Golloria George Will Always Be An Influencer

Joining a video call with Golloria George means two things. First, you’ll need to turn down the brightness on your screen—the beauty creator’s complexion is just that radiant (today it’s courtesy of the Danessa Myricks Yummy Skin Blurring Balm Powder). Second, you’ll fall into the type of rapid fire banter you typically reserve for a night out with your closest girlfriends (“Girl! Love! Period!”) within a few minutes. It’s an occupational hazard for anyone who loves to talk beauty, as we both do, and whose average workday means sharing makeup hot takes with the world.

As a beauty influencer, George’s world—largely populated by over three million followers on TikTok—is facing an uncertain future when we speak in December. News of a TikTok shutdown had been looming for months. A few weeks later, in mid-January, the app was eventually banned; offline for about 12 hours before being reinstated. Still, the potential for a future shutdown has forced many creators to look elsewhere for their social media livelihood. George, though, remains unfazed. “I’ve been blessed to build on multiple platforms, and while TikTok was my start, I know it won’t be the end,” she tells me.

I believe her. The scale of George’s reach is the stuff Harvard Business School dissertations are made of. A single product recommendation can prompt a relatively unknown beauty brand to sell out of its stock within hours—just look to her recent Jordana Ticia Cosmetics bronzer review with 7.9 million views and counting—while a scathing review of a non-inclusive product can elicit a recall and a lengthy public apology, à la Youthforia’s botched shade extension rollout in August 2023.

But it’s her community of loyal followers—who seem to vibrate with joy at seeing George’s candid beauty takes, especially her advice for women of color—that has catapulted George to social media superstardom. “It was really interesting to see that there was a community of so many people who also felt the exact same way I did,” she explains of her frustration with the beauty industry’s sluggish move towards more inclusive products and practices. “That's when I was like, Okay, let's keep talking. Keep the camera rolling.”

That she did. Just three years after posting her first video in February 2022—an inspirational take encouraging other women with dark complexions to start YouTube or TikTok channels—George has become synonymous with the digital beauty-sphere. Even casual TikTok users have likely come across George’s signature “Darkest Shade" videos, in which she swatches various makeup brands and their foundation or concealer offerings for deep skin tones (spoiler alert: they are often far too light for her complexion).

“I'm proud. It's hard to get on the internet and talk about…colorism and racism and breaking barriers all the time,” she says. “It's also hard to not only talk about it, but experience it for the entirety of your life. So we're healing slowly. One video at a time.”

A former refugee from South Sudan, George moved to Texas with her parents and sister when she was five years old. Her memories of shopping with her mother at big box retailers and wandering into the makeup section, only to find that her options were almost non-existent, remain vivid to this day. “I'm a kid, I want to play with some makeup… so [when] I went to the stores and noticed that there weren't any shades [for me]...I was like, Why am I not included?” she says. “I was just so young, but I knew that it was unfair. Even then, even though I couldn't fully conceptualize it, it was disheartening.”

Because she couldn’t access products that worked for her skin tone, makeup in general felt “out of sight, out of mind” throughout her middle school years. It wasn’t until George entered high school that she noticed her classmates wearing makeup, which prompted her to consult YouTube for tutorials. “I used to love watching Jackie Aina, Nyma Tang, all of the OG YouTube girls,” George says. “I feel like that's where the love of makeup came from. And then when I hit college freshman year, that's when I really was able to dabble with buying things.”

That was 2019. It was still the era when very few brands offered 40-plus foundation shades (Fenty Beauty being the pioneer), so George’s options remained scarce. Brands that tried to formulate for darker skin tones often only had one or two options, and extremely limited undertones. It was nearly impossible to find formulas for blush, contour, and bronzer that wouldn't show up ashy on her deep ebony skin.

“Before the girls go out, you want to get ready together, and my friends would all have a full face beat and I would…have [one] thing,” George says. “I wasn’t finding a lot of makeup videos tailored to dark skin, especially skin as dark as mine or deeper. Most creators I saw didn’t reflect me or my reality. There was a gap in representation, and I kept asking myself, If not me, then who? I wanted to create a space where people like me could see themselves celebrated.”

From her Texas college apartment, with no background and no lighting set up, George held her phone up and recorded her first video: “To all the dark-skinned girls…you are beautiful, you are loved…and with that, you better go get your coin, girl! Within months, her follower count would grow into the millions; fan comments and likes came in by the tens of thousands.

Then Hailey Bieber called.

After testing the buzzy Rhode blushes (the product appeared ashy on her skin), George publicly chastised Bieber, who founded Rhode. Bieber soon reached out to George and took accountability for the formulation misstep. “Hailey calling me, that was probably number one [standout moment],” George says. “It was just like, your voice is being heard and there are people willing to receive it, acknowledge it, willing to change and be better, and just be like, ‘Hey, we did miss the mark, but we're going to do better.’ That's the entire goal of inclusivity."

George has since consulted for Rhode on new launches. Everyone from Rihanna to Patrick Ta have hired her, too.

Suddenly, George didn’t just have followers. She had a new Mercedes Benz and a dream house in Texas, too. “Having a space that’s truly mine is so meaningful,” she says. “It’s not just a house. It’s a symbol of everything I’ve worked for.”

Eventually, she’d like to have a makeup brand of her own. “It’s in the works,” she says. “I feel like [it’s] definitely something that I should do, especially one that caters to people that look like me and people that are darker than me.”

To borrow a beauty cliché, George’s influence is more than skin deep. “It took me a second to realize, but what I do inspires a lot of Black women on a deeper scale,” George says. “That's really where I've seen that shift outside of the virality—the community of Black women that I have built. We're healing together. I feel like I'm healing so much of my inner child. Like, There's nothing wrong with you, girl. There has never been anything wrong with you.”

That level of connection brings George a lot of pride—and pressure. “We have come so far and so quickly, and being that hyper visible, you're constantly making sure that you're trying to say the right thing; do the right thing. “You forget that you're also human,” she says. “You can feel things, you can take a break, and you can continue to just do what you do, but also do it authentically while taking care of yourself, your mind, and everything else in between.”

That means keeping “a lot of my old routines,” George says. Hanging out with her friends, getting her nails done, being carefree and 23.

It also means delegating. Although George still works on the creative side as a team of one, she’s hired management to oversee her business operations. But while George and her brand have evolved, the messaging has never changed: “Those spaces that were not built for you? Infiltrate those spaces. You belong. You deserve to be there, and don’t let anybody ever tell you that you don’t.”