Hailey Bieber’s ‘brownie-glazed lips’ trend bashed as cultural appropriation

A recent make-up tutorial from Hailey Bieber has been met with backlash after it went viral on TikTok, raising questions of cultural appropriation from Black and Latina creators.

The model and Rhode skincare founder posted the video of her “brownie-glazed lips” – lining her lips with a brown liner and topping it with gloss – last month, dubbing it “the lip combo vibe I’m feeling for fall [autumn]”.

While it flew under the radar at the time, white creators have since recreated the look, crediting Bieber for a trend that black and brown women have been wearing “their whole lives.”

“Cute cuteeee. Where’d you get this inspired girl? My chola tias have been doing this FOREVER but when they do it it’s ‘ghetto’,” one person wrote under the 25-year-old’s video.

Meanwhile beauty content creator Tajia Reed wrote: “White women, quick question: What would you do if you couldn’t co-opt black women and Latina women?”

Speaking to Buzzfeed News, Reed said that watching popular trends get criticized as “ghetto” or “ratchet” when done by black and brown women, and then applauded when white women do them is “a rite of passage”.

“We’re talking about a cultural phenomenon of using this lip liner and lip gloss and what we dealt with, the backlash we got in the ’80s and ’90s. [Black and Latina women] have done it their whole lives,” she said.

A Latina woman and creator, Junibeth, echoed Reed’s sentiment, telling Buzzfeed News: “A lot of the things that not just WOC, but POC, get judged and discriminated for years later becomes a trend when a white person does it.

“What makes me upset is when a white-passing Latina, or just in general white person, does something, it becomes a trend. Or it gets recreated and renamed,” Junibeth, who made a TikTok that showed screenshots of white women crediting Bieber for the look, said.

Weighing in the controversy overnight, Beyonce’s makeup artist, Sir John, told fashion watchdog Diet Prada “it’s not about Hailey”, expressing the importance of context and accreditation when recreating a look inspired by black and brown culture.

“All you had was a lip liner and a clear gloss back in the day. We had to be creative and try things in an unorthodox way because of the lack of products for black and brown people,” he said.

But, as decades-old trends find their way to new communities through the likes of TikTok, context is often lost, with people ultimately claiming things as their own.

“Everyone feels like they found gold for the first time. That’s why we need to look and say, ‘Hey, we’ve been here,’” Sir John said.

“When it was on my sisters or my mum, and in black and Latino communities, it was seen as ghetto. Now that it’s on white bodies, it’s seen as ‘fashionable’.”

Both Reed and Sir John concluded that “beauty is for everyone”, but, the latter said: “When you have a megaphone that goes out to millions of young, impressionable people, it’s your job to know.

“As long as we’re having the conversation about equity in beauty, we’re in a good place.”