A "SELF-MADE" billionaire with massive fame and beauty to boot, Kylie Jenner seems to be living the good life.
But with personal drama, frequent backlash, and a few business flops, it's not always easy being the 26-year-old reality star.
The empire-building baby in the family, Kylie has recently released an alcohol brand, brought her clothing brand KHY to physical retail stores, and launched her first eau de parfum, Cosmic.
According to Forbes, she has a net worth of around $680 million after working in cosmetics, fashion, TV — and now beverages.
Her ability to set global trends has earned her over 400 million followers on Instagram and 12 million on YouTube.
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Fans have taken to X, formerly known as Twitter, gushing about the 26-year-old following the release of her latest ventures.
“Suddenly I'm obsessed with Kylie Jenner” one person tweeted.
“I don’t think anyone understands how much I unironically love Kylie Jenner,” another wrote.
“I have this weird connection to her that I can’t quite explain.”
Despite admiration from fans, Kylie is sometimes considered a divisive figure, having everything from her appearance to the causes she chooses to support coming under scrutiny.
In fact, she was recently forced to delete an Instagram post after losing around 330,000 followers.
This isn’t the only time that Kylie’s social media following has plunged following backlash for her actions.
Here we reveal all…
PAINFUL POUT
Kylie launched her beauty brand in 2015 with a lip kit that included liquid lipstick and matching lip pencil.
The products sold out within minutes as fans were under the illusion they could use them to create the appearance of having fuller lips.
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According to Kylie, having small lips had always been an “insecurity” of hers.
I wish I had just been honest and up-front.
Kylie Jenner
Self-conscious fans began the #KylieJennerChallenge, which involved placing their lips in a shot glass or similar object and sucking to create a vacuum.
Their lips would temporarily swell, but in some cases, the painful results lasted longer than expected.
Dr. Dendy Engelman, a board-certified dermatologic surgeon, described the trend as “quite concerning.”
“Not only can significant pain, swelling, and bruising result from these suction techniques but there is a potential risk for scarring and permanent disfigurement with repeated attempts,” Dr. Engelman told Seventeen.
Kylie began to have injections to achieve a plump pout in 2015 but avoided speaking about it because she didn’t want to be a “bad influence” on her fans.
“I didn't want people to think you had to get your lips done to feel good about yourself,” she told Elle.
“But they thought it was crazier that I was lying about it because it was so obvious. I wish I had just been honest and up-front."
At the time, people were speculating that she had gone under the knife to tweak her entire face.
“People were saying I got my chin reconstructed, that I got a nose job, an eyebrow lift, I got my boobs done, this and that,” she told Elle Canada.
“So I wanted to come out and say that this is crazy and I only got my lips done.”
Fans’ obsession with her changing looks has remained at the forefront of discussions throughout the years with a photo taken at Paris Fashion Week going viral earlier this year.
She was spammed with messages from social media trolls saying that she looked older than her age.
“Those plastic surgeries botched her face,” one said on Instagram.
“She’s so hot for a 55-year-old! Go Girl!!” another chimed in.
It's just years and years of not feeling like my face or looks are accepted.
Kylie
Saleena Zimri, the founder of Skin Doctor Clinics and expert at Teoxane, and Dr Mahsa Saleki, aesthetic doctor and founder of SAS Aesthetics told Fabulous that the reality TV star may have had “too much dermal filler.”
"Kylie Jenner looks to have had under-eye filler, which can be noticed through skin volume,” Saleena said.
“The tear trough is an area with very little fat and so is very thin, becoming more apparent as we age and hyaluronic acid and collagen decline.
“One must be extremely conservative with filler in this area to avoid overfilling or using a non-eye-specific filler to treat this area, which can lead to a puffy, lumpy appearance.”
Kylie has denied having done more to her face other than fillers and is aware of the ongoing speculation.
“It's just years and years of not feeling like my face or looks are accepted,” Kylie told the New York Times.
“There's nothing anyone could ever say now that would hurt me.”
SELENA GOMEZ FEUD
According to the Daily Mail, Kylie lost 1 million followers last year amid her friend Hailey Bieber’s drama with Selena Gomez.
The makeup mogul posted a photo of her eyebrows on Instagram with the text, “This was an accident???”
As the post came around the time that Selena said she’d accidentally over-laminated her brows, social media users assumed Kylie was mocking the singer.
Kylie shut down the claims in the comment section of a viral TikTok post.
“This is reaching,” she said, according to Cosmopolitan.
“No shade towards Selena ever and I didn’t see her eyebrow posts! U guys are making something out of nothing. This is silly.”
“Agreed @kyliejenner it’s all unnecessary. I’m a fan of Kylie!” Selena responded.
BEAUTY BIN
Coty Inc. made a $600 million deal to own a 51% stake in Kylie’s beauty business in 2019, but in the years since the staying power of the brand has been questioned.
“The bottom line for me is I don’t know why you feel the need to pay such a high multiple of sales for a brand that may well be a fad,” Deutsche Bank analyst Faiza Alwy told Forbes.
Online sales of Kylie Cosmetics declined from $68.7 million in 2017 to $36.2 million in 2022, according to Statista.
The href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8464299/Kendall-Kylie-Jenner-celebrate-launch-Kylie-Cosmetics-collab.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Daily Mail.
I would never bypass sanitary protocols and neither would any other celeb or beauty brand owner.
Kylie
The sisters collaborated for a second collection in 2022.
That same year fans noticed what seemed to be unsanitary practices at the Kylie Cosmetics lab in Milan.
The entrepreneur took to Instagram showing snaps of herself not wearing a hair covering, a mask, or gloves as she worked on “creating new magic.”
According to People, she responded to criticism by denying that the photos were taken at a manufacturing facility.
"I would never bypass sanitary protocols and neither would any other celeb or beauty brand owner," she said.
"That's completely unacceptable.”
Money-savvy customers have been surprised to recently see shelves of once-popular Jenner products sold in discount stores.
“I went to Dollar Tree and look what I found y’all,” a TikToker said.
“Freaking Kendall and Kylie. Damn, are things this bad with the brand?”
Kendall has confessed that she doesn’t have the same “passion” for makeup as her sisters.
“I love wearing makeup, playing around with it, and learning from makeup artists on set, but I never really saw myself being in a lab creating products,” she told W magazine.
“I think I’ll leave that to the pros who know what they’re doing and have a passion for it — like my sisters.”
Kendall and Kylie’s clothing brand, which debuted in 2016, has also had issues.
Non-profit organization Remake penned a lengthy post on Instagram blasting the sisters for failing to pay factory workers in Bangladesh in 2020.
Kylie and Kendall responded with a lengthy statement explaining that they weren’t owned by the company responsible.
“We would like to address the unfortunate and incorrect rumor that Global Brands Group owns the Kendall + Kylie brand and that we have neglected to pay factory workers in Bangladesh as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic,” the statement read, according to The Independent.
“This is untrue. The Kendall + Kylie brand is owned by 3072541 Canada Inc., not GBG.
“The brand has worked with CAA-GBG in the past in a sales and business development capacity only, but we do not currently have any relationship at all with GBG."
"We know these are trying times for the fashion industry and garment workers as a whole, and we continue to support all of our partners working in the factories who produce our products,” the statement added.
“We manufacture in countries all over the world and have not received any concerns from the factories who produce our goods."
ASTROWORLD
Kylie and rapper Travis Scott were first linked in 2017 and welcomed a child together in February 2018.
They split in October 2019 but rekindled their romance by the summer of 2021.
According to People, it was less than a year after they welcomed their second child that they split again in 2022.
"There is a reason that they never got married," an insider told the publication.
"It's always been very up and down. And they have never even lived together. They have always had separate homes."
The pair were still together when disaster struck at Travis’ Astroworld festival in Houston on 5 November 2021.
According to the BBC, 10 people were killed by compressive asphyxiation, and thousands were injured as crowds moved towards the stage during his performance.
My thoughts and prayers are with all who lost their lives, were injured or affected in anyway
Kylie
Kylie took to Instagram Stories on 7 November 2021 to pay tribute to the victims, having been blasted by fans for posting clips of the concert with emergency vehicles visible.
"Travis and I are broken and devastated. My thoughts and prayers are with all who lost their lives, were injured or affected in any way by yesterday's events.
"And also for Travis who I know cares deeply for his fans and the Houston community," she wrote.
"I want to make it clear we weren't aware of any fatalities until the news came out after the show and in no world would have continued filming or performing.
"I am sending my deepest condolences to all the families during this difficult time and will be praying for the healing of everyone who has been impacted."
Kylie shocked many when she decided to have an Astroworld-themed joint birthday party for her children in February 2023.
Among the decorations used for the party were inflatable heads with open mouths that looked strikingly similar to the image on Travis’ album cover for Astroworld.
“Kinda in bad taste for Kylie to decorate her kids' birthday party like Astroworld considering what happened,” one person tweeted.
“It’s tone deaf as all hell and severely narcissistic,” another wrote.
“Kylie using Astroworld branding for her children's birthday party is a bit scary to me,” a third said.
COPY CAT
Kylie's fans have accused her of lying about the time she spent making her new fragrance.
The entrepreneur shared a photo of herself on Instagram to tease its release.
"The making of COSMIC — it has been YEARS of love into this fragrance & many many rounds to create the perfect signature scent," she captioned the post.
"Cosmic is truly out of this world and I can’t wait to share it with you all. coming March 7 to kyliecosmetics.com."
One person said she only had a "week's worth of pics" for the work as they joined others in questioning Kylie's claim.
The disbelief came after Kylie was said to have copied singer Kali Uchis's album cover for her perfume campaign.
"Kylie's transitioned from a trendsetter to a trend bandwagoner," a Reddit user said.
