Have you ever watched a Tati Westbrook video on YouTube and thought to yourself, "Wow, her skin is flawless?" Like, come on, it's like she doesn't have any pores, she possesses this seemingly effortless glow, and her piercing blue eyes seem almost unreal. Well, guess what, folks? Reddit thinks that's exactly what it is: unreal.
After posting a video earlier this week alongside makeup artist Scott Barnes, viewers noticed that the pair's skin was too good to be true, and people are now calling them out for "false advertising." Has Westbrook been filtering her videos all along? It kind of seems that way.
On June 17, Tati Westbrook posted a video with makeup extraordinaire Scott Barnes.
The video, which is one of many collaborations with the celebrity MUA, highlighted all of their favorite trending beauty products of the moment.
"I was on YouTube 10 years ago before beauty was really a thing on YouTube then kind of parted ways from it. Now all these years later, I'm so excited to be back on via Tati and I'm loving all of the community and your love. Tati is so special to me and she keeps it real. Shoutout to all the companies below who I rely on for all my makeup jobs all around the world. Be kind to one another," Barnes said of the video on his Instagram page.
But in a thread on Reddit, viewers noticed some inconsistencies in the video's image quality.
"Tati records at 1080HD. Why aren't drama channels calling her out for blatant use of filters?? She's promoting Halo on her channel and using herself and Scott's skin as examples. This is false advertising," the thread began.
"Scott's hair and chest texture is sharp, while everything else is blurred," the critic continued.
And they were right, neither Westbrook's nor Barnes' skin had a flaw in sight.
"Scott's nose and cheek become one with the bottle. No creasing under Scott's eye even when squinting," the same commenter noted.
Neither of the makeup masters even appeared to have pores. And as most of us are used to seeing Westbrook's face alone, to see that same airbrushed finish on another person raised some serious red flags.
So why hasn't anyone called out Westbrook in the past?
Well, the answer to that is simple: They have. But there's a reason you haven't seen those comments appearing under her photos.
"People do call her out on it though, she just deletes negative comments on her videos including any mention of filters," someone claimed.
But ultimately, there's no real regulation in the beauty industry to prevent "false advertising" instances like these — especially on YouTube.
"This makes me think of when the Better Business Bureau got involved with mascara ads that used false lashes on the models. They tried to say it was false advertising and ban the ads, but L'Oreal made an arguement [sic] basically saying that the lashes were obviously fake and that if people believed they were real that was their own problem. For some reason that was a good enough arguement [sic] for the review board to appeal the decision. So in the U.S. mascara ads are allowed to use fake lashes as long as they put a disclosure somewhere," one Redditor remembered. This is a real thing that happened, by the way. L'Oreal has actually come under fire with FTC for false advertising, too.
"I wish people promoting products on YouTube had to disclose that they used a filter or something. Because, like you said, a lot of people just believe what they see," another person said, reflecting on other instances of this in the beauty industry.
But what isn't considered by these YouTubers is the effect that the possible filtering has on devoted (slash young slash impressionable) viewers.
"I’m not very good with makeup and for the longest time I though it was me doing foundation wrong because my skin NEVER looked like the people I watch on YouTube," one user began. "I had tried buying better foundation getting facials everything. Then I learned about filters, like a month ago. Now I’m a grown woman but let me tell you it hurt to look at the way my face turned out vs theirs. I can’t imagine if this was when I was a super insecure teenager.
I wouldn’t call it false advertising only because every company does this but for people who preach about loving your flaws and are supposed to be teaching the average joe how to apply makeup it’s incredibly sketchy. Rant to say, if you use filters at least be honest. And maybe don’t review face products with heavy filters because guess what they will look wonderful on our screens."
And to think of it, her videos really are always so glossy.
How could we have missed this?
"Man I always knew something was off when I watched her videos… everything seems so glossy and kind of filtered through glass almost? But the weird smoothing and lack of pores in certain areas definitely points to some sort of filter. Unfortunately a ton of influencers do this and it's just… ridiculous because it's so unnecessary and totally false advertising," a commenter noted.
And while Westbrook surely can't be the only YouTuber who edits her videos, it's surely unfortunate that the false dreams that she continues to sells her subscribers. So a note to all makeup lovers out there: None of us have perfect skin, and there's nothing wrong with that.
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