Jaclyn Hill angers fans after posting ‘disrespectful’ Instagram referencing 2019 lipstick debacle: ‘Were you ever really sorry?’

Jaclyn Torrey — professionally known as Jaclyn Hill — is one of the original beauty YouTubers, with over 5.5 million subscribers, 9 million Instagram followers, 746,000 TikTok followers and many, many scandals since her rise to fame in 2011.

One of her most notable scandals took place in 2019 when her brand, Jaclyn Cosmetics, launched a lipstick line that many customers claimed arrived broken, with some products covered in some kind of fuzz. At the time, the company argued the lipsticks were safe to wear but still issued refunds to all who requested them.

Now, years later, Hill posted an Instagram that referenced the saga and that followers are calling “distasteful” and “disrespectful.”

On July 8, Hill uploaded a clip in which she’s applying lipstick with the caption, “POV: You’re still using Jaclyn Hills ‘contaminated’ lipsticks 4 years later.”

“This screams ungrateful, pretentious, & the opposite of humble,” one commenter wrote. “Were you ever really sorry to begin with?”

What happened to Jaclyn Hill’s lipsticks?

After customers came forward alleging that Jaclyn Cosmetics lipsticks were not arriving in perfect condition, Hill initially posted an apologetic YouTube video in response to the complaints.

“I am so, so sorry that any of you are experiencing anything less than absolute perfection from my first launch,” she said. “I will do whatever it takes to make it up for you. I will send you a brand-new lipstick. I will pay for it myself. I will give you a full refund.”

In the video, she said her lipsticks were not “expired, moldy or hazardous.” She claimed that common complaints from customers could be explained too. The “melting issue,” “fuzzies,” “black dots” and “grittiness and texture” that users were claiming they experienced after opening the lipsticks were all from various points in the manufacturing process. The “fuzzies” were allegedly from lab employees’ gloves; she claimed the “black dots” were “oxygen bubbles” from when the lipsticks were being cooled down.

“My lipsticks are not moldy, they are not hazardous, they are not contaminated, they are not unsafe for you in any way, shape or form,” Hill said in her video. “Every single ingredient in my lipstick is new, and is FDA approved.”

There was also a popular theory circulating that Hill manufactured the lipsticks years prior. The rumor started after customers came across a Jaclyn Hill fan account on Instagram that had a photo of a JH-branded lipstick tube uploaded in June 2015.

“This didn’t age well and neither did her lipsticks,” one commenter joked.

Hill addressed the fan page in her YouTube video, saying the lipsticks “did not go into mass production” until May 2019. She shared a screenshot of a document that claims the Jaclyn Cosmetics lipstick in the shade “That Girl” was manufactured in May 2019.

Ultimately, Hill seemed to go back and forth about whether this had been a big project in the making since 2015 or whether her team had moved too quickly.

According to experts, the timeline isn’t always a lengthy one. Rachel Strugatz, the beauty editor-at-large at Business of Fashion, wrote in an article unrelated to Hill that “chemists and formulators, founders of startups and executives at big cosmetics companies will tell you that they typically shepherd new products from ideas to store shelves in under a year.”

The aftermath

For a few months following the lipstick debacle, Hill took a break from social media.

In a video she posted in February 2020, Hill admitted that she had been “self-medicating” with alcohol since the lipstick launch.

“At the end of the day, to cope with my anxiety and my depression, I turned to alcohol and started drinking to fix what I was feeling mentally,” she explained in the video. “Last year, I would say, there was a couple months’ period where I was throwing up probably five days a week.”

But with Hill’s recent Instagram post, followers are back to being upset about the 2019 incident and how she handled it.

“Tell me you didn’t mean a word you said in your ‘apology’ without telling me you didn’t mean a word you said in your ‘apology…'” one top comment says. “This post is extremely distasteful and disrespectful to everyone who received those contaminated tubes. Grow up and take some actual accountability.”

“This video is so tone deaf — yes even 4 years later,” another Instagram user wrote. “People spent their hard earned money on your lipsticks, supporting you and your brand. This screams ungrateful, pretentious, & the opposite of humble. Were you ever really sorry to begin with?”

Other scandals Jaclyn Hill has been involved in

The lipstick launch isn’t Hill’s only scandal — it’s not even her only product-related one.

When Jaclyn Cosmetics launched its bronzer in 2021, fans were unimpressed with the limited shade range and unimpressed with Hill’s response to the backlash.

“When it comes to creating something that really deserves a very big and broad shade range, it is really difficult for me,” Hill said. “I feel like it should be difficult for everybody because when it comes to shades that I can’t wear, like once I get into like the darker shades or the super, super, super fair shades, I kinda just like don’t know so I have to rely on testing. I have to rely on giving it to other people with different skin tones.”

In October 2022, Hill launched a loungewear collection called Koze and, according to the creator behind the brand All Things Koze, had allegedly been asked not to name her line something so similar to what already existed.

Kalyn Nicholson, the founder of All Things Koze, filmed her own YouTube video on the situation and claimed that after talking to Hill about the name, Hill filed to trademark Koze instead of choosing another name.

Since October, the All Things Koze website reads, “All Things Koze has officially logged off. Thank you for the many years of support.”

In April, Hill launched a jewelry line, Jaclyn Roxanne, that was met with controversy yet again. It was advertised as luxe jewelry at affordable prices, but her brand has since been accused of stealing designs from other small jewelry companies.

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