In the Year of Our Lord 2017, it's all about the glow-up. No YouTube beauty tutorial would be complete without a hefty dusting of #blinding highlighter applied oh-so-gently with a fan brush.
Social media beauty influencers just loooooove a fan brush, and on some level I understand why: they're different, they look fancy, and the application process — lightly dancing the bristles across your cheekbones! — looks really cool on camera.
Fan brushes are the definition of Extra, and every Extra YouTuber, Instagrammer, and editor worth their salt are obsessed with them.
And I HATE them.
I'd even go so far as to say that the greatest lie the devil ever told was that you NEED a fan brush in your makeup routine.
You don't.
You absolutely don't.
In fact, you're probably ruining your products, screwing up your application, and wasting a buttload of your time by using it.
Here are five reasons that fan brushes are hot garbage, and have no business being on your vanity.
1. Fan brushes waste an absolutely batshit amount of product.
Pictured above is my beloved Hourglass Ambient Strobe Lighting Powder ($38, Hourglass Cosmetics) in Iridescent. This is one of my favorite subtle highlight powders; it gives me a candlelit glow, and also has some subtle blurring effects.
I sat this wonderful highlighter on a black background, and swirled a natural-bristled fan brush around the pan twice. Behold the insane fallout situation. If I used a fan brush to apply this powder, I'd be wasting ALL of this product every single day.
2. Fan brushes aren't made for what we use them for.
Most fan brushes, like the one pictured above, have very long, loosely-packed bristles. In general, the longer the bristles of a brush, and the more space between them, the lighter the application will be — the brush will pick up less product, and there's more space for it to get "lost" between the bristles themselves.
That's exactly what you want in a blush brush, or an eyeshadow blending brush. But for a highlighter, it means you have to pick up twice as much powder to get half the results. Essentially, fan brushes waste your makeup — and that shit ain't cheap.
3. Fan brushes are TERRIBLE at blending.
Thanks to those ~long, luxurious~ bristles, fan brushes don't blend makeup all that well — but they DO push it around.
Instead of depositing the highlight onto skin and blending it out, fan brushes dump a bunch of powder onto a very narrow area and push it around without actually working it in to the rest of your makeup. In the photo above, you can see there's product fallout ALL over my cheek, and very little shimmer. Nah.
And I mean, SURE, you *can* get a decent highlight blend with a fan brush, in the same way that you *can* apply your foundation with a tomato — it's just a lot harder, wastes more product, and at the end of the day, WHY WOULD YOU BOTHER?
4. They don't actually apply highlighter in the right place.
When I say in the "right" place, I'm not saying there's a WRONG way to blind haters with your highlight. I am not the beauty police, do whatever you want.
But I AM gonna talk a little about technique. Fan brushes are wide, but they're narrow. If you use that very skinny edge to apply your makeup, you're going to have a single, razor-thin line of highlight right beneath your eyes and nowhere else — because, hi, FAN BRUSHES SUCK AT BLENDING.
That's a powerful look for Instagram — God knows it pops under a ring light — but it's often not what you want for real life. It's almost impossible to use a fan brush to apply highlight like a normal person and not a FaceTuned #influencer: more concentrated on the cheekbone, slightly down the cheek, around the temple, the bridge of the nose.
5. Have you ever tried to wash a fucking fan brush?
Oh.
My.
God.
I'm prefacing this by saying that I wash my makeup brushes weekly. I take incredible care of my tools — I've had most of my brushes for over 10 years, and they're still immaculate.
Washing fan brushes is the goddamned worst.
If they're natural-bristled, they dry with every hair pointing in a different direction — even if you shape them before they dry, even if you dry them between two towels with a dictionary on top. If they're synthetic, they HOARD PRODUCT, the bristles clump together, and they take approximately two billion years to dry.
There's Extra, and then there's using a makeup brush that requires more grooming than my dog. I cannot.
"OK, Alle," I can hear you saying. "I get it, fan brushes suck. What kind of brush should I use to apply my highlight with?"
So glad you asked! This is the brush that I use to apply my highlighter — the NARS Yachiyo ($55, Sephora). Like a fan brush, it's aesthetically pleasing — unlike the fan brush, it actually does its job.
There are some key features you should look for in a good highlighter brush: The top should be slightly rounded, with a "footprint" about the width of a quarter. The bristles should be flexible, with a medium density — not as tightly packed as a concealer brush, not as loosely packed as a blender. The handle should feel comfortable in your hand, and not be too heavy OR too light.
But mostly, you should like using it. I get that fan brushes are fun and cute, but it's no good if "fun and cute" comes at the expense of your artistry looking good! Pick something that makes you happy, AND that makes you look as glorious as you are.
Go forth, and glow with confidence!
After all, life's too short for bad highlight.
