- This video is sponsored by Squarespace, an all in one platform to build your brand and grow your business online. Hello, my beautiful doves. My name is Mina and sorry that this video took so long to put out. The reason is because
I got a stomach virus. It's still affecting my system, but it literally incapacitated
me for eight days, so I was busy fighting for my life. ("Windows Shutdown sound")
(woman squealing) Anyways, today's video is going to be about the massive influx
of celebrity brands, specifically in the beauty
and wellness sphere. (intriguing music) What am I talking about? Well, in 2022 alone, the
following brands launched, GXVE, (vocalizing),
G-X-V-E by Gwen Stefani, The Outset by Scarlett Johansson, Cay Skin by Winnie Harlow,
SKKN by Kim Kardashian, Pley Beauty by Peyton List,
Inala by La La Anthony, and Hailey Bieber and John
Legend have also proposed that they'll be launching their
own brands later on as well. This is literally just 2022, mind you. Other existing brands include Fenty Beauty by Rihanna, Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez, JLo Beauty by Jennifer
Lopez, Honest Beauty by Jessica Alba, Flower
Beauty by Drew Barrymore, Haus Labs by Lady Gaga,
About-Face by Halsey, florence by mills by Millie Bobby Brown, Humanrace by Pharrell Williams,
Victoria Beckham Beauty by by Victoria Beckham and so many more. In my humble opinion, enough is enough. (chuckles) Generally, I don't think
any of these new brands are offering anything new
that hasn't already been in existence, just under
different packaging. At least when Rihanna
launched Fenty Beauty in 2017, it felt fresh and interesting, because the celebrity beauty
market wasn't as oversaturated and she also introduced a
40-shade foundation range, which was virtually and
sadly unheard of at the time. But now everyone and their
mother and their agent wants to cash in on the beauty industry and I'm just tired of it. So first things first, I want to explain the different types of celebrity brands and endorsements, because not all of them are the same. At one end of the spectrum, we have people like Viola Davis, who's
the face of L'Oréal Paris and Margot Robbie, the face of CHANEL. These celebs get paid
to promote the brand, but they have very little creative input when it comes to products and campaigns. Sometimes they'll get
collections within a larger brand like Victoria Beckham
had with Estee Lauder. At the other end of the spectrum, we have brands that are
like independent entities that have their own creative teams, their own funding, et cetera. For example, Haus Labs,
Goop and Honest Company. These celebrities hire
out management team, seek funding, have their
own boards, et cetera. Basically, they do
whatever a normal person founding a beauty
company would have to do. This is also the most intensive option, if that wasn't clear. (chuckles) And in between those two ends, there are traditional licensing deals. For example, Revlon owns licenses for several celebrity fragrances like Britney Spears,
Christina Aguilera, et cetera. For these types of deals, celebrities can but they don't always have
creative input in the products. There's also brands where
celebrities are owners, but the brands are not marketed as theirs. For example, Olivia Wilde is currently part owner of True Botanicals. But as of recently,
the most popular method of creating a celebrity brand
is through beauty incubators, which are companies like Kendo, which is responsible for Fenty Beauty. These companies handle everything
from product development, marketing, management,
retailers, et cetera. Normally, celebrity ownership
is in the form of equity and celebrities do have creative freedom when it comes to product
design and promotion materials, but the parent company is
responsible for coming up with ingredient suppliers, manufacturers, and marketing strategies. And then there's also
some smaller companies that basically do the same things like Maesa and Beach House Group, which have produced
Flower by Drew Barrymore and Kendall Jenner's oral-care
line, Moon, respectively. So that's a rough overview of
celebrity branding packages. Now, before we get into the thick of it, a word from our sponsor. Thank you Squarespace for
sponsoring this video. Squarespace helps you easily build a personal or business website. They have a bunch of cool features like their email campaigns,
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to launch your website, you can use my link down
below to save 10 percent off your first purchase of
a website or a domain. (intriguing music) So I thought I would
preface this little video with a little story on
celebrity fragrances, because we all love those,
we all remember them and they were arguably the first major mainstream collaborations between celebrities and beauty brands. Fragrance experts at beauty
retailer, Justmylook, date the advent of celebrity
perfumes back to the 1950s. They said, "What really started the craze is Marilyn Monroe with Chanel No. 5. Although this wasn't Marilyn's own scent, the brand was able to
capitalize on her influence and use this to sell perfumes. This is when the beauty
and fragrance industry really started to take
notice of the success celebrity fragrances could have and celebrities started to utilize this technique for themselves." Later in 1954, Givenchy
she designed a fragrance for Audrey Hepburn known as L'Interdit, which was then marketed
with her image in 1957. However, Givenchy did not pay Audrey for using her in his advertisements so I wouldn't really consider this the first celebrity collaboration. Arguably, Sophia Loren
in 1981 was the first to launch a celebrity scent
through Coty called Sophia and maybe the first most successful one was Elizabeth Taylor's Passion in 1987, which had the backing of Elizabeth Arden. Upon her death in 2011, Elizabeth Taylor had a net worth of $800
million. (chuckles) The majority of it being
from her perfume brand. Elizabeth Taylor has also famously claimed that she's made more
money from her perfumes than all of her movie roles combined. Then in the early 2000s, we
had a celebrity fragrance boom with stars like Beyonce, Britney
Spears and Jennifer Lopez, all with their own signature scents. The Justmylook teams
explains the excitement. "At that point in time,
most celebrities stuck to their job and didn't branch out into different businesses or
didn't invest their money, making the perfumes even
more exciting for fans. Perfumes like this are popular because they're an accessible way for fans to relate to their favorite celebrities. Their wardrobes are too expensive to copy, but the ability to smell
like your favorite celeb is easy as it's cheaper
to buy the perfumes than their designer outfits." Laura Capon writes about
her own nostalgic experience with Jennifer Lopez's scent,
Glow, in Cosmopolitan. "When I sprayed that
artificial grapefruit scent, I felt like Jennifer herself, casually throwing away
my expensive jewelry from a 1997 Aston Martin convertible and then stopping for an impromptu dance break down on the beach. In reality, I was an overweight 15-year-old girl from Croydon who spent her evenings
with the curtains closed, desperately trying to nail the moves from her Darrin Dance Grooves DVD." But of course not everyone was riding the celebrity perfume wave. I would arguably say that
the celebrity perfume market mostly targeted teens and tweens. There was definitely the
snobbery among the elites when it came to celebrity perfumery. Former perfume critic
for The New York Times, Chandler Burr, wrote in a review for Britney Spears' Midnight Fantasy, "Celebrity perfumes occupy a decidedly downmarket place in perfume. In other words, if you had money and presumably, taste,
you didn't buy them. As art, creativity, quality, legitimacy, their reputations are abysmal. It may also be that much
of celebrity perfumery is unadulterated garbage." But he did give Midnight perfumery an excellent four stars, so, I know that's right. (audience squealing) - It's Britney, bitch.
(percussive pop music) - Nowadays, celebrity perfumes don't have the same pulling power as they did in the early 2000s, with sales declining
at 22 percent in 2018. Fragrance expert, Nick
Gilbert, has a theory that, "There was a period in time
where celebrity fragrances were the way to access a secret world. Now that has been replaced by
social media almost entirely. There's no need to 'buy in'
to the lifestyle anymore." I definitely agree with Nick on this one. An example is in 2001,
Britney Spears was called out for drinking Coca-Cola in public when she had just signed
a deal with Pepsi. - Candidly, just between
you and me, how much Pepsi do you think you drink on an average day? - I really do like Pepsi.
- Really? What's your favorite kind?
- I really do. - My favorite kind of
Pepsi? Pepsi's Pepsi. - Well, you don't drink Diet Pepsi or- - No. Just regular Pepsi. - Nowadays, I think,
if someone like Britney was caught doing that exact same thing, a lot of the internet
would just find it funny. We're just so much more
aware of the realities of advertising and ambassadorship and it's just not as scandalous because we also know that
celebrities are imperfect and we're so exposed to their messes, their bad tweets, their
weird posts on Instagram. I feel like celebrities still, obviously, hold that star power, but they definitely no
longer hold that mystery. Hilariously, in 2011, Adam Levine tweeted, "I would like to put an official ban on celebrity fragrances. Punishable by death from
this point forward." But of course, are we surprised that he then launched his
own fragrance in 2013? By order of Adam Levine, bring
out the guillotine, folks. Rochelle Bloom, president of
Fragrance Foundation, notes, "Celebrities see it as a revenue stream without a lot of responsibility and the manufacturers see
it as a revenue stream to help their bottom line." To give you an idea of how profitable celebrity fragrances were, back in 2013, when this Style Caster
article was written, celebrities tended to make
between 5 and 10 percent of sales for licensing
their name to ascent on top of an upfront
payment of $3 million plus. The cost of making bottles
of perfume and cologne is also roughly about 25 percent of retail so there is a huge profit margin. In other words, I can't
help but think cynically that celebrity fragrances
are just a money grab and let's be honest, to add on to that, most celebrities don't
wear their own perfumes with the exception of Elizabeth Taylor, who reportedly wore her
scent, White Diamonds. Adele one said in a Billboard interview regarding perfume endorsement, "I've got nothing
against people who do it. It's just the only thing
people do it is for money and I'd rather not give into that. I wouldn't wear my own perfume. That's not me being in touch with my fans. I'll always wear the same
perfume I've always worn since I was 15, Christian
Dior Hypnotic Poison." (intriguing music) So why are we so obsessed
with celebrities? Why does celebrity
endorsements sometimes work? Why do brands keep resulting to this? Why do beauty incubators keep trying to push out celebrity brands? Well, celebrity endorsements
can act as signals that differentiate similar products. If you have 10 foundation
brands to choose from and you're undecided,
maybe that deciding factor is because you love Selena Gomez and you wanna support
her Rare Beauty brand and maybe you believe,
because you like Selena Gomez, that she also knows what she's doing and therefore you trust her product more. Inevitably, I would say
we trust individuals over corporations and when it comes to
celebrity beauty brands, there is an individual tied
to that corporation's face. Psychologist Pamela Rutledge adds, "Authenticity in marketing is really key, because it's a precursor of trust and trust is what gets
people to buy into the story and it's the only thing that influences our purchase behaviors." Michael Yanover, head of business
development at CAA, notes, "Consumers are tired of being marketed to. They don't trust the big companies. That's a total shift that's happening. It's easier for Gaga or
Gwyneth to come along and say, 'Hey, you know me, I'm not going to do anything to screw you.'" And then of course, there's this idea that celebrities are
commodities themselves and when you're purchasing
a celebrity product, you're purchasing the idea of celebrity. Consumer psychologist
Kate Nightingale adds, "Purchasing celebrity perfumes
can be related to ideal self, the future dream self of a
person's identity and lifestyle. As a person is working on getting closer to their imagined future,
they are using various tools to help them in the process
of self development. One such tool is emulating
celebrities' identities and lifestyle via consumption." And of course, the basis
of most celebrity worship, which we cannot forget about is, ding, ding, ding,
parasocial relationships, which, if you have been living under rock or are just not in tune
with celebrity culture, parasocial relationships
are these one-sided psychological relationships
where a person is obsessed with and spends, exerts time, energy and money on another person who
doesn't know they exist. And you know we've all been there. I don't think I'm necessarily above it, because a lot of people who tend to get into these parasocial
relationships are teenagers and I was obsessed with K-pop groups when I was in high school,
so I totally understand. I knew someone who
literally bought their bias, which is, for anyone who's
not aware of K-popisms, is your favorite member of a group or your favorite K-pop idol, and she bought her bias a shirt and sent it to, I don't even
remember how this works, I don't know if you can still
send things to celebrities, but at the time she did. I mean, at the time, I was lost in it so I wasn't really
thinking, but looking back, I'm just like, why as a teenager with such low disposable
income to begin with, would you spend money for a celebrity who's making way more money than you? - Right when you can afford
to buy anything you want, you get given everything for free. It doesn't make any sense.
Don't give us free stuff. - Stan culture is definitely
something interesting. And for anyone wondering, I
was really into Shinee and EXO. But anyways, what's more
insidious and more extreme than just buying beauty products
that celebrities endorse is following celebrity medical advice. For example, when Australian
singer, Kylie Minogue, was diagnosed with breast cancer, bookings for mammograms rose by 40 percent in four Australian states. And after Angelina Jolie
wrote about her risk of breast cancer in The
New York Times in 2013, there was an immediate 64 percent increase in the number of American
women who underwent testing for the breast-cancer gene mutation. Those are not necessarily
bad things by the way. Those are pretty good
examples, get your mammogram. But on the flip side, it
can get pretty dangerous. OB/GYN Dr. Jen Gunter has
made numerous blog posts contradicting the health advice written on Gwyneth Paltrow's
lifestyle beauty brand, Goop's website including
a writeup on the yoni eggs the company was selling,
which they eventually had to pay $145,000 in civil penalties for lying to customers about its benefits. (intriguing music) With the celebrity fragrance
industry slowing down, though with new releases
from Billie Eilish and renewed interest in
Britney Spears, maybe not. But anyways, it's no
surprise that celebrities have now all jumped ship
onto the next trendy thing, which is creating their own beauty brands. I was listening to this
little segment on Marketplace with host Reema Khrais
speaking with freelance beauty reporter, Cheryl Wischhover and I'm going to play a
quote that Cheryl says. - [Reema] So I wanna get more specific. What is it about the beauty industry that makes it especially lucrative? - [Cheryl] Beauty has a really, really high margin, like huge margin. So I interviewed a beauty founder whose brand no longer
exists several years ago, and she sort of walked
me through the process of what a lipstick actually costs to make. And she said it was about $2.50 cents and if you go to, you know, Sephora, what are you paying-
- It is not- - the lipstick-
- $2.50, I tell you. - [Cheryl] No, no. $30, $40. Even $18 is a huge markup. And celebrities, if they are big enough and have a big enough
social media platform, they don't have to do
traditional advertising, which just saves a huge amount of money. So that's even more profit. - [Reema] Right, right. - Celebrities have recognized they have more ways to monetize than ever before. And especially with known successes like Kylie Jenner's Lip Kits
and Rihanna's Fenty Beauty, now everyone wants to get
their hand on the pot. Beauty expert, Rachel
Weingarten, tells Glamour, "We're not seeing celebrities
as much these days as we did. They don't have glamorous movie premieres. There are less opportunities
for endorsements. They have to do something
to get their name out there and make money right now." Stacy Jones, founder and CEO
of Hollywood Branded, adds, "Celebrities want an
active stake in the action where their time and
energy and association can yield returns that far outlast a single endorsement campaign. The sky is the limit now,
thanks to social media and the massive footprint
celebrities have online. From celebrities receiving C-suite titles to creating limited edition lines to fully branded and owned product lines, it's a potential financial windfall." To give a sense of how successful some of these beauty brands can get, Kylie Jenner sold 51
percent of her beauty line to Coty for $600 million. Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop was
valued at $250 million in 2018 and Jessica Alba's
Honest Company was stated as being worth $1 billion in 2020. So I also posed this
question on my Patreon about celebrity beauty brands and one of my patrons, Danielle F, wrote that the celebrity
beauty/wellness brand narrative tends to portray celebs
as these girlbosses who start these companies
all by themselves, which is definitely a good
point and definitely good PR. But I've also noticed, ironically, that the girlboss narrative also applies to men in the beauty industry, which is extremely funny
in a dystopian way. You know what I mean. Harry Styles and Machine Gun Kelly, they started their own nail polish brands and they're all about
making nail polish for men and gender-neutral and breaking barriers, because we wear makeup and we're men, which is not a problem. I obviously think that makeup
should be gender-neutral, point blank, but I think, just what's deeply ironic
about how journalists and the press get all up in
arms, raising their hands, applauding for these
guys, for these fellas. What's ironic about it
is that almost two thirds of executive committee
seats in the beauty industry are held by men so, no, I don't think it's really groundbreaking
that male celebrities now want in on the beauty brand business because men have already been here. (intriguing music) I may sound like a complainer
throughout this whole video, but I'm not the only one tired
of celebrity beauty brands. Plenty of people all over social
media have been complaining about how we just keep
getting more and more of them. And I feel like all of this cynicism can be perfectly captured by how, in 2019, Millie Bobby Brown posted a
video tutorial on Instagram on how to use one of her products and it looks like she wasn't
using anything at all. The video, of course,
received a ton of backlash with one commenter writing, "She literally didn't apply anything. If she was actually applying something, then all her makeup would
be smudging and coming off." Millie quickly released a public apology, but I think the case
definitely raises the question on whether or not celebrities even use their own skincare and makeup products. And in Millie's case, she
was 15 years old at the time. So I also just don't understand why she was recruited to
be the face of a brand because she literally is a child or she was a child and she had perfect
youthful skin to begin with. You know what I mean? And more likely the not,
celebrities have really good skin, because they get all
these types of procedures at the dermatologist that
normal people cannot afford like microneedling,
Botox, vampire facials. There's a procedure I
learned about recently called ultherapy, which
can cost up to $100,000 for full body skin tightening. No product is gonna give
you that, I'm sorry to say. According to Hana Ben-Shabat, the founder of Gen Z
Planet, a research firm, many gen Z consumers are aware of this and are harder pressed to fall
for celebrity endorsement. Ben-Shabat data indicates that
only 19 percent of Gen Z-ers said celebrities influence
their purchasing decisions compared with 66 percent who cited their friends as the most influential. And according to a Trustpilot report, celebrity influencers currently have the lowest level of trust among consumers. Two thirds of consumers,
67 percent in the US and 65 percent in the
UK, describe their level of trust in them,
particularly when it comes to health and beauty products as low. Customer reviews and expert
ratings ranked highest. So I think we're definitely coming to a point where the tide is turning and people are just getting
sick of being pushed products by people who have no idea
what they're talking about. So I do wonder if the
celebrity beauty bubble will burst anytime soon. People are also apparently engaging less with influencer content as a whole. - Yo, what's up. My name is Owen. I am the best person in the
house. I'm the best looking. I am the most outgoing
and I am the most fun. - While the number of active
users and sponsored posts across makeup, skincare
and hair care increased in the last three months of 2021, engagement has fallen
quarter after quarter according to influencer
marketing platform, Traackr. Granted, I do think part of
it is because algorithms suck and specifically Instagram. I have a bone to pick with Instagram, because they never wanna show me things I actually wanna see. Marketing officer, Evie Leons
also references the burnout. "Influencer marketing in the beauty sector is a saturated space. It's a channel that
has worked so everybody is pouring more money into this strategy. There are a lot more brands at play and creators talking about products." Here's an example of a
celebrity beauty collaboration that did not save a company. Four months after BH Cosmetics released a makeup collaboration with Doja Cat, the brand filed for Chapter
11 bankruptcy protection, closed their operations
and put their assets up for sale for at least $4.3 million. In its bankruptcy filing,
BH Cosmetics stated, "An extremely competitive
retail environment, a decline in makeup
sales during the pandemic and the lackluster performance of recent celebrity fronted collaboration lines. Its 2021 collection with Doja Cat, which featured a set of
eyeshadows, eyeliner and brushes, and a similar collaboration
with rapper, Iggy Azalea, fell significantly below expectations and the company was left
with no clear strategy to return business to
growth and sustainability," according to the bankruptcy filing. But then how do we explain
the success of Fenty and Harry Style's beauty brand, Pleasing, which sold out immediately
and was released last year. Weingarten explains
that it's more important to have a keen understanding
of celebrities' fan base than anything else. She adds, "What makes a line
is respecting your fandom and understanding what they like. What they like about you
and how to create a product that makes them feel like
some of your stardust has brushed off on them." And my understanding is, for Harry Styles, in the past few years, he's really broken out of his raggedy One
Direction shell, no offense, and he's really embraced
this vibrant, colorful, saturated, fun, glittery type of fashion and makeup with his solo career. So in a way, creating a makeup brand doesn't feel too far fetched for him, because it seems like a genuine interest. So there's a level of
authenticity baked in there. And in Fenty's case, the
40-shade foundation range, which I mentioned
earlier, was a huge draw. The brand reportedly made
$550 million in revenue after its first full
calendar year of operation with the Time magazine recognizing it as one of the top 25
inventions of the year. The darkest shades also sold out first, which proved to so many beauty brands that yes, dark skin, black women are a worthy market of people to cater to and so in this way, Fenty
Beauty also pioneered something. But what I also think made Fenty stand out is that, yes, no doubt
Rihanna's fame is huge, but Rihanna herself is a
black woman and has also, in the past, complained
about having issues finding makeup shades that
matched her skin tone. PR expert Brenda Gabriel says, "The fact that Rihanna was a black icon acknowledging the struggle for
black women, in particular, made them love her and her
disruptive persona even more." Now, how do we explain Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop, which has suffered from
scandal after scandal yet grows bigger and bigger every year? As just an example of a
previous Goop scandal, Goop was selling these Body
Vibes stickers back in 2017, which cost $120 for a pack of 24. On the website, they wrote,
"Human bodies operate at an ideal energetic frequency, but everyday stresses and anxiety can throw off our internal balance, depleting our energy reserves and weakening our immune systems. Body Vibes stickers made
with the same conductive carbon material NASA
uses to line space suits so they can monitor an
astronaut's vitals during wear come pre-programmed to an ideal frequency, allowing them to target imbalances," which sounds like gibberish
which it basically is, because a representative
from NASA's Spacewalk office told Gizmodo that they do
not have any conductive carbon material lining the spacesuits. Spacesuits are actually made of synthetic polymers, spandex and other materials. And yet, its June 2017
In goop Health Summit sold out of its $1,500 tickets and by 2018, Goop had over
8 million subscribers. Olga Khazan for The Atlantic
wrote that Goop has capitalized on several recent trends in health media. "The rich are already more likely than the poor to be
healthy, so they shell out for alternative treatments and supplements in hopes of achieving
even greater vitality." And yes, for anyone wondering,
according to Adweek, Goop's reader demographic averages 34-year-olds with six figure incomes. So they have money to blow. Khazan also explains the growing interest in being healthier in general, which she presumes the
site is benefiting from. Organic food sales have
grown well healthily over the past decade. Even Gatorade now comes
in an organic variety. Nearly 10 percent of Americans do yoga and 8 percent meditate. People are skipping soda
for mindful beverages like coconut water. Americans now spend about a
third as much out of pocket on complimentary practitioners as they do on regular doctors. And then of course there's the whole thing where it's all press is good press, because hate also brings
traffic to Goop's website. At a Harvard talk, Gwyneth Paltrow showed she was very aware of this power, calling these viral anti-Goop
moments, cultural firestorms, and saying to the students that she can monetize those eyeballs. So there are a number of reasons why celebrity brands can still succeed even when distrust for celebrities is growing more than ever. For instance, if the celeb
had a previous connection to the beauty industry,
then them joining it and creating a brand
feels way more authentic and if the brand is seen as introducing something new like gender-neutral makeup, then there's a novelty that
pulls people in as well. But even though I have a bone
to pick with Gwyneth Paltrow, I can at least say that she is
passionate about her company and that is saying a lot in her favor, because so much of the
industry is just saturated with people who are clearly
only creating brands as these easy money grabs. (intriguing music) So the last thing I wanna talk about is environmental impact. (audience cheering) (Mina hooting) I feel like the fashion
industry gets a lot of space in the conversation when
we talk about waste, but the beauty industry is
also incredibly wasteful. Waste is generated by formula testers and unsold products or
products that people return that just expire on warehouse
shelves and on store shelves. But something else to note is that there's actually a lot of missing data when it comes to figuring
out how much waste is actually being produced
by the beauty industry and this prevents people from being able to come up with solutions for it, 'cause we don't actually
know how big the problem is. I was reading this Vogue Business article on beauty industry waste and apparently, Sephora declined an interview request and declined to provide figures on product waste generated in its stores. Alta would also not share figures on unsold merchandise
or returned products. All that sounds incredibly fishy to me, because if you've got nothing to hide, why are you hiding? Arnaud Plas, co-founder and CEO of Prose, says he's done his own
research and estimates that between 20 and 40
percent of beauty products, depending on the
category, end up as waste. - This also has very strong chemicals. This is a foundation so you have to think about the groundwater contamination coming from products like this that's
seeping into the environment. - And that's also not including
the packaging, by the way. The personal care and beauty industry produces more than 120 billion units of packaging every year, globally. Most of which are not truly recyclable. - I mean, you have two
different kinds of plastic here and then the size, in lots of situations, this is gonna fall through
and then goes to landfill. - What way would this work right? - Color is an important issue. A lot of black plastics
are not recyclable. - And why is that? - When you try and make it
back into another product, the only color you could
mix it with is black. - This bottle could probably
be recycled but not this top. And there's 552 million shampoo bottles that are discarded annually in the US. So all of these can add up. (chuckles) - In 2018, in the US alone,
almost 7.9 billion units of rigid plastic were
created just for beauty and personal care products. I don't know why this info
is gatekept, by the way, because I didn't know
it until very recently. Oh my God, my cat's going crazy. Okay. (chuckles) Since 1950, which is when large scale plastic production first started, only 9 percent of the world's
plastic has been recycled, because most plastic cannot be recycled. A recent report by Greenpeace USA found that only plastics type one and two, out of seven types of plastic, can legally be claimed to
be recyclable in the US and most cosmetics and
personal care products use plastics other than types one and two in their packaging. Single-use plastics are the primary source of plastic pollution in the world, with Americans alone discarding 30 million tons of plastic a year. So needless to say, we don't
need any more beauty brands that are selling the
same products inherently, just with different packaging. So beauty reporter, Jessica Defino, told In The Know that a more
sustainable and ethical way for celebrity to be involved
in the beauty industry, if that's what they so please, is to fund research and improvement for already established brands rather than adding to an
oversaturated brand market. She says, "I think that
a lot of celebrity brands do have really great
intentions behind them, but there are already
existing cosmetic companies that are addressing a lot of the issues celebrities are aiming to address and you can support these brands or be a part of those
brands and not necessarily have to introduce a new product." She named Pharrell Williams'
line Humanrace, as an example. Humanrace uses Braille on its packaging to be more inclusive. Defino suggests, "How
incredible would it be if Williams took all of his
influence, all of his power, all of his money that
he put behind his brand and he found a way to
make accessible packaging easier to use within the industry and spread that technology throughout." She also criticized the need to create beauty brands for men, saying, "To launch something and be like, 'This is for men,' enforces the binary. You could partner with any brand that exists that primarily targets women and widen their existing
audience to also target men. That would be a more effective
way to be gender-inclusive. So that's all I have to
say about this topic. Thanks for watching, sticking around, being patient on this video drop, because I've just been sick to my bones. Let me know in the comments what you think about celebrity beauty brands, if you think they're redundant, if there's actually any
brands that you support that are celebrity beauty brands and why, I'm interested to hear it. I guess I'll talk to you later. I'll talk to you next time. It won't be as long, hopefully. Hopefully, I won't be fighting for my life again, anytime soon. And I hope you have a
lovely rest of your day and I'll see you next time. As you can tell, I'm very out of practice when it comes to being
in front of the camera. Bye bye. Have a lovely rest of your day. (smooches lips) (piano music)
