YouTube's beauty gurus, ranked from most to least popular

Manny Gutierrez, better known as Manny MUA to his 4.8 million YouTube subscribers, has been in his fair share of drama over his seven years as a beauty. But his popularity has been on the rise.

Gutierrez was best known for the makeup looks he posted on Instagram as an artist at Mac before becoming a full-time YouTuber. In 2017, he became the first male brand ambassador for Maybelline.

Gutierrez was a central figure in August 2018's "Dramageddon" — the bitter friendship war that tore the beauty world apart. It led to a very public falling out between Gutierrez and his former friend and fellow YouTuber Jeffree Star, whose fans responded by digging up a Snapchat video where Gutierrez acted suspicious of an Uber driver who couldn't speak English. He lost about 200,000 subscribers in the aftermath.

Just over a year later, Gutierrez spoke out about what happened, saying his cancellation was the "darkest period" of his life. He is open about his past and fans have praised him for taking accountability and growing from the experience.

In a poll taken in April, Gutierrez's net favorability rating was -6%. Since then, he launched a Snapchat series in which he helped young queer people come out, and collaborated with the Biden administration on a video about the COVID-19 vaccine.

This quarter, Gutierrez has risen to a positive net favorability rating of 10.5%. Out of the 5.2% of poll respondents who knew of him, 26.3% didn't like him, while 36.8% did.

YouTube beauty guru Laura Lee, known for her collaborations with makeup brand Too Faced and founding the cosmetics brand Laura Lee Los Angeles and fashion brand Nudie Patootie, lost 500,000 of the 5-million strong subscriber base she had built up over eight years after racist tweets resurfaced.

One unearthed tweet was posted to Lee's account in 2012, reading, "Tip for all black people if you pull ur pants up you can run from the police faster.. #yourwelcome."

This led to her posting one of the most infamous apology videos of all time, where viewers called her out for her dramatic crying and heavy editing with dozens of jump cuts.

Since then, Lee has slowly built her reputation back up by focusing on beauty and fashion content and sharing her experience of adopting her niece. She and Gutierrez remain friends, and have just started a podcast together called "Fool Coverage."

However, it doesn't look like she has entirely mended the way the public perceives her, as her favorability rating is negative and has fallen from -2% in last quarter's poll which was taken in April.

Lee has a net favorability rating of -11.8%. Out of the 3.1% of respondents that knew her, 35.3% did not like her, but 23.5% did.

Tati Westbrook, a beauty YouTuber with 8.7 million subscribers was once better known by her YouTube alias GlamLifeGuru, posting daily make-up reviews on her channel. She launched her own company Halo Beauty Inc. in 2018, followed by a cosmetics line called Tati Beauty in 2019.

She was broadly well-respected when she dropped a 43-minute exposé video about her former friend and fellow YouTube star James Charles titled "Bye Sister" in May 2019. She accused Charles of being backstabbing and manipulative and made several accusations of inappropriate behavior towards straight men.

Fans started unsubscribing from Charles immediately, and he lost over 3 million subscribers in a matter of days. Westbrook, meanwhile, gained several million herself, and onlookers were speculating over who would rise or fall to 10 million first.

It wasn't to last, though. Charles released a video telling his own side of the story a week later and gained back all of his lost subscribers, while Westbrook lost some of hers.

Westbrook did not post on YouTube for some time afterwards, until she dropped yet another bombshell where she accused beauty collaborators Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson of gaslighting her.

Her lack of consistency may be the cause of Westbrook's low favorability rating in three Insider polls. In the first poll conducted in February this year, she received a net rating of -23.1%, followed by -26% in the second in April.

In the latest poll, her net favorability rating has risen slightly to -20.5%. 12.2% of the 8.9% of respondents who knew her liked her, while 32.7% did not.

Jeffree Star, began posting make-up videos on YouTube in 2014 to promote his brand Jeffree Star Cosmetics. He has previously achieved fame as a singer-songwriter through his presence on the now-defunct social media platform MySpace in the late-2000s.

He became known for his collaborative documentaries with fellow YouTubr Shane Dawson and was named as the most notorious beauty guru on the internet in an Insider poll conducted at the beginning of this year. He had a -36.1% net favorability rating then, and it has since dropped further to -41%.

While Star fanned the flames of the feuds of 2018 and 2019, he emerged from it all relatively unscathed, building his following to a massive 16.3 million. It wasn't until Westbrook accused him and Dawson of manipulation that the internet fully turned on him.

Star recently moved out of LA to a more rural setting — a yak ranch in Wyoming. Whether this really is him leaving behind his chaos-filled past and settling down remains to be seen.

Star's -41% favorability rating was calculated from 11.3% of 21.6% of respondents liking him, and 52.3% disliking him.

In last place is James Charles, who burst into mainstream fame when he became the first male CoverGirl ambassador in 2016 after a recreation of his senior portrait where he was wearing makeup went viral. From there, he built a strong brand partnership with Morphe Cosmetics, and released his own eyeshadow pallette in 2018.

While he bounced back after Westbrook's takedown video, his controversies were far from over.

In February, a TikTok user named Isaiyah claimed that Charles sent him nude images of himself. Charles denied "grooming" in a video, saying Isaiyah did not disclose his age while they were speaking. Several other boys who said they were under the age of 18 when talking with Charles also came forward. According to an Insider poll taken around this time, Charles' net favorability rating was -11.9%.

Charles took a break, then posted a video in which he apologized for not verifying the ages of people he was sexting with, saying he was "desperate" for a love connection.

Despite everything, Charles remains YouTube's biggest beauty creator with 24.7 million subscribers. But his reputation, both among fans and fellow influencers, has taken a massive hit.

Of the 17.6% of respondents who said they knew Charles, 6.2% liked him, while 56.7% disliked him, giving him a net favorability of -50.5%.

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SurveyMonkey Audience polls from a national sample balanced by census data of age and gender. Respondents are incentivized to complete surveys through charitable contributions. Generally speaking, digital polling tends to skew toward people with access to the internet. SurveyMonkey Audience doesn't try to weight its sample based on race or income. Polling data collected 1,105 respondents between August 16-17, 2021 with a 3 percentage point margin of error.