Katie Jane Hughes is known for dewy skin, bold eyeliner, and a "cool girl" take on modern beauty. She is also one of the top makeup artists who have embraced viral challenges. Her spontaneous challenge videos-like creating a look using only her fingertips or working with just three products-feel raw and intimate. With over 1 million followers, her aesthetic has influenced the "clean girl glam" and "fingerpaint eyeshadow" trends. Her GRWM (get ready with me) sessions often spark full-blown duets.
The Rise of Makeup Challenges
Makeup challenges have exploded in popularity, pulling in everyone from industry pros to barely-out-of-high-school kids with neon palettes and too much free time. These challenges have become a cultural phenomenon, offering a mix of entertainment, inspiration, and a sense of community.
Why Makeup Challenges Go Viral
There's something oddly hypnotic about watching a makeup challenge spiral out of control. One second someone's calmly applying foundation with a spoon, and the next they're contouring with coffee grounds or attempting eyeliner mid-backflip. It’s chaos, but it’s the kind of chaos people keep coming back for. Makeup creators aren’t just doing their brows anymore, they’re turning their entire faces into canvases, memes, or sometimes, actual fruit bowls. There’s also this weird comfort in watching people fail spectacularly before nailing a look.
Top Makeup Challenge Creators
Many makeup artists have risen to fame through viral makeup challenges. Here are some of the top creators:
- James Charles: Known for his transformative makeup skills and challenge videos like the "full face using only highlighter."
- Bretman Rock: Blends beauty with comedy in his makeup challenges, incorporating his signature sass and bold glam looks.
- NikkieTutorials: Best known for kickstarting the viral "Power of Makeup" challenge, revealing how makeup can be both artistic and empowering.
- Meredith Duxbury: Known for her dramatic foundation challenge, where she slathers on thick layers of product to wild reactions online.
- Nikita Dragun: Built her empire on transformation challenges and drag-inspired makeup, pushing boundaries in beauty and identity.
- Mario Dedivanovic: The mastermind behind Kim Kardashian’s iconic contoured look, embraced viral challenges, giving them a luxe, editorial feel.
- Jaclyn Hill: Known for challenge videos like "Full Face Using Only Kids Makeup" and $20 Makeup Challenges.
- Safiya Nygaard: More experimental than glam, known for her "Frankenstein makeup" challenge series.
- Manny Gutierrez (Manny MUA): Known for his full-face glam challenges and brand battles like "Half Drugstore, Half Luxury."
- Desi Perkins: Rose to fame with viral challenges like "Boyfriend Does My Makeup" and Halloween transformation looks.
- Pat McGrath: A legendary makeup artist whose bold, otherworldly looks inspire countless viral challenges.
- Pony: South Korea’s most influential beauty creator, known for her doll-like transformations and celebrity lookalike challenge videos.
- Natalie Violette: Known for her chaotic yet genius makeup hacks and unhinged beauty challenges.
- Mary Phillips: Known for glamming up Kendall Jenner and Hailey Bieber, her techniques have gone viral in makeup challenge circles.
- MakeupbyAriel: Known for creating the signature glam seen on Kylie Jenner, also sparked numerous viral challenges with his sculpting techniques.
- Natasha Denona: Her eyeshadow palettes have practically launched their own viral makeup challenges.
- Danessa Myricks: A creative genius known for turning the face into a canvas of light, color, and shape.
- Hindash: A Dubai-based artist known for his cinematic, moody challenge looks.
- Sam Chapman: One-half of the Pixiwoo sisters and a co-creator of Real Techniques brushes.
- Lisa Eldridge: A legend in the beauty world, known for creating makeup looks for runway, magazines, and royalty, embraced online formats, creating challenge videos like “historical glam using only modern products.”
- Golloria George: A rising voice in beauty known for shade range challenges and dark skin representation.
- Nettie Lombardi: Became a viral sensation after creating an entire makeup look using yarn, glue, and craft supplies.
- Julia Poe Petersen: An emerging creator who leans into high-color, high-emotion makeup looks.
- Capucine Munuera: A French artist known for sculptural makeup challenges that blur the line between beauty and performance.
Niki Maldanado: Redefining Beauty Standards
Niki Maldanado is a self-described, unapologetic queer fat femme, whose passions include sex-positive education, eradicating fatphobia, and building wildly inclusive Jewish spaces. She’s also a skin care expert and founder of The Beauty Endowment, a nonprofit that distributes beauty products to femmes in need.
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Challenging Toxic Beauty Culture
As a fat femme with a lot of personality, Niki is exactly what toxic beauty culture will never claim as one of their own. She's not granted access to the club of beautiful people. It is through that exclusion that she came to aesthetics. She wanted to fit in, but as she got older and wiser, she knew to say “Fuck that world, who doesn’t even want me?” and to create spaces of her own.
Niki has acne, combination skin, hyperhidrosis (my face sweats), and a beard. Toxic beauty culture says she’s supposed to be trying to cover all those things because they are flaws. In reality, all of that makes her more human and relatable in her work.
Addressing Fatphobia in Social Justice Spaces
In so many social justice-centered spaces I’m in, fatphobia and body shaming remains an acceptable. It seems that for all of our unpacking of privilege, pretty privilege, in Janet Mock’s words, is taken for granted.
Fatphobia is a whole world of systemic oppression that has not hit the main stage of society yet. Fatphobia is diet culture. Fatphobia is photo-based dating sites. Fatphobia is systemic inaccess to clothing that is size inclusive and offered in ALL types of styles. Not all fat girls want a floral A-line dress. Fatphobia is airplane seats sized for a Barbie doll.
In social justice spaces, fatphobia is one of the few areas people still feel righteous in their harmful beliefs, words, and actions. I have never experienced an office culture that explicitly states diet talk is not okay. I can tell coworkers I will not engage in diet talk or talk about food or “health” and have that boundary crossed every single day. “You fat [insert expletive]” is the first insult men throw at me when I challenge them.
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The Beauty Endowment: Beauty Without Borders
Niki Maldanado founded The Beauty Endowment, a nonprofit that donates beauty goods to women of color, particularly trans and femme folks. All three board members are trans women, two are TWOC (trans women of color). All the back end administrative pieces are me. I am figuring this process out.
The realities of non-profits are that the construction of our internal framework has been incredibly focused to make sure we try and meet as many intersections as possible. The reality is that any non-profit will mess up and miss things. No one knows it all, and as communities grow and change how they feel respected, non-profits need to embrace the fact that all they can do is try to have good intentions with positive impact. When then doesn’t happen, acknowledge it, apologize, and grow to be better.
When you welcome the pushes that make non-profit work more inclusive, it increases an organization’s integrity and positive outcomes. For us, this shows up as our language of ‘trans femmes’ and not just trans women, as our vision to work towards body liberation where all bodies are seen as god bodies, and our values to make our practices political, like being a pro-BDS organization. People may not realize that something like a BDS movement intersects with the beauty industry. Large conglomerate companies give money to Israel, and we would choose not to partner with those brands when the time comes.
Niki dreams of The Beauty Endowment as a national go-to big name nonprofit, with corporate sponsorships. Plus maybe a yearly Gala, if I’m really going there. When I started explaining the idea to folks, I said, “It’s like Dress for Success for your face.” That said, I think we can be the change we want to see. We can use the collective growth of society in these heated times to the advantage of beauty. As brands realize they need to expand shade ranges for the vast array of dark skin tones, I think we could have a whole section of our organization that works with companies and PR for brands on sampling and reviews. I think as Femme folks take up more space in the world, I want us to be at the forefront of changing the narratives about beauty. That not all women want to wear makeup, that not all makeup wearers are women, and that makeup is not an essential part of existence for anyone. That being said-the goal is to have the love and passion for makeup become something without borders for any identity. I want to see a world where beauty lovers can find products they love, in the right shade, at a price point that works for them in stores. I want to see this nonprofit thrive in offering that same level of universal access to folks who can’t buy items they want or need.
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