Something clicked with me in the past year or two and I’ve completely gone gaga over makeup. My application skills have always been sub-par at best, but that is to be expected since I grew up a tomboy. What’s worse is that I had chronic eczema on my face, so I couldn’t wear cosmetics often without experiencing major breakouts. As my skin cleared up, I began to enjoy a new world of cosmetic possibilities, and quickly got sucked down the rabbit hole of YouTube beauty videos. If you haven’t had the pleasure, trust me — it’s a dangerous game. There’s something so hypnotic and alluring about watching an average looking woman turn herself into a “glamazon” over the course of a ten-minute-or-less beauty tutorial, deftly applying contour and popping in false lashes as if it were as easy as breathing.

Beauty Gurus, as they’re called, inhabit the corners of social media where even the most bored of straight guys dare not tread — YouTube makeup tutorials, “hauls” of all the things bought while shopping, SnapChats about favourite products, and of course, the completely bonkers world of Instagram beauty: Kardashian-inspired brows; contouring; “baking” (a means of applying and layering concealer with powder); “strobing” (aka highlighting) and more.

Beauty social media has inspired me in many positive ways — some of my favourite beauty bloggers and vloggers have helped me discover new or underrated products that are amazing, as well as application techniques I had never encountered before. But for every amazing video teaching you how to do cat-eye makeup, there’s also a dark side of beauty social media.

For one thing, I’ve definitely found that the more beauty videos I watch, the more money I spend at places like MAC, Sephora, Shoppers Beauty Boutique and even making purchases of various online-only cult brands. I can see why beauty brands spend so much money sponsoring these online personalities — there’s big money to be made. The capitalist shopping frenzy comes right from the mouths of beauty bloggers, sending out waves of panic when a new limited-edition shade of lipstick or eye-makeup palette comes out.

The obsession with buying, having, hoarding and bragging about high-end makeup products really kills some of the fun for me. I like to think that you can make interesting looks without spending too much money. I am the first to admit that I am highly prone to suggestion and way too often I let these bloggers and vloggers influence my shopping decisions.

Shopping hauls with hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars worth of cosmetic products are the norm among the most popular beauty YouTube personalities; that’s not even taking into account the huge amounts of sponsored, PR or “review” products they get for free from brands! I see young teens in the comment sections on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube lusting after things like $100+ products or high-end designer bags that seem so popular with the “gurus.” When I was fifteen, I was lucky if I had a few spare dollars to buy a couple of Wet ‘N’ Wild eye liners, let alone a $600 set of Dior makeup brushes. It’s a brave new world out there with thirteen year olds doing haul videos about buying Burberry, Chanel and Charlotte Tilbury makeup.

Another downside to beauty social media is that the personalities seem to offer a very homogenous and highly hetero-normative idea of what a woman (and her makeup) is meant to look like. Anyone who doesn’t live up to the highly feminized ideals that are so popular on YouTube are often left in the dust. Oddly enough, these ideals seem to be directly inspired by drag culture, slang and makeup styles, yet they advocate for very traditional ideas of femininity with regards to clothes, cosmetics, hairstyle, and accessories.

It’s funny to me that people so inspired by (and possibly co-opting) queer culture would turn around and impose very queer-unfriendly notions of how to be a woman. As a queer woman who sometimes makes YouTube videos about makeup, I find it to be a very strange, almost “Stepford Wife” mentality, that pervades the top beauty vloggers, and I wish there were more diversity in gender expression being celebrated. On top of that, you also find them to be a very monochromatic group — the top beauty names are all white, young, and wealthy (or spend money like they are). More diversity across the board would be amazing.

My very least favourite thing about online beauty culture is how critical it can be. A new vlogger, or someone with a small amount of followers, can find themselves the target of straight-up hatred from other YouTubers and commenters who don’t think their makeup is quite as “on fleek” as it should be. The room for growth is next to none, and much like any other social media platform, once there’s blood in the water, it can mean game over. Policing femininity and makeup skills seems to be the self-appointed job of a lot of beauty fans, which is sad because part of the fun of makeup culture, on sites like Makeup Alley, is the joy of sharing tips, techniques and learning together. There are teenagers who are still learning about makeup getting ripped to shreds on Instagram to the point where they need to close their account or at least temporarily make it private. And don’t even get me started on Instagram personalities with huge follower counts — the insults hurled in their comments would make a sailor blush!

The stereotype of “catty”, tear-down femininity is alive and well on social media, sadly. Can’t we get a little more “kumbaya feminist” on their asses with hugs and lipstick all around? Can’t we raise up on our shoulders a lady with uneven wing eyeliner and poorly defined eyebrows? I live to see the day.