The YouTube beauty community has become an extremely successful and popular industry. With millions of viewers subscribing and watching their videos, thousands of YouTube beauty gurus are uploading videos on a day-to-day basis.
Make up tutorials are one of the most watched and most requested type of YouTube videos in the beauty community. Here, beauty gurus walk through a make up “look” by applying all the cosmetics and make up products in front of the camera, while simultaneously reciting step-by-step instructions. The point here is to help those who are new to make up achieve the look they are aiming for.
Michelle Phan – Angelina Jolie Make Up Tutorial
Michelle Phan – How To Look Like Miranda Kerr
Michelle Phan, a very well-known Asian American beauty guru, once held the spot for the most subscribed account on YouTube. Phan uploads a wide variety of beauty videos that inspires young women to use makeup as a way to enhance their natural beauty features. Phan has also uploaded celebrity transformation videos, such as “How To Look Like Miranda Kerr” and “Angelina Jolie Makeup Tutorial.” In these videos, she uses make up to mimic the facial features of Miranda Kerr and Angelina Jolie. To start, Phan uses a lighter foundation to mimic the lighter skin tones of these white actresses/models. She also uses bronzer and highlighter to contour and sculpt her cheeks, nose and jawline, making those features sharper and more prominent like that of Miranda Kerr, Angelina Jolie and the white female facial structure. For the Miranda Kerr video, Phan blends brown eyeliner on her cheek to replicate Miranda Kerr’s signature dimples. For the Angelina Jolie video, Phan traces lip pencil outside of her natural lip shape to duplicate Jolie’s full, luscious pout. In both tutorials, Phan wears blue or gray contacts in order to fully transform herself to Miranda Kerr or Angelina Jolie.
These make up tutorials prove that make up is an art form and that these make up artists are extremely talented. However, these types of videos are extremely problematic when it comes to the standards of beauty. Michelle Phan and other Asian American beauty gurus are continuously uploading videos of their transformation into a famous white woman, who are popularized for her beauty. However, this exchange of make up advice only works one way. There has never been an instance where white beauty gurus upload videos such as, “How To Look Like Lucy Liu.” These make up tutorials perpetuates the idea that white features are the ideal type of beauty in America. For women of color, the pressures of conforming to white ideals of beauty lead to not accepting one’s own beauty and instead, masking it with make up.
Below, are some additional examples of Asian American women transforming themselves to white actresses.
Beautificasian 
The dynamics of beauty, I feel, are further complicated by corporate interests, as many of these makeup artists are spokespersons for cosmetic products in addition to hegemonic standards of beauty. They use specific cosmetics, each clearly announced and shown to viewers, as their bodies serve as spaces of advertisement.