James Charles

James Charles Dickinson was born on May 23, 1999 in Bethlehem, New York. He has a younger brother named Ian. He studied at Bethlehem Central High School, from where he graduated in June 2017. James, who is a spokesmodel for cosmetics brand CoverGirl, had its slogan 'Easy, Breezy, Beautiful' emblazoned across his graduation cap. He first came out as gay at the age of twelve, while in middle school. His parents are very supportive of his sexual orientation as well as his interest in makeup. His father, a contractor, converted their basement into a glam-room for his use.

James Charles was working as a hairstylist when, feeling bored and creatively constricted, he decided to delve into the world of cosmetics and share his pictures and videos on social media. He created his YouTube channel on December 1, 2015 to share beauty and makeup videos with his subscribers. He soon gained popularity as a male beauty guru and since then has managed to amass over 5.1 million subscribers to his channel. He is equally popular on Instagram and Twitter, with 5.1 million and over 1 million followers respectively. However, what made him instantaneously famous on the internet is his tweet on September 5, 2016, in which he shared pictures with his followers stating that he took his own ring light to his high school prom to have popping highlight on his pictures. His story soon went viral and cosmetics brand CoverGirl subsequently chose him as their first male spokesmodel.

Within his short stint in the limelight, James Charles has already courted controversy a number of times. In February 2017, while preparing for a trip to South Africa with his school friends, he tweeted a highly insensitive racist joke about the Ebola disease. He was immediately overwhelmed by criticism and deleted the tweet soon after. However, the damage was already done; not only people were surprised by his disgustingly racist joke, but even fans urged CoverGirl to drop him from the brand. Realizing the severity of his actions, he eventually issued an apology stating that he was extremely sorry for his actions and that he has learned from his mistake. Following that, CoverGirl issued a statement saying that his tweet doesn't represent the brand, which respects all people and cultures, and added that they were glad that he had had apologized for his actions.

Unfortunately, the very next month he got entangled into another controversy after it was revealed that he had lied about the very incident that made him famous in the first place. Following an altercation with him, his friend and fellow beauty guru Thomas Halbert, also known by his online alias 'ThomasBeautyy', exposed him by showing with proofs that he did not actually bring a ring light to the photo session and that the pictures were Photoshopped later to make his makeup look amazing. However, Halbert later apologized for his actions stating that the pictures were out of context, and also added that while James did retouch the photos later, he also did retake them.

In April 2018, he shared one of his unfortunate experiences after being asked by fellow YouTuber Shane Dawson about the rudest celebrity he ever met. He named pop star Ariana Grande, stating that she had followed him on Twitter after he posted pictures and videos from one of her shows he had attended. While she was very sweet initially, she unfollowed him three hours later, crumbling to pressure from fans who were angry that she had followed him right after the Ebola controversy happened. In May 2018, he teamed up with controversial YouTuber Tana Mongeau and shared personal experiences with TV personality Tyra Banks, claiming that she had done 'shady' things for fame.