About a year ago, Covergirl announced their first “Coverboy”. The company has been around for decades. In fact, it was started in 1961, and just recently, it’s decided to break the status quo and redefine gender norms. For their first Coverboy, they’ve named James Charles, a teenager from upstate New York who developed his love for makeup like many other young people today do, on social media. He reached out, in the form of his tutorials, on many different platforms, the big one being YouTube. He’s not the first to use these platforms this way–makeup tutorials have become regular appearances in video-driven and photo streaming apps. Gigi Gorgeous is one of the earlier examples of someone young who achieved fame this way. Surely, she would have had an influence on young James. People praised James initially because he wanted to take his senior picture with make-up on, and that went viral on Twitter. The main point is: social media gave him a wider audience and allowed him to reach a broader range of people, which helped him break gender norms in fashion and beauty, proving that for this generation, anything is can be made available and possible. We have the right to be who we are, and we have the power  to announce that through social media.

There have been many other influencers and celebrities who have broken gender norms, for example Jaden Smith with his Louis Vuitton ad campaign. Young Thug also broke traditional boundaries by posing for his new album cover in a long dress, and on top of that he brought two different cultures together. At the end of the day, the idea of gender is bigger than “boy” and “girl”. Fashion designers are always trying new ways to break gender norms, so fashion more and more becoming bigger than just the men’s section and the women’s section. For me personally, fashion and gender go together hand in hand, I am going to wear something that I personally love, not something that has to be in the men’s section.