YouTuber Tati Westbrook was thrown into the spotlight after posting her "Bye Sister" video,
which slammed teen beauty icon James Charles in May 2019.
With everyone quickly taking sides, we wanted to know the scoop on this beauty mogul.
Personal struggles
Before the James Charles drama took the Internet by storm, Westbrook was already planning to
take a break from YouTube.
"Just sometimes feels like, 'And this blush is fantastic!
Oh, and my uterus and ovaries.'
You know, like when does that fit in."
In a January 2019 video, Tati revealed that she and her husband, James Westbrook, were
struggling to get pregnant.
Westbrook has also suffered from endometriosis as well as severe inflammation.
This is why the social media star always stays on top of her health and gets blood work done
about four times a year.
"It has been like a deep pain in my soul that I have not been able to have children."
She added,
"As a woman, you feel like your body should be able to do this on its own, and it's always
frustrated me that my body betrays me a lot."
Westbrook went on to admit that the stress surrounding her fertility issues had also
led to depression.
While she decided to step back from YouTube to help ease her anxiety, she still planned
to share part of her journey on Snapchat.
Humble beginnings
Westbrook might be resting on a reported net worth of $6 million, but the star has had
to work for everything she has.
The YouTuber didn't come from money, and couldn't afford tuition for college or beauty school.
At various points in her life, Westbrook didn't even have a car to drive to work.
While opening up about all of this in a 2016 video, the YouTube star revealed that she'd
moved out on her own at the age of 18, but had only saved up a little bit of money and
had no income.
At the time, she was driving a beat-up Jeep with no radio and used a boombox to listen
to music.
She said,
"I've had every random job out there.
I have had to do things that I'm not really happy about to make ends meet."
She admitted that while that might sound sketchy, it wasn't.
"I've had to do what I had to do to pay rent and to support myself."
She added,
"I come from a family that is very loving, but we don't come from tons of money, and
it's not like I could call home and be like, 'Hey, can you pay my rent?'"
Realizing her destiny
Westbrook, who grew up in Seattle, admitted that she knew she was going to be famous when
she was just three years old.
At the time, her focus was on acting, musical theater and dance.
However, it wasn't until she was "discovered" by a casting director at the age of 13 and
moved out to Los Angeles with her mom that she realized acting might not be her thing.
She said,
"My mom kinda packed us all in a van, and my parents were going through a divorce, and
we just kinda got out of there."
Tati then admitted,
"So fast forward, you know, I did a lot of acting in commercials and this and that, and
then I kind of got burnt out on the whole thing.
I don't know, I was homesick."
She eventually left LA to live with her dad in Seattle.
Westbrook might not have grown up to become an actress as originally planned, but with
roughly 10 million YouTube subscribers as of mid 2019, there's no doubt she's a star.
Meeting her husband
While the rest of us have been swiping endlessly in a sea of men who won't commit, Westbrook
managed to find her husband James online.
But the pair's first date was almost a complete disaster.
"Our first kiss was in front of your apartment, and it was horrible.
It was horrible."
"It was so awkward."
Before their first kiss, Tati went to the sushi restaurant chain they had agreed on,
but accidentally showed up at the wrong location…and was livid that James was late.
When she realized she was at the wrong place, she tried to cancel.
But fate didn't let things end there.
Tati admitted to her husband in a 2012 video,
"I said that if this didn't work out, I was taking a year hiatus from men because I had
gone on so many bad Match.com dates, I was sick of it."
She said both she and James were tired of the dating scene and both were thinking of
quitting relationships altogether.
But she added,
"And then you said...'Wouldn't it be cool if this was it?'
And I'm sitting across the table like, 'You're a freaking psycho.'
But I liked you right away."
Looks like this bad date turned into happily ever after.
The Westbrook brand
Let's not beat around the bush: Tati Westbrook has made a heck of a lot of money on YouTube.
So much so that she even managed to become the sole investor in her company, Halo Beauty.
She said via E! News,
"I was able to do it on my own.
It's shocking how [much] money YouTubers can make."
It's not exactly clear just how much Westbrook has made on the platform, but it's definitely
in the millions.
The star averages 25 to 30 million views per month.
According to Vlogger Gear, YouTube pays out around $600 to $7,000 per million views depending
on the content quality.
As one of the most popular beauty vloggers, Westbrook's payout is probably on the higher
end of the spectrum, meaning she could be raking in around $1 million a year.
That's still not counting sponsored posts, brand partnerships, or the fact that YouTubers
can show a number of ads within a single video.
While estimating Westbrook's payout by looking at fellow YouTubers with similarly dedicated
audiences, Cosmo concluded that she probably makes around $9 million a year from her channel.
Cancelling her first wedding
While the Westbrooks got engaged in 2012, it would be years before the pair ever got
hitched.
In fact, they pulled the plug on their wedding altogether in 2015, and naturally announced
the cancellation, before they even told their family, on YouTube.
Tati said at the time,
"I found out that my very best friend from childhood was not going to be able to make
the wedding, and it was just like she's the one person that I wanted there."
She claimed life kept getting in the way, adding,
"People keep dying, people keep having surgeries, people are in the hospital, people get pregnant."
But as fans know, Tati eventually got her Maui dream wedding in 2017, where fellow YouTuber-turned-foe
James Charles did her bridal makeup.
Their infamous feud has apparently made looking at the wedding photos pretty difficult for
Westbrook, according to Life & Style.
But hey, at least her makeup looked great.
A thing for drama
Westbrook just can't seem to escape that YouTube drama.
Perhaps that's just the price of fame on the platform or maybe even the people with whom
she chooses to surround herself.
Long before the James Charles controversy lit a fire across the Internet, the star was
absolutely slammed for collaborating with Jeffree Star in 2017.
"Today we are doing a get ready like never before in the beauty community and I brought
the one and only Tati Westbrook.
Hey girl."
"Hey guys."
According to Revelist, fans thought Westbrook's collab meant she approved of Star's alleged
past bad behavior, which included well-documented displays of racism.
For his part, Star gave a lengthy apology for everything in 2017 and has since slammed
Tarte cosmetics for their lack of darker foundation shades.
Star said of the matter on Youtube,
"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."
Westbrook, of course, defended the pair's collaboration on Snapchat.
Claiming people didn't know the real Star, she said,
"What you see on Twitter and Snap doesn't always give you the full story."
Given this context, it makes sense that Star would fan the flame and support Westbrook
during the James Charles scandal, even if he later admitted he handled the situation
poorly.
The Halo Beauty controversy
Westbrook once again found herself in hot water in 2018, but this time it was because
of her actual company, not the company she keeps.
The launch of her very first product for her Halo Beauty line turned into an absolute nightmare
from the second it went live.
"My launch, although very, very successful, was also a different reaction than I had anticipated."
According to Allure, Halo Beauty's Hair, Skin, and Nails Booster, the supplement that's allegedly
in direct competition with SugarBear Hair, and thus sparked that whole James Charles
drama, included saw palmetto, a controversial ingredient that may potentially interfere
with hormonal birth control.
Of course, this didn't fly with Westbrook's audience, and the beauty guru took to Snapchat
to defend herself.
She said at the time,
"I feel very misunderstood.
I hate that my character is being thrashed.
Saw palmetto is not going to get you pregnant.
It's not going to make your birth control not work…I am working with the best physicians,
the best scientists, the best nutritionists.
I have a team.
I have advisors.
We have talked about this formula through and through to get to this point."
It should be noted that Allure also spoke to board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist
Leah Millheiser, who said that saw palmetto does indeed have quote, "estrogenic activity
and may affect endogenous hormone levels."
However, it seems as though more research is needed, in order to make any definitive
conclusions.
Her relationship with her stepson
On the surface, it looks like Westbrook has a really excellent relationship with her stepson,
Taylor.
"I have Taylor my stepson here."
He's even been featured on her channel, like the time he gave the makeup guru a sweetly
adorable makeover.
She also pumped his Instagram account on Twitter to help get him more followers.
And that obviously worked because, as of mid 2019, he has roughly 124,000 fans.
However, Westbrook admitted in a March 2019 video that things weren't always so rosy between
the two, particularly at the beginning of her relationship with husband James.
She admitted,
"There was a year where it was hard.
It was like, 'Hi, I'm your dad's special friend.'"
She said Taylor was only about 14 or 15 when they met, claiming,
"He was a little pipsqueak, and he was a moody teenager, and he didn't want to talk to me,
and I got a lot of one-word answers."
She then shared some sage advice with her viewers, adding,
"So to anyone that is navigating dating someone with kids: be patient.
They'll open up when they're ready."
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