TikTok’s “Brownie Lips” beauty trend is yet another example of cultural appropriation. YPulse recently told you how cultural appropriation keeps trending—but TikTok is getting ahead of it this time. Hailey Bieber is (once again) at the center of a controversy around appropriation and beauty after the model posted a video of herself using brown lip liner and gloss and dubbing the look “Brownie lips.” Other creators followed suit, making the look trend, but the conversation turned when BIPOC creators rightly pointed out that this “new” style has long been used by BIPOC women. On TikTok, #BrownieLips has over 6B views, with some of the top viewed videos calling out the appropriation taking place. One of the top-viewed, titled “Was ‘clean girl’ & ‘spa water’ not enough?,” calls out Bieber for problematic past behavior and taking something created by women of color and trying to pass it off as her own. According to makeup artist Sir John, “When it was on my sisters or my mom, and in Black and Latino communities, it was seen as ghetto…Now that it’s on white bodies, it’s seen as ‘fashionable.’” (Diet Prada, TIME)
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