It's been rumored (for what feels like months now) that YouTube's core beauty trio — Jeffree Star, Manny Gutierrez, and Laura Lee — have broken up. Birthdays were ignored, collaborations with sworn enemies were made, and vicious subtweets went flying.
The beauty world was certain the friendships were over for good, but now things aren't nearly as clear as they seemed.
Confusingly enough, Star and Gutierrez are hanging out again.
This photo of the two of them "catching up" was posted to Gutierrez's Snapchat. Star posted a Snapchat story with similar selfie and a now-deleted tweet that read, "When people try to break up a friendship that is stronger than gold… Try again."
"I’m sure a lot of you guys are shook at my last photo," Gutierrez said over Snapchat. "There’s been a lot of speculation online about Jeffree and I."
"I just want you guys to remember, at the end of the day, first and foremost we are people. We have miscommunications, we have missteps, we have friendships that go awry, we have relationships that end. And that is OK; that’s part of life, that’s part of growth, and that’s part of change. And change is good; change is welcomed.
"And it’s frustrating because we are public figures… and our friendships and our relationships are made known to the public, and the public feels the need to know what is going on [behind] closed doors."
"Shit happens between people all the time; miscommunications happen all the time."
"I just hope you guys… understand that we need to solve it between ourselves and talk amongst ourselves before we bring it public and before we go live and make statements that we don’t want to make and say things we don’t want to say and be petty online and things like that — we don’t want that to happen."
"We are fine, and we are navigating our relationship like healthy people should."
"In the future, please just let us navigate our own issues." He then went on to dispel the "fake rumors" that Star pulled funding from his and Lee's beauty brands (and that he was funding their brands to begin with).
Where does Lee fall into all of this? According to screenshots of Star's Twitter, she might be the source of miscommunication.
Screenshots circulating the internet from Star's Twitter reveal now-deleted replies that say of Laura, "You know nothing about her personality. Her soul is pure evil," and "I am so sorry for ever introducing her to my audience."
Fellow YouTuber Jackie Aina also revealed a distrust for Lee via Twitter this week.
"Don't let that 'southern charm' fool y'all," she wrote.
Star, Gutierrez, nor Aina have yet to explain what the hell happened — meanwhile, Lee is busy promoting her ColourPop collaboration.
Which JUST SO HAPPENED to launch this morning.
And now the internet is trying to put together the pieces like:
This is all too much.
