James Charles, 20, is back and better than ever. On May 18, the beauty guru left YouTube with a dropped subscriber count, many accusations against his name and the controversial “No More Lies” video that had fans doubting if they should be Team James or Team Tati Westbrook. But one month later, on June 18, James marked his return with a 27-minute makeup tutorial and chit chat video called “Hi Sisters” — and it was just as breezy as the title sounds. “Hi sisters! James Charles here, and welcome back to my YouTube channel. Oh my gosh, it feels so weird to be sitting here in the studio on camera, recording this video for you guys, but I’m so beyond excited because it is about time and I’m ready to come back and work so hard and see all of you sisters,” James gushed in the introduction, but soon got serious about his current headspace.
“I went from being so in it [YouTube and social media] for the past three years, I’ve literally been like addicted to filming my videos and checking my social media,” James continued. “And like it was so much fun, but it got to a point to where it was incredibly, incredibly like toxic for me and my mental health and after everything that just went down on social media, I just kind of needed some time to detox, slow it down.” For a debrief of “everything” that just went down, the scandal between Tati and James blew up after James promoted Sugar Bear Hair (the rival to Tati’s own vitamin company, Halo Beauty) in exchange for an artist pass at Coachella in April 2019. This incident served as the tipping point for Tati to release her “BYE SISTER…” video, which touched on James’ supposed “betrayal” and threw out other allegations (James rebutted these with his clapback video, “No More Lies”). But the she-said, he-said is over.
“I’m really, really excited to say that after the last month, I’ve done a lot of growing and thinking,” James confessed in his new video. “I’m now able to leave my phone in another room walk out and like enjoy life, which sounds so stupid, but like for me that’s major, major progress.” And on that note, James proved he has made progress by leaving the drama behind and launching into a tutorial for a “dripping rainbow” makeup look for Pride Month. He even made his return to YouTube into a charitable cause — James will donate all of the video’s AdSense-generated proceeds to The Trevor Project, which combats youth suicide in the LGBTQ+ community.
While James has reunited with YouTube, his Sister Tour remains cancelled. The YouTuber pulled the plug on his cross-city tour on May 26, explaining on his Instagram Story that he “wanted to take the next few months to focus on things that make [him] really happy” and because it was “really important for [him] to get [his] head back to where it was when [he] first started, which was to do this out of a love for makeup, artistry, inspiring people and, most importantly, making people happy.”