From sea to shining sea, preteens are spending their birthday money on barrier-repair creams and collecting fragrances like Beanie Babies. Allure set out to find out when and how tweens became beauty experts—and over the course of six weeks shadowing seven of them, we got some compelling answers. Come get to know Generation Beauty.
Yesterday, Katie Fang was posing in front of a 40-foot billboard of herself in the heart of Times Square. But today, on a balmy Friday afternoon in downtown Manhattan, she is just an 18-year-old girl standing in front of a wall of nail polish, debating the merits of Barbie pink versus baby pink.
We are at JinSoon Nail Spa getting pedicures. It’s been a week of firsts for Fang: her first billboard, her first time speaking on a panel, and now this, her first in-person interview. She’s spoken with other media outlets, she tells me, but always via Zoom.
Fang was born in Taiwan and is currently based in Vancouver, Canada, but lately, she is living out of a suitcase. So far this year, she’s been to Mexico (where she shot the photo that appeared on that billboard, for the makeup brand Kosas), Paris and Bordeaux (with the French skin-care brand Caudalie), Coachella (as a guest of sun-care brand Supergoop), Los Angeles (where she met Rihanna at a Fenty Beauty launch party), San Francisco (for the previously mentioned panel), and now, New York City. (She also squeezed in a trip to Rome and Milan, just for fun.)
Somewhere in between, she took her driver’s license test.
Beforehand, she posted a Get Ready With Me (GRWM) video on her TikTok account, on which she has approximately 5.1 million followers. “Hey guys, get ready with me to take my driving test,” she says as she dispenses a puddle of Glow Recipe Watermelon Glow PHA+BHA Pore-Tight Toner into the palm of her hand, “except I’m probably going to fail.” She goes on to expound on how nervous she is (“My heart is pounding right now.”) before signing off: “Wish me luck, guys! Bye!”
It’s that sort of vulnerability that has won Fang the hearts—and views—of Gen Alpha. Throughout the many weeks I spent interviewing preteens for Allure’s investigation into the tween beauty boom, Fang’s name came up time and time again when I asked them who they liked to follow on social media. “I think her videos are honest and relatable,” said Olivia, a 12-year-old living in the New York tri-state area.
When Fang sings the praises of a cleanser or mascara or highlighter, her followers trust her recommendations like they would that of a friend. But though she may be a driving force behind the phenomenon, Fang is just as bewildered as the rest of us that the tweens of 2024 are even into this stuff in the first place. When she was a preteen—just about six years ago—she had Barbie dolls, not serums, lined up on a shelf in her bedroom, she says.
Knowing that much of her audience is still in middle school, “just makes me want to be a better person for them,” says Fang. She makes a point to touch on tough topics like mental health (“It's good to encourage [my followers] to not be afraid to reach out for help or speak about it.”) and understands the impact she has on young Asian girls in particular: “It makes me feel really good when I get comments like, ‘You've made me feel so confident about my identity.’”
Fang is also glad that you—perhaps the parent of a tween who follows her—are reading this, and thereby gaining a better understanding of the sorts of accounts your child engages with. “It's important to foster good communication with your children,” she says. “A lot of my friends' parents heavily regulate their social media use, which just leads to them using it under their radar. This usually means even more problems and doesn't encourage a trusting relationship with their kids.”
Fang stresses the importance of teaching tweens how to set their own boundaries for screen time—and to remember that parents are the ultimate influencers. “Be a positive role model in your own social media use, and demonstrate healthy habits,” she says.
For her part, she feels a level of responsibility not to use skin-care products that could do more harm than good for her young followers’ skin—or hers, for that matter. “I’ve never used retinol,” says Fang. “I stick strictly to [promoting] moisture. I recommend hyaluronic acid for hydration and niacinamide for oily skin, which is the opposite of mine.”
Because she’s earned their trust, even when Fang is doing things that aren’t so relatable (like, say, meeting Rihanna), her followers cheer her on like they would their BFF. “I’ve been a silent follower for awhile but I just wanted to say it’s been so much fun watching you grow and seeing you accomplish all your dreams and goals. So proud of you katie ❤,” commented one on the video in which Fang revealed her Kosas billboard.
“It’s crazy to think u started all this with posting a video where you didn’t want to go to work,” chimed in another. It’s true: On January 28, 2023, Fang was on call for her job as a hostess at a chain restaurant in Vancouver. “I was having a bad day. But I was like, ‘Okay, it’s rainy. They’re definitely really slow; they won’t need me,’ Of course, they called,” she says. “I was bawling my eyes out as I was getting ready, and when I saw myself in the mirror I was like, ‘Wow, this looks so ridiculous.’” So, as teenagers do, she decided to document it.
Before Fang started her shift, she posted a sped-up, two-and-a-half-minute version of the 15-minute video on TikTok and added the text: “POV: I got called into work.” When she picked up her phone a few hours later, “the video had just completely blown up,” she says. “The views were in the millions already. It was terrifying.”
It’s hard to say exactly why and how the video picked up such momentum so quickly; the TikTok algorithm works in mysterious ways. In any case, because of that video (which, as of this moment, has north of 40 million views), Fang’s follower count jumped from somewhere in the hundreds to somewhere in the thousands. So what did she do next? Absolutely nothing. “I didn't post for a whole week,” she says. “I was scared.”
Instead, Fang decided to let her account “marinate a little” and a week later—inspired by the fact that many of the comments on the previous video were about how flawless her makeup looked even as she cried—she posted a beauty tutorial. The rest is history: “After that, I did a get ready with me every single day before school,” says Fang.
By “school” she means high school—Fang was a senior at the time. She had already applied to college and decided on her major—journalism—before her TikTok following suddenly ballooned. She signed on with a talent management company (United Talent Agency) in June, and headed to college (the University of Victoria) that summer.
She lived in a dorm on campus for her first semester, but found it difficult to adjust to the slower pace of life on Vancouver Island. “Because I'm such a city girl, moving to an island… I mean it was a gorgeous island, don't get me wrong,” says Fang. “But if I wasn't in class, I was just in my dorm.” Or the mailroom: Fang says she used to have to borrow a dolly to cart her PR packages—boxes filled with beauty products that brands hoped she would feature in a video—from the mailroom to her dorm room each day.
Fang decided to do her second semester virtually while living back home with her mom and sisters in Vancouver proper. If she could turn back time, would she have done anything differently? “If I had exploded on TikTok first, before I had to decide on a college, I think I would've directly applied to schools in the States,” she says. “Especially New York.”
But in a move that proves it’s never too late to follow your dreams, Fang plans to transfer schools and relocate to New York City this fall. “I’m going through the process now,” she says. “Nothing’s confirmed yet… but it’s happening.” She’s started looking at apartments online and looks forward to the day she can order takeout whenever her heart desires. “The food here is so good. It's the best of every cuisine you could ever want—and if you’re craving something, it’s all open 24/7,” she says. “Every time I come here, I get Wingstop at 1 am.”
She will also be able to satisfy her craving to study business—because even at just 18-years-old, she’s smart enough to understand that she, Katie Fang, is a business entity. “It was when I signed with my team that I realized this could be a career,” she says. “Before that, it was just about making silly TikToks for funsies.”
Fang doesn’t share details about her income, but anyone who’s watched one of her recent shopping hauls and knows the ballpark price of a Goyard tote or Dior slingbacks would probably assume she’s doing quite well. “I feel like I was more into fashion before beauty, even,” says Fang. “If I was ever to start a brand, I'd probably start a jewelry line because I'm so into my pieces—but that’s not in the foreseeable future.”
When I ask her if she got herself anything special as a sort of “I made it” gift, she says no—but that she did get her mom a Chanel flap bag. “Seeing her so happy was amazing,” Fang says. She and her mom are clearly close: I see them hug as they part ways on the sidewalk before Fang walks into our interview. “She is the strongest woman I know… she’s gone through so much and handled so much on her own,” Fang says later. “Talking to her helps clear my head and teaches me how to handle myself whenever I feel pressured, overwhelmed, and anxious. That’s not to say having every aspect of my life exposed to everyone on social media is easy on my mental health, but having my mom by my side has always helped me manage my feelings.”
To that end, Fang says her mom is “super supportive” of her upcoming move, even though it means she’ll be a five-hour flight and three time zones away. “It’ll be a new chapter in my life,” she says. “I’m so excited.”
That might be what I like most about her: Fang is not trying to play it cool. It is not lost on her that this time last year, she still had that restaurant hosting gig—and now, she gets recognized by fans on airplanes as she jets round the world. “I’m still normal Katie,” she says. “I’m still freaking out about it. I’m not becoming jaded.”
I also like her taste in nail polish: For her pedicure, she has selected a peachy-pink shade with flecks of gold glitter, aptly named Sparks Fly. “Like the Taylor Swift song!” Fang squeals when she realizes. I ask her if she went to the Eras Tour. “Yes! It was amazing! Did you?” she replies. And in that moment, I, a 30-something beauty editor, get to experience a sliver of what has made Fang a TikTok sensation among the preteen set: her unbridled enthusiasm, and most of all, her relatability. “Of course I did,” I say with a smile.
Read more about how tweens are interacting with beauty products:
- So Your Tween Wants to Use Beauty Products—Here's Where to Start
- Sephora Tweens Are Nothing New
- How to Build a Skin-Care Routine for Your Tween
Watch Sabrina Carpenter's 10-minute makeup routine:
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