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10 Men Who ROCK The Beauty Industry

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Ten YouTube beauty vloggers turned the cosmetics counter upside down, and two of them landed the biggest brand deals a man had ever gotten in the industry.

“10 Men Who ROCK The Beauty Industry,” the TheThings Celebrity rundown making the rounds, isn’t about legacy hairstylists or perfume-house veterans. It’s about the wave of male YouTubers and Instagram creators who spent 2016 building six- and seven-figure followings out of contour tutorials and eyeshadow swatches — and then got the brand deals to prove it. Two names anchor the list: James Charles and Manny Gutierrez, the first men ever tapped as the face of a major cosmetics campaign.

• James Charles became CoverGirl’s first-ever male brand ambassador in October 2016, earning the nickname “CoverBoy.”
• Manny Gutierrez (Manny MUA) was named Maybelline’s first male campaign face in early January 2017, fronting the “That Boss Life” mascara launch alongside Shayla Mitchell.
• The video also spotlights Patrick Starrr, Gabriel Zamora, Jake-Jamie Ward (The Beauty Boy), and U.K. teenager Lewys Ball (Lookingforlewys) as creators who built massive followings purely through YouTube tutorials.

The CoverGirl Breakthrough

James Charles’ signing with CoverGirl in October 2016 wasn’t a marketing gimmick tucked into a press release — it was a first for a brand that had run through decades of female ambassadors, from Christie Brinkley to Katy Perry. Charles built his following on YouTube tutorials heavy on cut-crease eyeshadow and full-coverage foundation work, the kind of technical content that earns credibility with beauty-obsessed subscribers rather than casual fans. CoverGirl’s decision to make him “CoverBoy” signaled that a brand this size was willing to put a man’s face on shelves next to every other ambassador in the lineup.

Maybelline Follows With Manny MUA

Manny Gutierrez, known online as Manny MUA, followed roughly three months later, becoming Maybelline’s first male campaign face for the “That Boss Life” mascara launch in early January 2017. He shared the campaign with Shayla Mitchell, another established beauty creator, which mattered as much as the mascara itself — Maybelline wasn’t experimenting with a novelty hire, it was putting Gutierrez in the same rotation as its established female talent.

CoverGirl’s first-ever male brand ambassador, then Maybelline’s first male campaign face — two of the biggest names in cosmetics handed their marquee campaigns to men within three months of each other.

The YouTube Pipeline Behind Them

Charles and Gutierrez didn’t emerge from nowhere — they were the tip of a much larger creator pipeline the video runs through. Patrick Starrr and Gabriel Zamora had already built reputations as tutorial-first creators with technique-heavy followings, the same credibility that made brands take notice of Charles and Gutierrez in the first place. Jake-Jamie Ward, who goes by The Beauty Boy, and U.K. teenager Lewys Ball, better known as Lookingforlewys, extended that same model overseas, proving the audience for male-fronted beauty content wasn’t limited to the U.S. market.

What ties all ten men together in the video is the same career path: tutorials first, subscriber trust second, brand deal third. It’s the same on-ramp that’s turned a new generation of young talent into industry names without a traditional agency or campaign shoot to start.

Dismantling the Gender Norms of the Makeup Counter

The through-line of the video is less about individual subscriber counts and more about what CoverGirl and Maybelline signing men in back-to-back windows actually did to the cosmetics counter’s unwritten rules. For decades, campaign faces were exclusively women; by January 2017, two of the biggest mass-market beauty brands in the country had each put a man front and center on a flagship product. It’s the kind of shift that echoes what’s played out among contestants who actually turned modeling exposure into lasting careers — visibility on a big platform, followed by a brand willing to bet real money on it.

Manny MUA’s mascara wand and James Charles’ CoverGirl compact aren’t just merch — they’re the receipts. Two campaigns, three months apart, both firsts, both signed off by brands that spent decades never once considering a man for the job.