities in particular have an obligation to put out new content frequently, which can sometimes lead to repetitiveness and redundancy. I think in the case of beauty vloggers, this works in their benefit because it provides pressure to experiment which leads to innovations and discoveries in makeup artistry.

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