It was the drama on YouTube that went viral online.
Beauty guru Tati Westbrook made a number of accusations against fellow makeup influencer and her former best friend James Charles in a shocking film that was released in May 2019 in an infamous attempted takedown.
Westbrook gained more than four million subscribers in a single week as the video swiftly garnered over 30 million views, making it one of the most watched on the platform, while Charles lost more than one million in a single day.
However, after more than six years, Westbrook’s fame has diminished. The 43-year-old has endured a number of setbacks, such as a four-year legal struggle and the closure of her beauty business (more on that later).
A recent perceived change in Westbrook’s content—moving away from beauty advice and into the pseudoscience “wellness” realm promoted by figures like controversial US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—has also drawn criticism from some of her followers.
In the meantime, and in a twist of grim irony, Charles has more than recovered.
It was the drama on YouTube that went viral online. Beauty guru Tati Westbrook (seen in 2020) made a series of accusations against fellow makeup influencer and her former best friend James Charles in a shocking video that was uploaded in May 2019 in an attempt to have it taken down.
But years later, Westbrook’s fame has diminished, whereas Charles (seen in 2024) has more than recovered.
At the age of 17, he became the first male ambassador for the cosmetics company CoverGirl. By the time Westbrook aired that May 2019 video titled “Bye Sister,” he had already made a rumoured $11 million fortune from his YouTube beauty instructions. (Charles calls his supporters “sisters”).
He is currently 26 years old, has a $7 million mansion in Los Angeles, and this month Painted, his own cosmetics company, entered the UK market.
In fact, his cosmetics are so well-liked that Beyoncé herself utilised them during her August 2023 Renaissance tour.
What then became of Westbrook?
She started her channel back in 2010 and is often regarded as the “mother of beauty YouTube” or the “OG makeup influencer.”
Her success was fuelled by her approachable attitude, simple-to-follow lessons, and product review videos. She also gained the unique distinction of being seen as a truly honest influencer due to the candour with which she shared personal anecdotes.
All of which made it more harder for her to accept her choice to pursue Charles in such a public and forceful manner.
The fact that Charles was just 19 and she was 37 at the time, almost ten years into her career, probably didn’t help either. Westbrook had taken him under her wing and encouraged his nascent career, making him something of a protégé. Westbrook even asked Charles to handle her cosmetics for her 2017 wedding because they were so close.
“She was such a huge pillar within the beauty space,” beauty YouTuber Gabriel Zamora, who publicly defended Charles back in 2019, told the Daily Mail this week. In other words, it appeared to some that she was now punching down.
Then, witnessing her engage in drama merely cast her in an odd light. It was made worse by the fact that it kind of blew up in her face. Many people’s lips were left with unpleasant tastes by [her video].
And it did blow up. Westbrook’s 43-minute, since-deleted “Bye Sister” video began with a business grievance.
While visiting the Coachella music festival in April of that year, Charles shared an Instagram advertising for SugarBearHair, a rival vitamin supplement company to Westbrook’s own Halo Beauty.
The advertisement, according to her, was a professional betrayal.
Westbrook accused Charles, who is openly homosexual, of predatory behaviour, including “seducing straight men” and “tricking them into thinking they are gay,” after the allegations became personal.
There was a significant public backlash. As the tale made news across the world, Charles, who subsequently referred to the moment as “the darkest time in my life,” was actually losing hundreds of followers every minute.
However, the story abruptly changed in a matter of days.”I have never, and would never, and will never use my “fame”, money or power, to manipulate or get any sexual actions from a guy,” Charles stated in his video, “No More Lies,” which has now received 58 million views. “That is disgusting, it is not me, and the fact that Tati brought this up blows my mind, because she knows the real story.”
Following several back-and-forth videos between Westbrook and Charles, the controversy—dubbed “Dramageddon” by fans on the internet—finally put an end to their friendship.
However, Westbrook appeared to do worse.
She later apologised to Charles and claimed that seasoned YouTubers Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson had “manipulated” her into uploading the initial “Bye Sister” video. Dawson and Star have refuted this claim.
However, it appeared that the harm was done.
The scandal, which followers on the internet called “Dramageddon,” ultimately put an end to their friendship. “She was such a huge pillar within the beauty space,” Gabriel Zamora (pictured) told the Daily Mail this week. However, Westbrook appeared to fare harder (shown: Jeffree Star, left, with Charles and Westbrook, prior to the fallout). Then, witnessing her engage in drama merely cast her in an odd light. Many unpleasant aftertaste were left in people’s mouths by [her video].
Dwight O’Neal, a specialist in the beauty industry, told the Daily Mail that he thinks “a lot of egos were involved” in the YouTube affair.
According to O’Neal, co-founder and co-CEO of the beauty consultancy firm Rose Neal Collective, “the thing that really caused people to talk about [Dramageddon] is that the drama wasn’t really between the influencers, it was between truth and image.”
It forced them to acknowledge that they had been somewhat duped. We were duped. We were duped.”It helped people realise that influencers have created an image, and sadly, a lot of us fell for it.”
In response to the criticism, Westbrook stopped using YouTube for a year and severed connections with other beauty influencers.
Among those influencers was 32-year-old Zamora.””I think I should apologise,” he declared.
Since the drama, Westbrook’s YouTube following has decreased. declining to little under 8 million at the time of publishing from a peak of more than 10 million.
Charles, on the other hand, has 24 million followers on the platform, a significant increase from the 13.8 million he had following Westbrook’s accusations.
Views of Westbrook’s videos are also declining. She used to frequently have over a million views on a single video, but this month she only had an average of 120,000 views across the previous 15 films she uploaded to her YouTube page.
In addition, Westbrook has been dealing with severe legal issues.
Along with business partner Clark Swanson, she and husband James Westbrook co-founded the Halo Beauty vitamin brand in 2018.
Westbrook’s own cosmetics brand, Tati Beauty, was introduced five months following her October 2019 “Bye Sister” video.
However, after starting her own makeup line outside of Halo Beauty, Swanson launched a lawsuit against Westbrook and her husband just a year later, accusing them of fraud, carelessness, and breach of fiduciary duty.
In a statement to E! News at the time, Swanson’s attorney referred to her claims as “meritless.”
However, in order to make ends meet, Westbrook had to sell both her condo and her $4 million Los Angeles property.
“We sold our LA home.” In a 2021 video, she told viewers, “I moved out of my condo.”
“To truly be able to go all in and support what’s happening with me through this litigation, I have drastically reduced the size of my life.”
Westbrook had to close Tati Beauty that same year, citing the conflict with Swanson as well as the Covid epidemic.
Her marriage suffered as a result of the legal drama. “During this very, very stressful time in my life, James and I almost got divorced,” she stated in a YouTube video. “We could not be around each other; he got his own place, we were separated during the holidays.” It was a depressing period.
“I really thought I had lost everything,” Westbrook continued. “This is it for me” is what I recall thinking when I was by myself.
In August 2024, the Swanson lawsuit was ultimately resolved out of court after four years. Westbrook and her husband resigned from Halo Beauty as part of the settlement.
Westbrook and her spouse departed the influencer-heavy city of Los Angeles for a more sedate existence in Texas, either due to the legal dispute or her strained ties within the close-knit YouTube community.
According to Johnson County court records, they paid nearly $2 million for a five-bedroom, five-bathroom mansion outside of Fort Worth in February 2022 with a $1.3 million mortgage.
Following what Westbrook called a “transformative” year of “spiritual awakening,” which helped her navigate her lawsuit, marital difficulties, and the closure of Tati Beauty, they relocated to the Lone Star State.
In order to support herself during her legal battle, Westbrook (shown with husband James) had to sell both her condo and her $4 million Los Angeles home.
Her marriage suffered as a result of the court turmoil. “James and I nearly got divorced during this extremely stressful time in my life,” she stated.
She switched to the “carnivore diet” as part of this “transformation” after years of consuming plant-based and gluten-free cuisine. Additionally, she began using castor oil “for everything,” moisturising with bull tallow, cleaning her teeth with fluoride-free toothpaste, eating “raw cheese,” avoiding “toxic” red dye and microplastics, and cutting out “inflammatory” seed oils from her routine.
Fans have taken notice of this apparent change in Westbrook’s messaging. One former admirer commented on Reddit, “She went real weird and fell down the woo-woo pipeline and stopped being relevant to me.””Instead than a load of wide-eyed bullshit about seed oils that she learned from a podcast, I want to know about how she bakes her under eyelids.
Westbrook’s recent videos seem to be supported by “pseudoscience,” according to another commenter.
Some influencers have made beef tallow—rendered calf fat—particularly popular by promoting it as a natural substitute for cosmetics that contain chemicals.
As “one of the driving causes of the obesity epidemic,” Health Secretary RFK Jr. has been a strong supporter of cooking with beef tallow rather than seed oils like sunflower oil.
But whether using cow tallow instead of seed oils has any long-term benefits is still up for debate, according to scientists.
Fluoride reduction from toothpaste has also been promoted by RFK Jr.
“It feels to me that perhaps she is falling into what she feels is trendy and aligned with how she’s trying to rebuild her brand,” stated O’Neal, an expert in the beauty industry, who believes that Westbrook’s change in content is just an indication of an influencer trying to make a name for herself in the increasingly crowded beauty industry. I believe she is attempting to identify her speciality. However, I would advise you to make sure that anything you decide to do is true to who you are.
In fact, being genuine used to be crucial to Westbrook’s ongoing significance, whether it was through her frank evaluations of cosmetics or her harsh criticism of her former YouTube protégé.
It’s unfortunate that when the Daily Mail reached out to Westbrook’s reps for comment, “Team Tati” replied via email that the drama was “no longer culturally relevant.”
