Jeffree Star Has Always Been Like This

So nowadays, it's all these fucking weirdos telling their kids, oh my god, you like a Barbie? You're a woman. And then the pandemic put a halt on all of our lives, right? Six feet apart. That was a lie, by the way. That was a full lie. Trump is taking away visas if you're tweeting, I'm glad he died. Good. I want to teach people to eat better and how we've all been tricked and the government doesn't care about us and they want to keep us sick. Oh, baby, they weren't ready for that. Now they are.

We have grown men with beards wearing dresses going into the women's restroom. I think it's the phones. I think it's made people, I don't know, dead inside. no one goes and plays outside i will always use my platform and my voice for good

Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity. I'm Matt Bernstein, and I've been feeling kind of under the weather. And I got up this morning, and I was like, I don't know if I can record a podcast. And then I remembered... the subject of today's podcast. And like, I'm up. Let's fucking go. On the day that Charlie Kirk died, Jeffree Star did what he does best. Went live on TikTok.

And a Twitter influencer by the name of GypsyPatriot underscore shared Jeffrey's reactions to Charlie's death with the caption, Jeffrey Starr speaks about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and you won't believe what he has to say. Here's what he had to say.

This is what's wrong with a lot of you people. You will never get far in life. You are sick in the head. Someone just said they're unsubscribing from me. Thank God, please. Because if you believe in vain thems, you're part of the problem. If you're so stupid enough to go against science...

Please unfollow me. You can be whoever you want to be, but there's science and there's facts. You can pretend in your head you're a cat. You can pretend in your head that you're this and you're that. Good for you. You're still only A or B. And the truth hurts a lot of you, I see. I see a lot of you still can't get over it. So yes, I am a grown-ass man that wears makeup. I will always be a male. My name is Jeffrey. I am a male that likes cosmetics.

All these grown men going into women's bathrooms wearing wigs? You should all be in prison forever. You are the problem. So a grown man that goes around the country debating people, spitting facts, was just taken out. And I'm not over it. I can't sit here and play with makeup right now. I want to throw up. So no, I'm not a Republican. No, I'm not a Democrat. I'm Jeffree Star. Stop trying to label me. Stop trying to label me. I am a male. I am a makeup artist. I am a makeup...

Mogul, I am a business owner. I am a farmer. I am a rancher. I am a son. I am someone's cousin. I am someone's friend. Politics aside, biology will never change. Why is I up for debate? Am I saying any of this? Because Charlie Kirk fought for the rights. He fought for the truth. He debated everybody. And you guys cannot argue that.

You are delusional and you are mentally ill if you were trying to go against what I just said. I didn't say my opinion. I said a fact. He really told us. I'm not a Democrat or a Republican. I'm a man. I'm a makeup artist. I'm a wife. I'm a cousin. I'm a brother. I'm a single mom who works two jobs.

video to me had the energy of the video of the male model where he's like 180 poses in two minutes. Like he's like, I'm a farmer. I'm not a Republican. Charlie Kirk. I hate non-binary people. Biology. Men in a wig. It's literally, it was just buzzwords. It's literally, and that's the thing. The conservative grift is easy. It is a script that just gets repeated over and over and over and over again. That's kind of why it sounds like that because.

Literally all he's doing is going down the list of very popularly stated transphobic points and repeating them. With the knowledge that there's a large group of people who are going to agree with him. There's so many layers to what he says. And I think we have to remember how old Jeffree Star is too. Because one thing I will say is that.

there are people who have some of these feelings and some of it is based in like when he says don't label me there are a lot of especially older queer folks who feel that way and feel that there's a lot of people who are eager to label others in ways that like aren't how they actually feel you know

So I can get how Jeffree Star would be like, I'm not non-binary personally. Don't call me non-binary because I'm a man who wears makeup. That's not my identity. That's not who I am. I am a male, da-da-da-da-da, because that's how he feels, right? Layers. There were so many people who were surprised by Jeffree Star having this like very visceral reaction to Charlie Kirk's death. For so many reasons, I was not one of those people who was surprised. We'll get into it.

What I was surprised by, though, was how he was like, this is terrible. Charlie Kirk died. And then it's like a four minute long coke rant about non-binary people. It gives like an absurdist quality where it's like, it's almost hard to believe that people do take Jeffree Star seriously politically, but.

To your point, Kat, he's just repeating what is already said to these people in a multitude of different ways. He's just like spitting it out at them. And they're so used to hearing this messaging that it clearly doesn't even bother some people that he.

Can't even focus on the topic of Charlie Kirk. He's going... veering between these things because the audience just needs to hear those phrases and that's what he knows and like as a content creator watching it i'm like i know you don't like this was almost like a prepared speech that you're giving or like

Like something you know is going to perform a certain way. Because I don't even believe that he believes some of what he's saying. 100%. So as always, I like to lay some groundwork on this podcast.

Everyone is coming here with their own well of knowledge, and you may have the pleasure of not yet knowing my nemesis, Jeffrey Lynn Steininger Jr., a.k.a. Jeffrey Starr. Jeffree Star is, first and foremost, a cockroach of the internet. He was, at one point, the most friended person on MySpace, then rode the wave of beauty YouTube into becoming one of its foremost celebrities.

built a makeup empire alongside that success, then transitioned into becoming a TikTok star, where he spends all day live streaming to huge audiences. And his most recent act, seemingly, is doing audience capture with the American far right. Jeffrey's open embrace of far-right politics while looking like a sort of femme queen, non-binary alien, or as one Twitter user would put it, like Kylie Jenner was put through a dehydrator.

has led many to wonder, how? How can you look like that and talk like that and be so, among other things, transphobic? And like so into Charlie Kirk. Many people were confused about that. Why is this gender bent pink hair person lecturing me about how I should feel about Charlie Kirk? It doesn't make any sense. Or does it?

Today, we're going to do a deep dive into Jeffree Star's long existence as a public figure and demonstrate not only that Jeffree Star's current act makes so much sense, but also That like, Jeffree Star is just another example of what white men can become when there are no real mechanisms of accountability in place for bad behavior. And prove my thesis that Jeffree Star is Donald Trump.

Sorry, that was kind of a wild card at the end there. But I'll make the case. I mean, these are all just like white men who were like, did alleged sexual abuse and got away with it. And now they feel like they can do anything. And so they do. They've got weird hair and they love sucking dick. I love that. To do this, I am so excited to be joined by...

This is the Cat and Cat special. We are joined by Cat Black, who is a veteran YouTuber who has been online and making content for so long and who has... chronicled jeffree star's youtube career at great length fuck that man and by kat tenbarge who if you listen to this podcast a lot you're already familiar with Kat is a journalist and has also been chronicling...

especially the misdeeds of Jeffree Star for a long time. She is the person who broke the investigative reporting around Jeffree Star's alleged sexual harassment and assault allegations and the hush money allegations, which... We're going to be talking about all of that today. So if any of that feels like a sore spot for you, just know that that's going to be part of this conversation.

Kat and Kat, welcome to the show. Thank you for having us. It's such an honor to be in this Kat duo right now. Kat times two. How are you guys, broad strokes, feeling going into this conversation about... this person i know jeffree star but i have since written jeffree star off and i've seen whispers of what he's doing now

But like last time I had a conversation with you, this is some stuff that I'm probably going to learn a lot of as we go. Because Jeffree Star to me is just such an annoying person, like figure, just like concept, idea, whatever. that when I see him, I just ignore it. So this will be an interesting episode because I'll get to learn that I guess he has...

not really changed, I suppose. It's funny to me that people are still talking about it. I think that's one of the baffling things about this is that, like, I think I made my video like 10 years ago. Like, it's, we're still talking about Jeffree Star and that's, that's fascinating. to me actually it actually proves a lot of the point that i was kind of making in that those videos which is that like no he's going to continue to be successful and known and celebrated because he has

that much power in this world as a white man. Yeah. And I feel kind of similarly in that.

There was a period in my life a few years ago when I was reporting on Jeffree Star, and there would be stretches of time when I would be thinking about Jeffree every day, like day in, day out, because I would be... knee deep in writing these stories and reporting these stories about him but Around that time period, around when, as we'll talk about, he became a quote-unquote farmer, he kind of started to fall off the map for me a little bit, but he was always sort of there in the background.

In recent months, as I've watched him start to reemerge in this form, I'm like, yeah, this is just yet another twist on who Jeffrey has always been at his core. Shall we get into the chronology of Jeffree Star?

Absolutely. I want to just do a teeny bit of early life. Jeffrey Lynn Steininger was born in 1985 in LA and raised in Orange County. Just like... Another fixture of this podcast. No guesses. I was not raised in, but I lived there for six years. Oh, wait, I actually knew that about you. Well, so the answer is Gwen Stefani.

Okay, yeah. Oh, I should have known that one. Kat Black, as someone who was in Orange County, lived there for some time, can you just explain if anyone's unfamiliar with like the social... and political landscape of orange county okay so i live in los angeles largely because i spent a really long time living in orange county attempting to be a housewife and i'm not kidding it didn't go well

Turns out being the only Black trans woman in a community of white conservatives is kind of not healthy for me. Orange County is very conservative. Orange County is where people live when they don't want to live in scary L.A. And when you're living in Orange County, there is this concept of never leaving the orange curtain, which is really about. not going to the big, scary city where all the Black people are. That's really more of what it's about. A lot of Orange County more recently has...

become more blue or gone purple. But historically, it has been a very white supremacist place, been a stronghold for that. And I left in 2016, 2017 actually is when I left. I was very happy to leave because it is now very much MAGA country. Yeah. So that is where Jeffree Star grew up. Jeffree's dad dies by suicide when Jeffree is five years old and he was raised by his mom.

The way that Jeffree Star talks about his childhood, he was always really into makeup from the time that he would use his mom's makeup, you know, secretly, which like relatable. He was from a young age really into like... gothic looks and sort of like this really high femme sort of alternative presentation. He also talks about his experiences with bullying or lack thereof. Jeffree Star has said in more recent interviews that I've watched.

He'll say in the same breath that he wasn't bullied, but that also when like people would call him a faggot out of a moving car, for example, that he would stand up for himself and he would fight back and he would like put bitches in their place. I am probably one of the only people that looks like me that has never been bullied. I was never really bullied at all. I always stuck up for myself. And if someone tried me, I'd get vicious back. I love I used to love fighting. And so it's like.

it sounds like you were bullied and like i can't imagine being queer in like the late 90s early 2000s in fucking orange county and not being bullied but this sort of like mythology that he has about himself is one where like

Anyone who's mean to him, he'll be twice as mean back. And so like, that's how the world should be kind of. Yeah. It strikes me that like the persona Jeffrey had from his like late teenage years onward. It's formed of this sort of violent exterior where he has this persona both in his content online and people who knew him in real life at that time period described like. real physical acts of violence toward other people. So it's like.

He has this super aggressive way of dealing with the world around him that feels very much so like it literally emerged from his childhood and also the values in his early content. are him like sort of punching down on other vulnerable marginalized individuals like unhoused people black people like all kinds of other minorities really and you know why he's doing that because he's trying to gain the favor

of like the white dudes who are bullying him, because if they can say, oh, I also hate black people, you know, that's that's what it's all about. And when I look at Jeffree Star, that is immediately what I read of him. And I get it. I've lived in. conservative communities for the vast majority of my life. There's a lot about his personality and even some of my less favorite conservative figures on the internet who are in the alphabet mafia, who have this persona thing that kind of comes.

from being in a very conservative community, being attacked, but then finding inroads. with some of those people who are attacking you, where you become essentially one of the good ones, like, oh, yeah, we may have called you a faggot, but you're one of the good ones, right? Like, we can joke with you, like, we'll still be bigoted, maybe to other people. But you know,

are cool or you're cool within certain contexts. So he's still, even in that video we just watched, he's still seeking the approval from that group of people who would typically hate him, who do hate him actually.

That's that's I think behind the vast majority of like the conservative LGBT, frankly. After graduating high school in 2002, Jeffree Star like hustles for gigs. He talks about. using a fake ID to get into Hollywood clubs to meet celebrities and then sort of like offer himself up as a makeup artist. And it was through this sort of hustle that he became the makeup artist for Kelly Osbourne.

Did you know this? I could see it. I could think of her makeup of that era and think of his makeup of that era and it does match. It does match. Jeffrey talks about how he would steal Callie Osborne's clothes to take, I mean, like, steal, quote unquote, but he would take her clothes and then take MySpace photos, pretending that, like, they were his clothes to project wealth.

that he did not really have which i think is also a really interesting through line because we're going to talk about yes jeffree star's accumulation and transfers and drop-offs of wealth and it is very Very hard to understand how much money Jeffree Star actually has at any given point in time. Also very bling ring, which was around this era. Very bling ring. I recently...

I recently, like a month ago, randomly was like, I'm going to watch every documentary about the bling ring. This whole thing of like Jeffree Star sort of like slipping into clubs in the early 2000s to try to like link up with celebrities that he had nothing to do with. It is very bling ring. And Jeffrey actually knew in like the early 2000s.

loosely through like a social circle one of the guys whose house had been robbed by one of the bling ring members early on like before they did the huge celebrity houses they just like robbed one of their high school friends's houses yes and like Jeffrey like vaguely knew that guy through MySpace circles. So it's all a very like incestuous community of like, we love fame. We want to get close to fame. Like they're almost like, like vampiric way.

I feel like if history had been tweaked ever so slightly, Jeffree Star would have been in the bling ring and then he would have like gone to jail for two years and like we would never would have heard from him again. If only Jeffree Star was in the bling ring. So in 2003, Jeffrey joins MySpace and quickly becomes extremely MySpace famous. Now, I just turned 27 and I don't really know that much about MySpace. Yeah.

It was a spectacle. I mean, all of us were friends with Jeffree Star on MySpace because it was the era of that. You know, you added as many people as possible. You organized your top friends. It was a very political thing. And everyone wanted to be on Jeffree Star.

page and like a series of other people who also turned out to be shitty um but i remember coming to school and being like oh did you see what jeffrey posted and it's always like some outlandish thing i remember vividly the fruit loops picture of him um self-inducing wait what is this this great example of how he hasn't changed actually it was a picture of him making himself throw up fruit loops and you know it was a very kind of cool looking weird

like edgy picture but it was such a great example of him doing edgelordship because obviously at this era people had sensitivity around anorexia and body and things like that that was early 2000s right and so yeah that's a good example of him being like edgy and glamorous and like not giving a Like not give, not caring. I'm like, yeah, I did it. Yeah. Yeah, I did it. And the thing is, I think a lot of people don't understand like how common that.

attitude was online because there were less of us online like social media was like starting to really become a thing and like you know if you were an early adopter you were kind of often also more of like a nerdy person too What really struck me was how specific of an aesthetic there was to this era. I don't think it really has a lot of easy one-to-one comparisons. This was the hot topic.

goth like jeffrey fell into that category with like the hot pink hair and like the crazy looks but what i think really defined this era was also just like tiny scene queen girls like literally the scene queens of my And Jeffrey wove his social life into theirs and understood very early on that one of the ways to stay relevant, in addition to cultivating this really shocking aesthetic and having this shock. jock persona was also to

put himself in the social world and sort of cause drama. And he also at this era was appearing in like the background of Kesha music videos. And there are, there are photos of him and Demi Lovato from this era at house parties. He really wanted. He wanted to embed himself in the scene and he succeeded. I was watching while preparing for this episode. Like there's like all sorts of old Jeffree Star MySpace content.

like on the internet archive and like deep deep deep in reddit there are just these videos of him with like his other mostly like white scene queen type friends and they're just being so unbelievably racist yeah like like really like truly shocking like just like throwing around the n-word a lot of like anti-mexican racism it's it's it's quite shocking

...watching me, because I wish they were famous, and sadly I am, and they'll never be anything. So they send their little shacks with their fucking, you know, little lighters, because they can't even afford an oven to bake their little food, and they just keep on harassing me, and it's so pathetic.

I mean one of the videos I did was about several of the clips that had resurfaced where he had like been saying the n-word right and a lot of people at the time saw these these videos and were like things were so much different back then and keep in mind you guys i'm 35 i was there you know like

It was racist then, and it's still racist now. These people just kind of got away with it because the one thing that has changed is that there are more people on the internet. It's not really subculture anymore. And I think that's the thing that a lot of people don't really have. context for like i had to sneak on the internet to get onto to myspace and start a zanga and do all this shit now it's in everybody's pockets right

And so now what you have is a wider range of people looking at what you're doing. And these kids could just be racist. You know, they could post really heinously racist stuff. You know, I've been posting videos on the internet. There was a time when I didn't post. videos with the idea that other people would see them

Or the videos would get outside of my immediate circle of people. Or, you know, I wouldn't think about people capturing it or downloading it or thinking about it. So I know that a lot of these kids, they made these videos.

uploaded them mostly probably for their friends there was probably a large amount of people on the internet who at the time were still subculture who were laughing at it but not necessarily criticizing it because everyone kind of understood that that's kind of the weird thing that they were doing is like being racist in like a safe way right and no one really criticized it and then when these things resurface because jeffree star's issue in my opinion

I mean, issue. It's a good thing. He decided to jump on the bandwagon of extended shade ranges and started to become very much about, yeah, I'm all about Black women and da-da-da-da-da. And so when these things resurface and he said, centered himself as like a central figure on social media who is a trusted source, there are a lot of people who are naturally going to ask, does a person...

who would make that content even back then keeping in mind that not every white person goes through a racist phase right would that person be the right person to trust when it comes to black women and extended shade ranges and there were still a lot of people who swore by the makeup swore by the quality of it swore by his opinion of other makeup and said you know

maybe jeffree star was racist back then but you know he's clearly changed my main argument was i mean really all he's trying to do is like most capitalists make more money by selling products that can be sold to certain types of people right like

at the end of the day it doesn't matter how extended your shade range is like you're still trying to make money it's not actually charity you know but people treated it like charity and i think jeffree star largely survives on the idea that he's in some way doing charity and i think like

Going back to that early MySpace era, the racism was a prominent feature. The like top influencers were either incredibly fair skinned and white, like they were all white people for the most part and or openly white.

This was viewed as like a part of edgy culture, a part of cool culture. And Jeffrey performed in Warped Tour, where popular bands and singers used this type of iconography to be edgy. It was a fetishization of... racism of white supremacy also of things like self-harm of eating disorders and this stuff fed itself into jeffree star's content and was a part of his like aesthetic image as well

Yes. And Jeffrey, at this point, he loved, like you said, it's like fetishizing this sort of like Nazi iconography. He loved Confederate flags and he loved swastikas. And to that end, there's something I need to talk about. But I do want to add that like to me from a psychological place, a lot of this reads as like not to give him too much grace and not that it justifies anything.

But like, to me, a lot of this behavior makes sense as like a cry for attention. Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, this is someone who, right, whose dad died by suicide when he was five, who like grew up as like this.

openly effeminate queer kid in like a very conservative place and it's like it to me a lot of it just seems like acting out definitely a hundred percent i mean a lot of people who rose to prominence on the internet not just in the MySpace era, but throughout the entire timeline and history of the internet, a lot of these people are young influencers from incredibly troubled, volatile... home backgrounds. A lot of times they're very lonely and isolated, which is why they spend so much time.

on the internet putting content of themselves on the internet a lot of time they've had been abused like lots of times like trauma in their backgrounds and the unfortunately the internet It is a very comfortable place for people like this to thrive. And it rewards and incentivizes the worst possible behavior that they are willing to do, partly because of their backgrounds.

And every time something new resurfaces about Jeffree Star and people being like, can you believe Jeffree Star is a conservative? I'm like, you guys don't think that the guy who started Lipstick Nazi? would be a conservative. But the problem is, they don't know about lipstick Nazi. Are you two familiar with Jeffree Star's first attempt at a beauty brand? I am, unfortunately, yeah. Around?

2006, Jeffree Star launches lipsticknazi.com. I can't believe the words that are coming out of my mouth right now. Do either of you want to describe... What lipstick Nazi is. I mean, people dig this up every few years and it is a revelation to too many. But essentially, like you have. this MySpace era web design. Classically, the hot pink lipstick, the super heavy black and glitter eyeliner, and pink swastikas, pink razor blades, barbed wire. LipstickNazi.com Hollywood.

This falls into this MySpace aesthetic that is so specific so clearly. And at around the same time, there was a rumor. So I don't know how much of this survived to this day, but there was always kind of like an allegation that...

floats around from time to time that fans would like self-harm and post those pictures online in tribute to jeffree star yeah that honestly regardless of whether or not that is true that does feel like a rumor that jeffree star would indulge oh totally because it would be like look how much these people love me

In an interview that Jeffree Star gave recently, he, you know, now he's really leaning into this like anti-cancel culture, conservative grievance politics, like way more openly. And like you said, Cat Black, like using the script that he knows how to follow. he went on a cancel culture riff that i thought was really fascinating and for some reason around 2013 everyone became a And people were, it was a very bizarre shift. Like all my crazy wild jokes were now, and I'm like, okay, got it.

and people got really really weird and i think now we're at a place where people should be held accountable for really awful things right i think cancel culture is kind of over but like we talked about you're going to glorify and make fun of someone that was murdered on like Now you're getting the repercussions. So the people that are losing their jobs Trump is taking away visas. If you're tweeting I'm glad he died good

Now you're being held responsible versus, oh, you made a joke when you were 12. We're going to hate you forever. I think people are allowed to grow and change. And what's funny is he would love to be a kid right now making a Charlie Kirk joke like that. I can imagine that he would literally be doing that. Like if he was a little teen, because that's what the little teenagers are doing right now. If he was a kid.

now and like all of this had happened in the early 2000s jeffrey would have like made a lipstick called like charlie's blood yeah but yes it's so interesting and conservatives do this now which is also like jeffrey star just becoming like a run-of-the-mill conservative grifter type is so boring to like i hold him to a higher standard like do a more complex grift than that but he's doing what they all do which is like creating a very narrow definition of accountability that includes

everyone he personally disagrees with and not himself and and also reducing like his entire wild past of like very overt racism that went well into his 20s as A joke that I made when I was 12. There are two things about what he said in that clip that really irritated me. The first thing is when he talks about the cancel culture of the 2010s and how this period was so wrong. He weaponized cancel culture to his benefit.

and he has done this throughout his career he drives hate campaigns against his competitors in his various fields and at this period in time he weaponized cancel culture to his benefit he weaponized cancel culture when he attacked james Charles. He weaponized cancel culture when he attacked Laura Lee and Manny MUA and Gabriel Zamora and all of those other people. And he uses it to his benefit and then he discards it to his benefit and acts like he was never a part of it.

The other thing that really annoys me is when he's talking about the government taking away people's visas for joking or celebrating Charlie Kirk's death and how that's somehow better than cancel culture. It's not surprising. It's just annoying because conservatives already make this argument all the time. It's just even more infuriating to hear it out of Jeffree Star's like uneducated mouth. But I'm like, you understand that that is actually a freedom of speech violation when the government.

When the state restricts your movement because of your speech, that is tyranny.

cancel culture is not but of course you make the opposite distinction it is just so stupid to listen to and it's a continuation of like most of this stupid cancel culture shit anyway like did he get canceled no because cancel culture is fucking real like there's definitely something to be said about the way that people on the internet will sometimes jump on hate campaigns and whether or not accountability actually matters isn't

There's a conversation to be had about cancel culture, but it's never meant what these motherfuckers are trying to make it sound like. And what kills me about what he said... is it actually doesn't require a lot of thick skin for you to be a conservative and to just be racist and it really doesn't like it is actually a little bit more bold to stand up against

people like Charlie Kirk, who are paid a lot of money by billionaires to go to college campuses and say that people like me don't have the mental capacity to ever possibly hold any position of power over a white man, right? also frustrating because actually the thing you should be opposed to as a person who believes in this constitution is people being imprisoned for their speech. It would actually be far more American for you.

if we're buying into the bullshit for you to stand up with your fellow Americans. and support their freedom of speech rights, right? Like that would absolutely be the more traditional way. And that's kind of the thing that's fascinating. Being raised around so many conservatives, this whole Trumpy MAGA thing is kind of funny to me because

It's not consistent, but of course it never is, you know? Yeah. I do think you're giving Jeffree Star... way too much credit in the idea that he's like aiming to be coherent in his politics like he's just saying whatever he needs to say people who you who buy makeup for you have the right to care about you saying the n-word and that's actually not a big deal

You could argue that that's actually the free market with people making the decision to not purchase your stuff because of what you advertised in the past. It's funny to me. He wants to be able to be edgy. He wants to be free to be edgy. be able to say the racist shit he doesn't really like any of the consequences for it that's the funny thing because they'll walk away from the conversation thinking oh so i have thicker skin when really you're a thin-skinned little bitch yeah

So as we mentioned in the latter half of the 2000s and the early 2010s, Jeffree Star was making music. He established himself in this like Vans Warped Tour scene. The amount of celebrity cameos in Jeffree Star's existence is so bizarre. Jeffree Star made a song with Nicki Minaj. Oh, who is who is also who is now also a Nazi. How great. Yeah. Which I'm like, I'm like, can you believe that? And everyone's like, yeah.

Especially now. Especially now. Yeah, Nicki Minaj is also now a Trumper. That's a whole other thing. But do you know who managed Jeffree Star as a music artist? Akon. Fuck, you know everything about Jeffree Star. There's no surprises. Jeffree Star was managed by Akon, who signed Jeffree to his record label and once referred to Jeffree Star as...

The next Lady Gaga. Yikes. But you know, at that era, some of his music was kind of giving Lady Gaga. Some of it. He did like a whole electro thing for a bit that was giving that. And it was during Jeffree Star's brief career as a sort of up-and-coming musician that Jeffree Star has a number of sexual assault allegations levied against him.

And this is where I defer to Kat Tenbarge, who investigated and reported those allegations. Kat, take it away. So I think it really goes hand in hand with what we've been talking about in regards to... the violence of these eras and environments that jeffree star partook in because going back to the warped tour era which is when these allegations took place the majority of the ones that i reported on at least

Jeffrey surrounded himself and was in this environment that was ripe with this type of abuse. And there have been so many allegations that stemmed from artists who performed at Warped Tour, including the artists that Jeffrey collaborated with. with Blood on the Dance Floor.

And before I reported on the allegations against Jeffrey, I reported on these allegations against the lead singer Dobby Vanity of Blood on the Dance Floor, who Jeffrey worked with. And at the time, going back in the archive of Jeffrey's tweet. he tweeted about these allegations within this scene against Dobby vanity. He like said that he confirmed them, that he was like an eyewitness to things that had happened. And then fast forward to 2020 and Jeffrey kind of.

denounces some of this, I think, to not have any accountability or responsibility for what was allegedly happening there. And at the same time that he's kind of denying knowing anything about Dobby Vanity, whose allegations are being brought up. allegations against Jeffrey come up. And this is also the period of time when Jeffrey and Shane Dawson were both experiencing this reckoning that touched on all kinds of terrible content and conduct that they were partaking in.

racist content, offensive and derogatory content, inappropriate interactions with fans and with minors. And all of these allegations were like sort of swirling around. And a lot of them do date back. to the MySpace era. But this pattern emerged over like years of behavior where Jeffrey had allegedly engaged, kind of embracing like his online persona.

offline like people in the scene alleged that he had been violent toward them that he had like either threatened to use or used weaponry on them that he would then show in videos on youtube like my pink taser Or like my handbag with all my weapons that I have. So there were allegations of that behavior happening offline. And then there were also sexual assault allegations against Jeffrey. Groping men in venues and just sort of being like physically, sexually.

aggressive in public and then also involving like other people in the MySpace scene. And this was like pretty horrific stuff. When I approached Jeffrey for comment at the time back in 2021. A lot of sources and people who had made allegations reached out to start recanting those allegations before the story was published. And we were later able to report that Jeffrey had been offering.

sources for the story like hush money payments of like thousands of dollars tens of thousands of dollars in some cases to recant those allegations but the story still came out but interestingly enough the story It was definitely felt and read at the time and like fairly widely, but the story did not take off. Like most people do not know about these allegations against Jeffree Star. And I think the reason for that is people expect a level.

of bad behavior from him. And it doesn't shock them in the way that it shocks someone when you hear allegations against a beloved celebrity. So like the tolerance for the entire scale of his behavior, public or otherwise. has created this environment where he doesn't even receive the same levels of criticism or cancellation that maybe other celebrities receive. And yet here he is still complaining about cancel culture when he avoided and was able to sort of wriggle his.

way out of so much deserved scrutiny that's why it's so annoying he's been complaining about this forever but i think to your point earlier mostly as like a sales point because he's never really canceled him being canceled ends up being like the thing that draws more attention to him and then you go to the comment section oh we love you jeffrey don't let anyone you know who cares jeffrey is huge on tiktok sometimes i'll be on tiktok and i'll get his

lives and i'm like oh my god i clicked not interested a week ago you know and and even if it's like a new makeup thing i'll get i'll get it like he's everywhere still that's why you can't really take any of the i was canceled shit seriously because i don't Can I just return to my thesis that Jeffree Star is Donald Trump? But really what I'm describing there is like an enormous category of celebrity men who I honestly think being able to bulldoze.

sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations, which only a very certain type of person, right, wealthy white men are able to do. I feel like getting over the other side of that. relatively unscathed, like the message that sends is that you can do anything. It's very Trumpian to me. Well, I think a lot of men, they hold on to this idea that if they one day amass enough wealth.

that's what they'll be able to do. And it's funny because, you know, I've spent a lot of time with people of means and you kind of get the sense of that, right? That at a certain point, like they just want to purchase people. And when you look at what's happening with Epstein, you sort of see it, you know, you've got people messaging Epstein while he's in jail about how they can get around sexual assault allegations.

There's this group of men understand that at the end of the day, rich white men should be allowed to do it. And if they did do it, then, you know, whoever was on the other end of that should be happy it happened to them. You know, as a survivor, that's something that I've come to sort of understand as well. I've only once reported. a man who's assaulted me and there have been several. And I feel good about not reporting some of the men that have harmed me because they are rich white men.

They are men who have means and who would ruin my life. And unfortunately, that's the world that a lot of the Trump. like people want to hold on to. And I think it's a world that we hopefully dismantle quite soon. I don't know if that's possible in my lifetime, but unfortunately that is a big thing.

When I was reporting on these allegations against Jeffrey back in 2021, one of the things I remember strongly about having conversations with dozens of people who had known Jeffree Star at various points in his life. a lot of them for a very short amount of time, but they had crossed paths with him in some way. And a lot of them were terrified of him. And they were terrified for me for reporting on him. And they had built him up with this sort of mythology that...

I think was really understandable where they were coming from. But it's like... he is an individual who traffics in fear and benefits from people being this afraid of him. So he like cultivates this mysterious persona of like, I'm unimaginably wealthy. I can get away with anything. And through.

conveying that to people, conveying that message to them and that impression to them, he does get away with everything. He's like faking it until he makes it. And I think that's super Trumpian as well. And I also think that even the aesthetic in what... both of them project is kind of similar because with Jeffrey, when he transitioned over to selling makeup after his music career ended, his audience has always included a demographic of people who are like rural.

who are very low income, who are like middle America. These are the types of people who have always been fans of Jeffree Star, which doesn't necessarily strike people as like... predictable or sensible because it's like oh he's this hollywood openly gay super sexually explicit about being gay like flamboyant man what about him appeals to this demographic but

In a similar way, you could ask what appeals to this demographic about Trump, because Trump is also like an East Coast, like super flamboyant, loves Broadway, gold toilet seat, like type of individual. And yet they both have the same appeal. And I think a lot of that appeal, a singular part of that appeal, is this like air of I can get away with anything. Yes. So post MySpace, post...

music career, Jeffree Star transitions this relatively niche fame into becoming one of the biggest faces of what is beginning to boom in the early 2010s, which is beauty. YouTube. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to my channel. Hi, how are you? You know, this is not going to be an episode where we document every single thing that Jeffree Star has ever done.

Because Kat and I have like tried to do versions of that on Patreon and we end up just like locking ourselves in a room for eight hours and it's like really hard and like people start screaming for help. So... We need to be selective about what exactly we pull from each of these eras. I think the most interesting thing about Jeffree Star's career on YouTube is that this coincides with this like cultural shift, this Obama era.

liberalism, where I think, as Kat Black said earlier, you had to pretend to care about social causes. You had to pretend. And a lot of people earnestly did care about those things. But for Jeffrey... Someone who just a couple years prior was like saying the N-word on camera, chasing black women down the street and hurling racial slurs at them. This is, you know, someone who needed to do a radical shift if he wanted to capitalize on the moment the way that he was about to.

Yeah. And my thing with it has always been, I don't believe you, you know, and I felt that way about a lot of people back then, actually, mostly because there's a way you carry yourself and speak about things when you actually have done the work. And what it felt to me was happening with Jeffrey and with a lot of other people is they just got the script. Like he had the script earlier in the first video we saw. He has another script.

And, you know, we're all about inclusivity, intersectionality, you know, stay woke. I'll never forget one time a Google executive asked me if stay woke is still relevant. There was an era of like the Obama, like liberalism shit that, yeah, a lot of people were bull. shitting to make sales. And I think there are some people who feel kind of nice that we're not doing that anymore. Jeffrey being one of them.

Jeffrey for sure being one of them because he never believed it. And I knew that, but all people could say is like, but he's selling makeup to black people though. Like, would he sell makeup to black people if he was racist? Like, come on, you guys. Yes, yes, yes, he would. Jeffrey was doing what a lot of other I think celebrities and influencers were also doing, which was shifting like Shane Dawson comes to mind for the YouTuber comparison. Another episode. Let me know. I don't know if we can.

Maybe post holidays, we could revisit Shane Dawson because I don't have it in me right now. I want to feel, I want to, I want to feel Mary. God damn it. But yeah, I mean, a lot of these. celebrities and YouTubers, Kardashians come to mind as well. What Jeffree Star was doing was he was shifting from a kind of overtly racist viral content into a type of content that was like culturally appropriative. and therefore was able to be packed.

as socially liberal, socially progressive. But the reality of it was he was still taking advantage of, and in a lot of cases, still very overtly attacking and targeting Black women and Black people. the aesthetic indicators of this era were like no longer do we have the super grungy high contrast myspace era makeup now we've gone into this like

luxe aesthetic that really defines this group of people where it's like now we just fetishize wealth itself. So we have an entire room full of Birkin handbags and all of our clothes are designer. We live in these absurd Calabasas mansions and we have all these designer dogs and it's like Jeffrey in this era of YouTube really showcased wealth as a big like part of his shock and awe versus like some of the overtly offensive.

stuff that he was doing a few years prior. One of the highlights of his many YouTube controversies was his like very racist feud with Jackie Aina. who is a popular Black creator online. She was also very popular in the beauty space. I don't remember the exact timeline, but I remember that...

text messages were leaked of Jeffrey, I think calling Jackie a gorilla, if I remember correctly. I think that's what I remember too. I forget who leaked them or who was in that. I know I made a video about it, but I, you know, I have not cared. about Jeffree Star in a long time.

The granular details themselves are exchangeable for like so many of these Jeffree Star controversies, but it's like time and time again, even throughout this, this YouTube era, the peak of his career where he's the most beloved, even by liberal and socially. progressive people, the cracks were always there. The bad stuff was always bursting at the seams. We could see it the whole time. These text messages are so blatant and yet people still tried to like.

push it under the rug and pretend like that wasn't the real Jeffrey that they saw on their YouTube screen. Yeah. Which is bizarre because most, most people I'm bad at this, but most people, they put on a character that they show and.

To me, Jeffrey's projecting a character, and this character needs to sell makeup to you. And Black people have money. Black women invest very heavily in the beauty space. And I personally think... that jeffree star because of the way that both of their opinions were trusted was a little threatened by jackie you know who was doing a lot of stuff at the time and i think like the thing for me with with jeffree is so much of it leads back to him hating

black women and people like to think that black women are sensitive we're easily offended you know we got thin skin which is such a hilarious accusation, especially listening to him complain about being canceled still in 2025. But, you know, the reality is we just see it. You know, we see it because we're used to having to see it. So a lot of Black women did address Jeffree Star for being a little weird about Black women. And literally all people could come back with was, oh, but he sells.

makeup to black women. And I think that There's obvious reasons why a non-racist white people shouldn't even privately refer to a black person as a gorilla. But people love to like suspend their disbelief and, you know, oh, this person is trying to sell things to me. They couldn't.

They couldn't be a different person behind the scenes. Not at all. Wait, I actually want to touch on that though. We've been circling around this a little bit, but one comment that comes up over and over and over and over and over again for the like 20 plus long. years career of jeffree star is like jeffree star is real as fuck when he's reviewing makeup so like i trust him because like

he will always be honest when talking about that Anastasia Beverly Hills eyeshadow palette. And I'm like, the bar has to be higher than this. But, you know, here's the problem. Here's what I'll say. This is going to sound like a little bit of apologia, but I'll tell you. Oh, OK. No, I'm here. So Jeffree Star, especially at that era, because he was projecting wealth, there were a lot of people who were like.

okay, he really doesn't have a reason to bullshit us, that he's got all of the incentives to just be honest, right? And at the time, there were a lot. of influencers being paid to say nice things about products and i think actually this is maybe why jeffree star did appeal to some of the more rural folks too because he would actually give in my opinion

pretty good, you know, reviews of makeup. And for a lot of people, especially people who are trying to save money, you want to invest. You don't want to just go and buy this trendy bullshit because so-and-so said so, and they're reading a thing that says that you have, you know, so I think for some people it was like,

I'm going to watch a Jeffree Star video because I know Jeffree Star has no incentive to lie to me. Of course, that's, you know, to be questioned. But I think that was the idea. I think that's such a sharp analysis. And I also think like two things come to mind. again relates back to trump for me because that also is so much of trump's appeal is like because trump was also really honest about eyeshadow reviews well it's like the like the pathos is like

Trump is not a government guy. Trump is an outsider. So therefore, Trump will tell us the truth about what's really going on in this institution that we distrust, even though Trump himself isn't extremely corrupt. untrustworthy person. And I think the same can ultimately be said for Jeffree Star. But Jeffree Star was so smart about how he started and grew his makeup career at the same time as he was doing YouTube makeup commentary.

Because the first Jeffree Star Cosmetics products were like the intense, long-lasting liquid lipsticks that were pretty revolutionary at the time. People were using them. Drag queens were using them. Celebrities were using them. professional makeup artists put them in their makeup kits.

This was a good product for him to launch with because it actually set him up with like authenticity and credibility that other people did not have. He also was genuinely talented at doing makeup. He could impart actual makeup wisdom onto his viewers. And I think the way that he ultimately steered his brand was so unique, but worked really well for a time, which was that he was so aggressive toward other brands, which is not how people usually market.

their products, you're not usually like, I'm going to buy your product because you're feuding with the owner of the competing product and I side with you. But that is literally how Jeffree Star conducted himself. He feuded with the Kardashians. like their products are trash. And the reality is they were overpriced. And like he feuded with all of these different people. And a lot of times I think his insights about what the competitors were doing wrong.

were true but his ultimate kind of downfall in this territory is that as jeffrey grew his brand his own products could not live up to like what he was saying about competitors because today he sells a massive range of products He sells skincare. He launched, I believe, like concealer and foundation and was doing all these different things. And as he put out more products, it became more and more clear that like...

MUAs are not reaching for the Jeffree Star setting spray. The Jeffree Star skincare, nobody's asking for that. Yeah, never heard of it. Over time, he almost lost that edge, but it worked really well for a while.

I will say, I know we're kind of getting away from politics here, but when he launched his skincare line, I was like, who looks at Jeffree Star and thinks skincare? People call him the Crypt Keeper. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The opposite is true, actually. His makeup is so impressive because of what he looks like. I will say, though, there is a demographic of people.

who purchase everything he puts out like if you go deep into the weeds of like jeffree star fan subculture internet you will see people who have spent thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on all of his products on all of his like hand mirrors and will post photo hauls of all of them. And when I discovered that part of like Reddit or whatever, I was like, that's crazy. Well, I have some experience with them because back when I was on Twitter and...

posting about Jeffree Star all the time. These people would obviously be like coming for me constantly. And I would go look at like their pictures and like read their profiles and see how they had an entire wall of Jeffree Star hand mirrors and like every single palette, eyeshadow palette. but they didn't really wear it. It was interesting. It felt like I was doing like a sociological study in a lot of ways because

I could tell that these were not like wealthy people whatsoever. In fact, I don't think they could afford their level of. devotion to Jeffree Star, or at the very least, they were dedicating a substantial amount of what they had, the resources they had. toward these collections. They really sought his acknowledgement and approval. So like Jeffrey would occasionally, as many celebrities and influencers do, he rewards people with engagement. He has done like giveaways.

he puts on, as I believe Kat, you were talking about at the beginning, like this charitable persona. That also really speaks to these people. And so they're vying for his attention. They want to show him that they are a devoted fan and they also want to defend him. I'll never forget. I think the last time I went down this rabbit hole,

was he had released some some highlighter and someone at drag con got this highlighter and it had broken apart and they were finding out in like real time i think that jeffree star doesn't care about you and it was really sad because he was so dedicated because he had purchased all of these things, you know? I know a lot of people are listening to this and they might be waiting for me to talk about Bye Sister. And this is not a Bye Sister episode.

Kat, Tenbarge, and I did a very, dare I say, excruciatingly long series about Bye Sister. That is over on Patreon. What I will say about Bye Sister, which... Let me see if I can synthesize the entire events of my sister in like two sentences. Basically, James Charles, who is a younger, much more quickly up and coming competitor to Jeffree Star, Tati Westbrook, who was another.

veteran of youtube made a video about james charles who she was a friend and mentor to accusing him not only of betraying her as a friend but being a sexual predator and this was before all that stuff came out about james charles so at the time There was no actual evidence to believe that it was true. But Tati Westbrook nonetheless spun the narrative that it was true. And then James Charles disproved everything.

And Tati Westbrook looked really bad. And then Tati Westbrook, one year later, came back and said that Jeffree Star had manipulated her into making her original video. That is like... That is like the broadest of broad strokes, but did I do okay? I think you did a good job. Some people know a lot about like law or science. I know a lot about my sister.

My only comment with regard to this episode, Jeffree Star's political arc, his general worldview, is that I completely believe that he orchestrated my sister. Because I think one thing we know about Jeffree Star is he has always been intimidated by business rivals. He has never been shy about being unbelievably cruel to other people. I completely believe that he planted seeds in Tati's head about like, oh, maybe James Charles is a bit of a sexual predator and that's how we can take him down.

and then reign supreme in this YouTube beauty space? Well, I think that for me, the kind of through line here is that... Jeffrey, through the confrontational marketing style, Jeffrey saw James Charles as like... Someone he desperately needed to take out. They were so similar to each other. And James poised such a threat to Jeffrey's bottom line. And when Jeffrey does this like aggressive confrontational style of.

counter-marketing with other people in the industry, there's no low he won't sink to. He will 100%. accuse someone of very dubious, serious allegations, even as a total hypocrite, he will also rely on racism easily. And people let him get away with that. And I think for a long time, this continued.

until this and other factors, I think ultimately became too much for him, which is when we go into the next phase of his career. But like for a little bit, this strategy worked very, very well and it relied on people's underlying bigotry.

They're underlying racism. They're underlying homophobia. And we now see him doing that again. Should we talk about the insane apology videos before we go into that era? Yes. I totally forgot about those apology videos. realizing that he had to move on from YouTube because this era really came crashing down for him. He made a number of apology videos for like past racism, past transgressions. And I just want to sit for a minute with the thumbnails of those videos, particularly one where...

I totally forgot. It's all coming back. I'm dead. I love the little boy. He looks like a femme Voldemort in this thumbnail. And he's like... Holding his face ever so gingerly in his like Gucci sweater. And the text on top of his on top of his body just says racism. Also, I'm pretty sure in that video, he never actually utters the words, I'm sorry.

I don't think he ever apologizes. Like I feel like that's kind of a hallmark of Jeffrey is like the video is not titled, I'm sorry that I was racist. The video is simply titled racism. It exists. Like let's talk about it. And then he's like, he's like. The internet was a different place back then, or actually another classic.

rhetorical style that he falls back on is like, I'm not that person anymore. I'm really not. I can't even recognize that version of Jeffrey. I think that's what he says, right? I don't even recognize that person. And it just makes me sick to my stomach because I don't know who that person was. I know who I am today. I know exactly the person I am today, but I do not know who that person was. And you know, I do believe people change, but...

Have you changed, sir? I don't know. I feel like he's one of the most consistent and predictable people I've ever seen on the internet. Well, and this is the thing. It's like we're watching as this person tries to just stay with the times ultimately to sell makeup. And so what that means in this moment is like issuing a few really ridiculous apology videos. There was another one. And I think this was the last great YouTube controversy of Jeffree Star before he flees to Wyoming.

After the whole bi sister scandal really collapses in 2020, Jeffree Star makes an apology video where he is perched on his golden sofa in Louis Vuitton slippers. in front of a dual spiral staircase. And he's saying, you know, I never meant to get caught up in any of this. I don't know if you guys remember this video, but I literally have its transcript burned into the back of my brain.

He shifts so quickly from this is not who I am. This is not Jeffree Star. I know I'm dramatic. I'm crazy at times. I'm outspoken. But at the end of the day, that is not who I am. Two. We need to be talking about there hasn't been justice for Breonna Taylor. And did I get swept up into the bullshit again? Of course I did. And for that, I'm forever embarrassed of. Now, Breonna Taylor still has no justice.

Black trans women are being murdered every day and the news is silent. Elijah McClain has no justice and the countless other people who are murdered every single day while everyone just goes about their business. Like nothing's happening. Yeah, I do remember that. I was like, oh my God, shut up. And that's another example of him reading the script. It was like, I mean, all of these influencers back then were like.

black lives matter but then they were like being racist on the weekend and like you know bullying their black friend like yes And then they were like, but what really matters isn't what I did. It's Breonna Taylor. But also he doesn't care about Breonna Taylor, which is not, it was always very evident, but particularly after watching him praise Charlie Kirk, it's so obvious that he did not give up.

fuck about brianna taylor he just used her name as a buzzword charlie kirk he's extolling the virtues of this man yeah literally literally like what charlie kirk was advocating for is why she was murdered so for you to say but i believe that him and i did it it's like come on man you never felt that way and i i i do appreciate that people are being more honest now about how they feel like the jeffrey stars of the world did drive me a little insane during the obama era like just be honest you're

racist just make you can make makeup for just white people I'm sure you'll be fine Honestly, the multiple acts of that golden couch apology video are so insane to me because it goes from, if it's not me, I never did anything wrong, to like, let's talk about what really matters, Breonna Taylor, to I'm so excited for all the new things we're working on at Jeffree Star Cosmetics.

All right, now, no matter what narrative anyone tries to spin of me, I am so fucking proud to own an inclusive makeup company. Since I opened my doors in 2014, I have created products for everyone any product shade or formula i've created has worked for any race gender and most importantly i want you guys to remember that all beauty matters yeah His ability to go just effortlessly from one thing to the next was really on display there. But...

I do think this was the last time that Jeffree Star was like really making a splash on YouTube because he failed so completely in this moment. And so what he did was in 2021. He flees from Los Angeles to Wyoming. Getting away from the wokeness. Oh my God. I'm so scared. Oh my God. Get away. This is funny to me. To Wyoming, where he purchases a yak farm, which of course he seamlessly integrates into his business model and starts selling yak meat.

What I will say about the move from LA to Wyoming is it's really interesting. He lived in this mansion in Hidden Hills, which is a gated community in Los Angeles. He ultimately sold it for about $16 million. He tried to sell it to Britney Spears. She and her ex-husband toured it at the time. That was really interesting.

But Jeffree Star sells his mansion for, I think, 16 or 17 million dollars and then moves into this ranch in Wyoming, in Casper, Wyoming, which costs, I believe, 1.2 million dollars. Jeffrey Starr now says, oh, it was COVID and I was shacked up in this big mansion that I didn't know what to do with. I never even used the movie theater, which I'm like, I'm with you. Like, I would go crazy in a house that big. But...

There seems to me like something missing in this narrative of like, so I downsized by like over a thousand percent. I think that like the clearest explanation of what happened here, which is corroborated by several things, is like in. 2020, makeup trends changed dramatically. And like the things that Jeffree Star's brand had been known for bright, bold, full coverage makeup.

That was no longer in whatsoever. And that is around the time that he introduced like Jeffree Star skincare. He started doing more like makeup brushes, like other products besides what he was known for. None of that stuff. ever took off the way that his previous products had become cult classics. Jeffree Star Cosmetics.

It suffered as a brand. It was suffering as an industry. His scandals did not help a lot of people in the public who would have otherwise been comfortable buying his makeup, I think were turned off by some of what had happened in the preceding years. And so you have all of these economic factors. And then socially, you also have this sort of like quasi falling out with his like then best friend, Shane Dawson, where they really stopped.

like seeing each other after being previously super close for content and money, of course, but nonetheless, like they had a little bit of like a falling out that they kind of denied. He also broke up with his long-term boyfriend, Nathan Schwan. Who's engaged right now, I believe. To a woman? To a woman, yes. Oh my god, wait. Good for him. Yeah, he looks so happy, actually. Mazel tov, Nathan Schwant. For those who don't know, Jeffrey was like, Nathan is straight, except for me. Yeah.

Which honestly, like sexuality is very complicated. Straight identifying men are very complicated. I believe that that's how both of them understood that relationship. Not to get too off base. I agree. I think that like there was a dynamic in the relationship that had more to do with like Jeffrey's wealth. Absolutely. And the way that like that played into it. But regardless, they broke up. So Jeffrey moved to Wyoming. Obviously, Casper, Wyoming, where he lives, is a majority white population.

to nine out of 10 people there are white. And he just immediately embraced that rural conservative down home aesthetic to a degree where I at this time around like 2022. The inkling had been planted in my head as a full time Jeffree Star reporter. I was like, I think at some point he's going to get political. I didn't know if he would do like. full on run for office. It all makes sense to me. And you started to see him really lay the groundwork for where he is now at that stage.

Again, he hasn't changed. When Jeffree Star moves to Wyoming, he starts dipping his toes in. I remember he did this podcast at the time that went very viral. Where he was like, non-binary, they, them, all this fucking bullshit that we started to make up during COVID, what is that? I'm not into all the other bullshit, I think. What other bullshit? The they and them.

yeah and all that extra that we added during the pandemics everyone is so bored on their houses they just started to make up more and more stuff more stuff yeah that's why the conservatives like me because i'm just real yeah you do have a conservative vibe you're trans you're Male or you're female. And you're standing on that. So mad when I say that. How are you with they? What the fuck does that mean?

It's stupid is what it is. But you need someone like me that looks like me to say it. Because if you say it, it turns into you're homophobic. You hate trans people. You hate gays. And it's just how you feel. You don't hate anyone. You just think it's stupid.

He also really notably like embeds himself within the community of Casper, Wyoming. And this is an extremely niche interest that I have never been able to look away from. But are you guys familiar with the makeup and meat store? No, I've never heard of the makeup and meat store. But I've seen that where Jeffree Star sells his yak meat and also his makeup. Yeah. Jeff starts shortly after becoming like a yak farmer. He opens up a store.

uh called jeffree star makeup and meat where he sells jeffree star makeup and jeff and like beef like yak jerky like beef jerky but it's yaks there was this like i can never get out of my head He, he did like an opening day celebration with like the ribbon cutting and the whole thing. And like, this is a really specific reference point, but I don't know if you guys ever watched like the fairly odd parents.

Jeffree Star reminds me of like the mayor of Dimmesdale in Casper, Wyoming. Dugsdale Dimadone. I imagine Jeffree Star just like walking around. Like I imagine him as the mayor of Casper, Wyoming. Yeah, he does kind of give those vibes. And if you didn't know anything about Casper Wyoming, which most people don't, then you would kind of assume from this social media that he had taken over as like the king.

Because he has the money in the community, I assume. He quite literally does have the money in the community, or at least claims to. He does interviews now, and he'll talk about how he bought up yaks from neighboring farms. People will be like, oh, when you move to Wyoming, were people homophobic towards you? And he'll basically be like, well, you know, I got some weird stares, but they didn't really know what I was about. And once they learned, essentially through...

through this sort of coded language. He's like, once they learned that I was a conservative racist. and that I had the money to buy up all of their yaks, they weren't so mean to me anymore. Which is, again, it's the same thing from Orange County early 2000s MySpace bullshit, where he's like, yeah, everyone's being really mean to me. It's quite literally if you can't beat them, join them.

Yeah, absolutely. Now he has enough money to basically own those white people who used to beat him up. So I think it's probably a little bit of a power thing for him as well. You know, he comes from California where the cost of living is a lot higher. He goes to Wyoming. where it's a lot lower and he gets to be king. And I kind of think that's always what this is kind of about. He strikes me as a person who just desires endless, endless praise constantly.

100%. And one thing that I find really kind of ironic and funny about this era, when he first moved to Wyoming and bought the yaks, people were like, Jeffrey, you're not going to eat them, are you? And he was like, Eat the yaks. The yaks are like my pets. I love them. And then like three weeks later, he was like, hot, fresh yak meat. Come and get your yak meat. So like.

He's just such a ruthless capitalist. Also, when he first moved there, he was buying like engraved benches from local woodworkers and like going to local businesses and stuff, which in theory is also... a good thing to do but of course he was doing it to like win people's favor also at a local town square orchestra type

There were like banners of local businesses sponsoring it. And one of them was like Jeffree Star Cosmetics, which was such a weird image to see because it was literally like he had embedded himself as this Willy Wonka type figure. in a random Wyoming town. And I'm pretty sure he has a factory there now and he employs a lot of people.

And all of this stuff combined made me wonder for a little while if he was going to run for mayor or run for local office or start small. I was like, is he trying to move somewhere where he can... get a smaller position in office, like maybe be a representative or something and then work his way up. Like I wondered if politics would be in his sights, but I think.

based on what he's doing now, the answer is it's so much more work to be a politician than it is to be on TikTok Live for like 17 hours a day and just say a bunch of offensive stuff and get people to buy your like backlogged makeup stock.

Yeah, you have more freedom, too. So as we said, Jeffree Star's sort of latest act, he's become a total TikTok celebrity. He goes live relentlessly and does like TikTok live battles with people, which I gotta say. Doesn't seem like a super dignifying activity for someone with as much wealth as he claims to have. I was shocked when I saw him doing it. I really was, actually.

I was like, Oh, is he, is he broke? Is he broke? Like, and it's actually, I felt that way about a couple of different people. Like there's a couple of people like Michelle fan, for example, I'm like, why are you on Tik TOK live? my mind I thought isn't that kind of like not what you would do at your level but you know I don't sell on TikTok so who knows you saw with Jason Nash too and that was such a big joke online like

influencers and YouTubers who have resorted to panhandling on TikTok Live. I feel like Jeffrey... really thrives in this environment as well like going back to that clip of him we watched at the beginning like he can just be there and be like blah blah blah and he can do that for like eight hours I feel like yeah yeah yeah I'll share I used to do I used to be a cam girl

One of the things I didn't understand is that there are people who are literally like, they'll go on camera and they'll just say fucked up shit and people will pay them. And it's kind of, that's why I don't do the live thing because I kind of.

I have like low key trauma from being a cam girl. I know that that's what people want. People want conflict. Well, I mean, it is, it is a type of like psychological pornography. And he has really sort of leaned into this conservative political identity, again, because what are we tracing? Jeffree Star's political arc throughout his career, which...

can be traced right alongside the sort of cultural and political arc of America throughout his career. In his YouTube career, he had to do this Obama-era liberalism, hashtag Black Lives Matter shtick, where he pretended to care and he pretended to apologize.

pretended to grow and change and learn to be intersectional. But now we're in Trump 2.0 when the whole thing is just like, what is the attitude of this country right now? Be as mean as you possibly can. Go fuck yourself. And he's really born for that. Honestly, like this is the most natural point in Jeffree Star's like professional career where he can just be himself.

almost easier for him because it's less of a performative aspect. Like he's straining for credulity and believability when he's talking about racism from the perspective of racism is bad. It is so easy for him to talk about how. People who identify with they them pronouns are freaks, unlike me, because I'm a man. It just rolls off the tongue. It's low-hanging fruit. There's more people that are willing to pay you to say there's no such thing as non-binary people.

then there are people who are willing to fund a non-binary person describing their own life and experience. And that's been my experience. I've been an openly trans blogger for two decades. been in rooms where i'm asking for money i've i've asked people for resources and things they don't want to fund a lot of the stuff that would you know in so many ways let's just be blunt about it sabotage many of the ideas that are central to capitalism like they'll fund

Jeffree Star, especially as a visibly queer person, to say that stuff, because there's a larger group of people that want to hear that than there are people who want to actually humanize trans people. You know, there's way more.

way more support over there and it's i think why he's doing it any vaguely queer person can make a video saying there are only two genders and i'm a man and da da da da and they will literally get way way way more people who are willing to like support them follow them throw money at them because that's just people like that more so yeah it's so predictable he's following the money as he always has i think yes and

Particularly, he has leaned into this like model minority persona where it's like, yes, I may look like, you know, a super femme, gay guy, queer person, gender fuck sort of individual. But like, I am the version of that that's going to validate all of your most homophobic and transphobic beliefs. And I think this is the part, especially now that a lot of people are like, how can someone who looks like him be saying that?

I just watched like this full two hour interview that he just did where he says a lot of transphobic things that went super viral on like, you know, Instagram reels and Facebook with all of these conservative white people being like, I just love him. And I took a few clips from it because there is something extremely uncanny about watching someone and hearing someone who looks and sounds like Jeffree Star trying to like enforce this very arbitrary idea of gender.

Let's take a look. It started when the first person and we as a society let them. I'm they. Okay. And what the fuck does that mean? You don't, you don't. Five years ago, we would not be able to have this discussion. Everyone would have a meltdown. But why? You're a they and a them. Got it. So what you're saying is there needs to be more context around it? The absurdity is that... You can only be a man, a woman, or trans. Okay.

There's a third thing here. I love that you can be a man, a woman, or trans. To me, this is like more fun than like trans. people aren't real there's only like men like cis men and cis women because it's like oh now you know what i mean it's like it's not a binary yeah a tricary i don't know how it goes but he's like there's not quite a binary

But there's a little bit of a binary as I see fit. I have so much to say, so I'll try not to say too much. Please say too much. To me, all of these things, like I didn't want to go on the like the part about him having a straight boyfriend thing, because this is all kind of part of the same sort of thing. I've known so many Jeffrey stars through my life.

and it it usually follows a very particular pattern of he's a person who who is feminine loves being feminine likes makeup likes being all all up in you know drags and stuff but he's not going to transition because he doesn't identify that way and by nature of him being feminine he does indeed attract

straight men occasionally who he does indeed have some sort of relationship with but of course for most of these straight men because they are straight men it will never lead anywhere it will always be this either being sexualized thing or i think as we saw in nathan's case it's financial you've got the money i've got the thing you want give me a bit of money i'm you know that's a very common thing and then what i think sometimes they resent is when they

see these men do go off and form these relationships with women yes some of them being transgender like to me we can have a whole debate about whether or not these men are straight but like i'm polyamorous i have Four partners, two of them identify as straight. And if you said they were gay, they wouldn't care. It's not a big deal. But there are some people who get so wrapped up in what they see.

trans women being able to do what they see non-binary people being able to do and they're over there thinking well what the fuck like i have this thing and yeah i occasionally you know cross into these areas that they do and it it's like it comes from a place of bitterness and rejection And I think rejection is a very common, very potent.

thing in his life which is why he is so desperate to chase this yes he's chasing money it also happens to also help him chase a lot of that approval when i look at jeffree star i see someone who is incredibly ostracized he resents the fact that there are people who would say oh you're they them cool

and didn't bully them in the way that he was bullied i mean that's that's the sad part the worst thing in the world to to people like this is that someone accepted their gender and it's weird because you know you i mean i'm not saying that jeffree star is an egg i don't think jeffree star is an egg i actually think

Every star is very much a man who is feminine and enjoys all these things. But I think that he has so much dissonance around his rejection that it's causing him to not understand that some people. experience being accepted and it's genuine and like what's the big deal if you know someone uses they them It's a real non-issue, actually. It's a non-binary non-issue. It's a non-binary non-issue. It strikes me that he...

in this environment that he's currently in and with this demographic he's playing to, he knows what to say to get accepted by them in this context. I think he also understands that the only reason he's on this podcast is because In the same way that beautiful women are objectified by conservatives, his flamboyant and unusual appearance is being objectified by these people. And he is striving so hard to be in on the joke that he's willing to say whatever it is.

takes for the people to see him as in on the joke, but he's never going to actually get there. And the flip side of that is that Not too long ago when he was filming his documentary series with Shane Dawson, he said, and I've seen people pull this clip up and juxtapose them. He was like, he's like, people call me a man. They call me a woman, whatever pronouns, all pronouns.

Alien, whatever. Oh wait, that's another question I have. I keep calling you she on accident. Andrew was like, wait, is Jeffrey or what's happening? I'm just Jeffrey. So if you look at me and you're like, damn honey, yes. She, everyone calls me he, she, whatever they want to call me. So that's fine. Yeah, I'm an alien. Every pronoun is okay. Every pronoun.

He was doing the same thing to a different audience. He wanted to be at that point accepted by a more liberal audience. But now that he strives for this acceptance from the conservative audience. it's no problem to him to go back on what he said because he's like, it's performative and he knows what they want. Yeah.

And he's trying to make money. He's trying to find space for himself, too. I think that for some content creators right now, some of us are a little nervous about whether or not we're going to be able to continue to have careers. And I do think that for a lot of people.

grifting and kind of like cozying up to the right, that feels like a safer bet, especially during a time when people are being imprisoned for their speech or kicked out of the country for their speech. I think some people feel safer there. And I think that that's also sort of the sad part about it.

is sometimes that rejection makes you... desire or or believe in this idea that that those people who rejected you are actually safe and if you could only be accepted by them you would be safe but the reality is he's never going to fully be accepted by these people he's only as useful to them as long as he keeps

reading the script and eventually they're gonna say to him well okay you feel that way then why the fuck are you wearing that wig then why do you have that makeup on like yeah it was fun entertaining for for a while but if you actually feel that there's only men and women and things like

that then you also should feel that men perform this way women perform that way and what you're doing is attempting to be more like a woman than a man so maybe you should stop being as non-binary in the way that you live and fall in line. And you know, the reason I'm able to say all this, and I think the reason why I think he's able to say this is because we were raised in conservative communities. These are narratives that we internalize, you know.

what to say because you know what people are reacting to. And for some people, you recognize that if you stay in line, if you entertain the narrative, if you stay on the script, you'll feel safer. It's not real, but it's an illusion that's very strong.

And to me, so much of this goes back to that like teeny tiny detail of like, well, when I was bullied as a kid, I fought back and I loved that. Not to get like too like, ooh, like, but like, what if you didn't have to fight back? What if you, at any point during your 40 years on Earth, maybe got some therapy, did some internal work, I don't know, but like worked on... Quite literally, oh, I sound so annoying. This is like not the podcast for talking about healing your inner child.

What if you at any point like kind of tried to heal your inner child and realize you shouldn't have to actually fight back like those forces of bigotry shouldn't exist and like you should have been able to be like punk and have pink hair and be a fag and it should have been fine. But it wasn't for you. And so now you need to make sure that it isn't for anyone.

Yeah. And I think growth and part of healing your inner child for a lot of people is becoming that older person who does accept that younger person and make space for the fact that they can be a queer kid with pink hair and it's not. a value judgment you're not better or worse for it and it's sad to me that he has not gone that down that direction i think about the stuff that i post all the time that i want to be able to leave this earth in a way where something i posted and said

helped move us in a direction where some of the kids wouldn't have to go through the shit that I went through when I was younger and being ostracized and being rejected and, you know, identifying with how strong I had to be. Like, it's great that I have thick skin or whatever. Like, that's awesome.

whatever but what if i didn't have to do that what if what if i could just be embraced and accepted and what i hear in some of what he says here is that he does resent that that's happening and it didn't happen for him 100

This is a beautiful place to land, but I do have a couple other clips from this interview that were just so deranged, but also so to the point of like... he's memorized this script and he knows how to regurgitate it on a podcast that we're like almost funny. I'm going to play them. I'm sorry in advance, but let's just really take it there. Let's take it there. Why are we encouraging our kids to be a different gender and feed them false?

Information when they're so young. So this is what I said recently that people really understood when I grew up and I started looking different, right? my mother encouraged me to just be myself. When I started wearing makeup and being more feminine and wanting to do certain things, it wasn't, oh my God, Jeffrey needs, what do they call it now? Gender affirming care. I'm done, I'm done.

I just she let me be myself. She didn't push me to be anything just like when you're a tomboy Did your mom try to you know get you a surgery to be a you know what I mean exactly she Did she cut your tits off at 13? Did she cut your tits off? So nowadays, it's all these fucking weirdos telling their kids, oh my god, you like a Barbie? You're a woman. No, that's just a little boy experimenting not knowing what the fuck he's doing.

It's just so funny to me because this is quite literally an essay that Andrew Sullivan wrote in the New York Times like a couple months ago. This is the thing that I find disappointing about Jeffree Star is it's like your whole thing is that you're outraged.

and like unafraid to go against the grain like if you're gonna do this right wing pivot like at least be interesting you're just doing like you're just doing like so run-of-the-mill boring conservative grifter shit and it's not convincing coming from such a flamboyantly queer person because it's like he can sit here and be like

what is it gender forming care they just invented it three weeks ago and you can be like non-binary non-binary people have only existed for five years but it's like that's so not true and it's just so obvious that like you jeffree star know that None of that is true. But, you know, what's funny is I think that the conservatives don't care as much about that. I get the vibe from a lot of them that.

It begins and ends with them finding a video of a person who looks a certain way saying a certain thing just so they can say, see, see, look, people are always sending me like some black conservative woman's shit. And I'm like, great. I don't care.

But there are some people where they think that that's so important that that's the main appeal of the Jeffree stars of the world. And it's not convincing. I'm not convinced. You know better. Didn't you date a straight man and you're a man? How did that work? That sounds a little non-binary to me. I don't know.

And these clips went so viral. Like I've had a million people send them to me and it's, they're all posted by like conservative pages with thousands of replies being like, we love Jeffree Star. And I'm like, yeah, I'm sure you do because you know, he.

does serve a real role in this ecosystem where someone who is homophobic who is transphobic can hear all of their beliefs regurgitated back to them by someone who looks like jeffrey star and then feel like I don't have to challenge myself on anything because Jeffrey agrees with me and Jeffrey looks like that.

Yes, I think that Jeffrey is comfortable with this very impressionable audience that he does not have to work hard to impress. Like he just has to say the magic words. He at this point has learned. much like Donald Trump, that he can stand in the middle of the street and shoot someone in the head and no one would care. I mean, how much has he gotten away with? Let's not forget earlier we were talking about sexual assault charges. You've got...

This motherfucker on here talking about our kids, our kids, our kids. Let's keep you from the kids, actually. And off of those buses, huh? The whole conservative side. I saw a Megyn Kelly thing earlier today that was... so perfect on this you know oh i need to keep the boys out of the girls locker room but like donald trump didn't do anything to those girls and if he did it wasn't that bad because yada it's like come on it's all a fake

bullshit script but they've learned that they can get away with it and i honestly think that the sad part is is our literacy in this country is very low and there's enough people who just won't care enough to look into it. Like the fact that it is so tangibly hard for trans kids to gain access to gender affirming care, but people have been able to buy into this narrative that you can send your, your kid. to school and they'll come back with a sex change the next day. It's insane.

And they believe this, you know, like you have to get months upon months of electrolysis before you have a sex change operation, because if you don't, hair is going to grow where it shouldn't. But somehow these children are getting full sex change operations. And that's just believable. And for me, that speaks to just how dehumanized trans people are. The fact that no one wants to look into it enough to hear how...

actually hard it is to gain access to this care. He was mentioning, oh, cutting off your tits, right? In very, very, very few circumstances can a person who's under the age of 18 actually get that surgery. It's not a... common thing at all. And if these people knew any trans kids, they would know that. They would know that the first couple of years of this conversation is not, well, you need to have surgery. It's more like, well, we're going to support you in your way of expressing yourself.

same way that your fucking mom said to you apparently it would be we're not going to judge you we're not actually going to tell you who you are we're going to give you the opportunity to decide for yourself in fact that's actually the function of puberty blockers is allowing a child to have time to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted those things and you need to have typically a bit of time on actual

hormones before you have any of these goddamn surgeries. And so it is so frustrating to me the way that people talk about this because they actually don't understand that more likely... for a rejected trans kid to just, you know, go back into the closet and, you know, decide not to be themselves, is that they're going to run away, get onto the streets, be assaulted by grown men, some of whom are conservative.

And that's their only way up and out of their circumstances, being exploited by the same men that voted against their rights. That's the reality for a lot of trans people. is they have to do sex work to survive. It was my past, right? It aggravates me that people don't understand that the other end of rejecting trans youth is exploitation.

or suicide typically. The worst thing you could do to a trans kid is not just kind of accept who they are. Like, and I'm very passionate about that because I'm very much. who I am because of some of the shit I had to go through when I was a teenager because my parents didn't accept me. It pisses me off because I know that he doesn't care. He doesn't care. He gets to get away with it.

This actually does have an impact on people. You normalize the idea that this is such a thing. People do and have voted against people having access to their care just for this bullshit. Yeah, I think that.

Jeffrey has done the calculus that the things that he's saying now aren't going to directly affect him in a way that matters to him. And he also knows, I think at least he's made this sort of bet that. as a gay man who does not have a super strong line of protection between him and any fascist agenda. But I think Jeffrey, even if he's not smart enough to recognize this, like even if he couldn't repeat this back. I think he probably understands that deep down there are.

other queer people and allies who will be fighting for his rights and protecting his rights so he's not really in danger because he can ride on the back of other people's work to protect him while he endangers more vulnerable queer and trans people in a way that won't come back to bite him necessarily i mean that's what we do on this podcast like i fucking i fucking advocate for jeffrey star's right to be jeffrey star every day whether i like it or not

whether i like it or not okay this is my last six second clip but i just i had to include it because i love masculinity here's the problem with society we've set up society to shame and ridicule straight men have we have we have we and if he looks at the camera softly enough, a straight man will finally pick him. This is the problem with society. We set it up to shame and ridicule straight men. Jeffree Star.

If only you were right. I want to live in that society. I think that would be a much more productive one. Cat and cat. Thank you so much for joining me today, going through this journey. I don't know. I would say like, I hope this is the last time I talk about Jeff Star. It won't be. It won't be. Thank you so much for having us. You just reminded me that I think I ended one of my videos literally saying and I hope this is the last time I ever talk about Jeffree Star.

That obviously did not happen. Jeffree Star is going to live till 200 years old and he's going to be on whatever AI future app is dominating then and he will be one of the top 10 most followed people on that app. And I, thankfully, will be dead. Edgy teens will keep his likeness alive forever. They'll build pyramids in his name, I'm sure.

But thank you so much for having me. I did appreciate my time discussing this. This was a blast from the past. Where can people find each of you, support your work, etc, etc? Well, you can find me on blackinthecity.com. That is my website where I write. you know, every once in a while. And also YouTube. That's really the main place. That's where most people follow me on YouTube. Kat Black. K-A-T-B-L-A-Q-U-E.

Like the 90s girl group. And then I am at spitfirenews.com is my newsletter. And you can also find me on Blue Sky and Instagram at Kat Timbarge. And if you have made it this far in the episode, as usual, I have no idea how long this will be once it's cut down, but you have very likely made it through quite a lot of time. I appreciate you so much.

Thank you for allowing me to indulge in my little online fixations of the most annoying gay people in the world. I love you so much. And until next time, stay fruity.