B Is for Beauty: #10YearsofYouTube

May 03, 2015

In the past 10 years over 5 billion hours of beauty tutorials and explainers have been uploaded to YouTube. That’s about 100,000 years worth of contouring, eyelash curling, makeup reviews, and hairstyle how-tos.

And today, beauty tutorials are among the most viewed instructional videos on the platform, due in part to the intimate, immediate access they provide to the world of beauty.  For the first time ever, every makeup artist, hair stylist, beauty guru, and his/her unique techniques and experiences are available to anyone who wants to look and feel their most fabulous -inside and out.

Among those gurus are the prolific Michelle Phan and the U.K.’s most popular beauty creator, Zoella. For Zoella in particular, her 7.8 million subscribers see her as a role model they can trust—and whose closet they’d love to raid. In the five years since she launched her channel, Zoella has also found widespread success offline, first by starting her very own makeup line and then by publishing a novel that surpassed even J.K. Rowlings’ debut in first-week book sales.

Through these accessible and personal how-tos, YouTube also provides a space for previously under-represented beauty communities to take center stage. Shameless Maya is one beauty creator who gives the African American community guidance on how to style curly hair. And the one and only Bunny Meyers (Grav3yardgirl) proves that personality is the most essential ingredient of any and every look. And that’s truly a beautiful thing.

In the spirit of celebration, let these classic tutorials make your world a little more creative and a little more gorgeous, just as they did for millions of other viewers:

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