Welcome to Information Wasteland, a series about the many ways misinformation is worming its way into our algorithms and minds, wreaking havoc on our culture. Here, writer Kat Tenbarge dives into how wellness and beauty influencers can lead people down an alt-right pipeline, examining one of the many ways misinformation can reach teen girls specifically.
Jeffree Star was bleaching the roots of his hot pink hair on TikTok Live when he started making a speech about how the “LGB” (the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community) should be separate from the “T” (the trans community). Then he posted the clip on X (formerly Twitter) and asked for thoughts from his audience. The beauty influencer’s replies quickly filled up with derogatory comments about trans and nonbinary people, which has become a major theme in Star’s viral content as of late — despite his own flamboyantly gay, gender-bending persona.
Less than a decade ago, at the height of Star’s YouTube fame, he released an androgyny-themed eye shadow palette, referred to himself as an “alien” rather than a gender, and said he used “every pronouns.” He still wears dresses and high heels and sells makeup. But now he’s also parroting anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, has said he doesn’t believe in “the they and them [pronouns],” and promoted a post by an extremist, anti-trans hate group.
“About a hundred thousand people have unfollowed me this week,” Star said during a YouTube roundtable hosted by Piers Morgan on September 17. Star was invited onto Morgan’s show for the first time after he defended the late far-right political activist Charlie Kirk, who founded the Turning Point USA organization. Star was surrounded by conservative influencers. “I loved a lot of what he said and it resonates with me,” the beauty guru said about Kirk. “The good news is, hundreds of thousands of more people have followed me [after these comments], and they’re on the exact same page.”
Star is one of many influencers in the beauty and wellness space who is embedded in what some people call an “alt-right pipeline.” His latest pivot may be unsurprising in the context of his racist MySpace past (he has since apologized) and other controversies, but it also mirrors what’s happening on the internet at large. It’s not just Andrew Tate and the “manosphere” radicalizing men and boys. The online beauty and wellness community, which teaches many women, girls, and queer people how to apply eye shadow and blush or what yoga routines to follow, among other things, has also begun pushing some toward the modern conservative party under Donald Trump. But this pipeline hasn’t been taken nearly as seriously.
“Beauty and these more feminized types of digital work have been deemed less important and obviously nonconsequential to our country, when that’s not true at all,” says Mariah Wellman, an assistant professor in advertising and public relations at Michigan State University, who researches how wellness influencers have played a role in Trump’s reelection and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine “Make America Healthy Again” movement. “Think about the amount of women in the last few election cycles who have literally voted against their own rights.”
Reddit forums have compiled lists of MAGA-adjacent beauty influencers to avoid, but the “womanosphere” is nearly unavoidable now. On platforms like TikTok, conservative rhetoric is reaching an even younger audience through videos that also include popular memes and sound bites. This demographic tends to already be more disillusioned with politics than older generations.
The year 2020 was a major turning point for creators in the beauty and wellness industries. Makeup sales plunged while people were stuck at home during the pandemic, and trends in skin care, wellness, and “natural, clean” beauty replaced the colorful, heavy makeup looks of the 2010s. The wellness industry is defined by the idea that buying products is what makes you healthy, Wellman explains, with the caveat that you’ll never be able to buy enough. The wellness industry specifically targets women and girls in the same way that beauty always has: by creating and enforcing standards of living that predominantly apply to them.
Other kinds of rhetoric aimed specifically at women and girls include fearmongering about birth control and its potential side effects. Conservative podcaster Alex Clark, who is closely associated with Kirk’s Turning Point USA and has a right-leaning “health and wellness podcast,” has characterized birth control as “synthetic,” versus pregnancy, which she says is “natural.”
Extremism researcher Marc-André Argentino coined the term “pastel QAnon” to describe how women can be lured into far-right conspiracies through content about motherhood and female-coded aesthetics. Some beauty and wellness influencers have proven to be a natural fit for this ecosystem.
The biggest gurus in makeup were once YouTubers like Star, who used flashy stunts and influencer feuds to stay relevant. But by the end of the 2010s, Star traded his Calabasas, CA, mega-mansion for a Wyoming yak ranch, where he now spends much of his time hawking products on TikTok Live. (Teen Vogue reached out to Star for comment, but has not heard back.) He wasn’t the only beauty guru to leave the city and chase a rugged homesteading aesthetic, either.
RawBeautyKristi started her main YouTube channel in 2013, and today it has over 1 million subscribers. She and her husband also maintain a smaller side channel, launched in 2019, after they purchased a rural Washington home and plot of land. They started making content about chicken coops, dirt bikes, and garden tours.
“Today’s beauty TikTokers do a lot of stuff. They don’t just do makeup; they do ‘Day in the Life’ and clothes and homesteading and gardening,” Wellman says. “Part of that is because the space has become so saturated, consumers and audiences want to know that they align with the whole person. Not just can you do a full beat, but are you voting for the same person I’m voting for? Are you living your life and raising your children the same way I am?”
Since RawBeautyKristi entered the influencer scene, other women who create lifestyle content have far eclipsed her platform. In a way, she is now catching up to “trad wives” like Nara Smith and Ballerina Farm, two influencers whose content has reached millions more people than Kristi, but follow the career path she helped build. A lot of what these women are selling is aspirational wealth — either an outdoorsy, trad version or a sleek, modern one — but viewers tend to reward whatever looks like authenticity. In the comments on Kristi’s videos, a lot of women her age thank her for her “bravery” in “speaking up” about her politics alongside her makeup routine.
Kristi’s style has always been extremely personal and down-to-earth, sharing every detail of her life and family with her followers. When she got pregnant after 15 years of struggling with infertility, the beauty community celebrated with her. But after having her son in 2021, Kristi’s intimate posts started to attract more scrutiny from followers and beauty fans. As she documented her own struggles with mental health, Kristi drifted closer to the “crunchy” side of social media, one that is often aligned with pseudoscience and figures like RFK Jr.
“Kristi was one of my favorite creators for a very long time. She would curse in her videos and make faces that weren’t prim and proper and traditionally feminine. And I just thought that was very cool,” says Matt Bernstein, an OG beauty YouTube fan who made makeup content before transitioning to a career as a leftist political commentator. Last summer, he released a podcast about influencers like Kristi taking what he calls a “crunchy to far-right pipeline.”
“There’s no problem with wanting to grow your own vegetables, but so often — especially with influencers — you see them add ‘and we need to return to the land, and what they’re pushing in schools today is woke garbage,’” Bernstein continues. “I do think a lot of the beauty audience was very liberal in the 2010s, but you can see how there was a natural segue into where we’re at now, which is that some of the biggest beauty influencers are [seemingly] conservative.”
As Wellman explains it, this pipeline can ultimately take participants down an ultra-conservative path that often involves Christianity and white nationalism. But even if influencers say they don't believe these ideas themselves, their content can lead viewers to others who do.
RawBeautyKristi did not respond directly to Teen Vogue's request for comment, but did post a video in response to our email to her. In the video, she says she is not alt-right, and certainly isn't aligned with white nationalist views. She said she grows her own food and bakes her own bread because she enjoys it and it's fun, and homeschools her child because she wants to spend time with him. In the video, she called the idea that any of these behaviors are linked to far right ideas “nonsense.”
Wellman notes these topics have led others down an alt-right pipeline, though. And, engaging in videos about these topics can build an algorithm that leads down that path.
“All of a sudden, your favorite influencer is not only talking about the ‘clean’ makeup they bought from Sephora, but also how to be clean in other ways,” Wellman says. “How do you take care of your home using clean products? From home it goes to homesteading, and growing your own food to homeschooling. And then a distrust in government, which means you want small government, which means you obviously need to vote Republican.”
Like Star, RawBeautyKristi has dipped her toe into talking about politics in the wake of Kirk’s death, releasing a video that shunned anyone not mourning Kirk’s loss. But unlike Star, Kristi isn’t doesn't leverage shock value for engagement by teasing extreme conservative views. Instead, she is much more familiar to everyday women and girls who question prevailing sources of authority.
“It’s sort of this trap that they’ve all fallen into, and I believe there are some influencers who don’t realize they’ve gotten to this point,” Wellman says. “I have talked to some, and truly, deep down, they think they’re doing what’s best for their audience. There are people who are doing it for the money and there are people who are seriously fearful and anxious and distrusting of the government, so they reproduce that rhetoric. It has become very difficult for consumers to navigate.”
