Poor Zoe Sugg. Until a couple of months ago, you probably wouldn’t have heard of her unless you were born in the noughties – or if you had a little sister who was. The 24-year-old fashion and beauty vlogger, who goes by the name Zoella, remained largely unknown outside of her (admittedly massive) 6.2 million-strong teen fanbase. But that’s all changed this year.
Sugg has scored a Penguin book deal, a Superdrug beauty range and a lucrative gig as a YouTube brand ambassador. I walk past a huge digital billboard of her grinning on my way to work. If grown-ups didn’t know who Zoella was, they do now. And it turns out lots of them don’t like what they see.
Even the most ardent pro-Zoella adults seem baffled by her success: who is this girl, and how does she have more YouTube subscribers than Beyonce when all she does is post videos from her bedroom? Somewhat less charitably, Vice labelled her a 'vanilla human' and lumped her in with a new tribe of 'dickhead vloggers.'
But worst of all? The oddly prevalent idea that Zoella is a bad teen role model because of what made her famous in the first place: her makeup tutorials. In particular, her comment this week at the Teen Choice Awards that girls should worry less about their looks. ‘When you’re younger you worry about so many things that you don’t need to worry about like image, appearance,’ Sugg explained on the red carpet.
Some people thought this stunk of hypocrisy to the highest degree. One Independent columnist fumed: ‘It’s maddening that a girl who has made it her business to tell teenagers how to put makeup on… now feels she’s in a position to admonish them for “fretting” about their appearance. Why, if she feels so strongly about the pandemic of insecurity raging through the tweenage generation, doesn’t she vlog about going to school without make-up… rather than on the latest liquid eyeliner to hit Boots’ shelves?’
READ MORE: Why Are We Still Making People Feel Guilty For Wanting To Wear Make Up
Sure. Well, I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles so every tween could eat it and never be sad again, but that ain’t gonna happen.
For young girls, fashion and makeup is the one area of your life that you can exercise some independence over – school uniform aside, duh. You might not be able to convince an arsehole pub barman you’re 18, but you can sure as hell dress like a goth and cry through your wonkily-lined eyes about it in your room (guilty as charged). You might not understand why your boobs hurt or why your face has erupted in spots, but you can figure out how to do a cute topknot or paint your nails. When you’re living in a body that sometimes doesn’t feel quite yours, that little bit of control is imperative; even empowering.
I get why Zoella infuriates some people. She’s a pint-sized Disney princess made flesh. Not everyone gets the appeal of watching a 5-minute video of a girl from Brighton chat about makeup hauls from Lush. But we shouldn’t be shaming girls about wanting to learn about makeup any more than we should shame women for wearing it. There are worse people for girls to learn from than a woman who runs her own mini-media empire and makes an estimated £300,000 a year. In fact, I wish somebody like Zoella had been around when I was a kid. At the very least, I would’ve learnt how to draw eyeliner on right.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.