“We’ve got this kind of cool, edgy ‘90s girl moment going with bleached brows, cool tones and muted brown colors, structured lip look. And then we’ve got Douyin makeup, which is the literal opposite end of that spectrum. It’s just serving a purpose in the beauty world right now and answering that call that people are looking for,” makeup artist Taylour Chanel told Teen Vogue in 2023.
Alongside the enduring styles of Western cosmetics, East Asian makeup is having a moment. South Korea has emerged as the world’s second-largest exporter of cosmetics. This year, China’s cosmetic exports rose 12%, with the US, UK, Indonesia, and the Netherlands as its top importers. Put in perspective: last holiday season, Britain’s largest cosmetics retailer, Boots, sold a Korean skincare product roughly every 15 seconds.
This is to say nothing of the makeup trends themselves, which have claimed and – more importantly – maintained virality. Douyin makeup, named for the Chinese social media app from which it originated, is characterized by a powdery finish and eye-emphasis – usually featuring glitter and manhau, or bold, clustered eyelashes. From Japan, Igari makeup mimics a flushed, hungover look: the balancing act to its venerable suncare market. K-beauty has exploded into both a nomen for sweeping product lines and a series of varying makeup looks, connected most linearly by a natural, dewy base and aegyo sal, emphasizing the “cute fat” under eyes.
For the US, Western Europe, and other regions that may identify as “Western” like Australia and Scandinavia, such widespread popularity is a new phenomenon. Together, these makeup trends reflect a deepening global acceptance of East Asia’s cultural exports – and of East Asia itself. Western audiences have consumed East Asian media for decades. Now, beyond merely consuming, they increasingly seek to emulate.
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The recent shift in beauty trends is remarkable in a number of ways. There has been a move away from passive appreciation towards active imitation. The cherry-picking of selective appropriation has given way to a genuine respect for the cultural distinctiveness of East Asian styles, techniques, and products. Through it all, the cultural cachet of Asia has risen across the global fashion world. But cultural changes of this sort aren’t “just” about fashion. Another way of describing this popularity is soft power.
Defined by its first theorist, Joseph Nye, soft power describes countries’ influence over other countries without coercion. In other words, soft power is an expression of others’ willingness to be influenced – military or economic power aside.
This concept challenges the unidirectionality of older theories of cultural imperialism, allowing for a more nuanced view of beauty’s globalization. During the last century, when the West – and especially the United States – produced the vast majority of mass media, its cultural forms shaped social behavior around the world. As the cultural pressures of global media eroded previously independent self images, beauty standards have emerged as an ideologically recognized form of cultural sovereignty. Interference in the latter is what shifts conversations on beauty into a conversation of autonomy for countries themselves.
Of course, the conversation has historically focused on Western media’s global effect – in many cases, for good reason. In general, that has been the reigning power dynamic in place. Cultural consumption does hold a legacy of appropriation and even theft. For East Asia, this includes the historical expropriation of silk, and even more recent debates over the fox-eye trend, a style of eye-makeup some commentators claimed imitated Asian features that had been historically mocked.
Parallel to this truth, however, is a rapidly solidifying new one – or perhaps more accurately, an increasingly recognized one. Western media is no longer the only media with the ability to influence others on a global scale. The newfound emulation of East Asian beauty trends represents a transition away from the use of East Asian media by the West, and towards the influence East Asia has on the West. As Nye might argue, true soft power thrives in this unblanketed willingness.
The question, then, is why, and why now? This is hardly the first time media from East Asia has gained international attention. The rise in consumption of East Asian media is best charted through a series of unofficial beginnings. PSY’s 2012 “Gangnam Style” was the first video to break one billion views on YouTube, a milestone that acts like BTS and Blackpink would go on to follow. Anime viewership has tripled over the past five years on Netflix. Pokémon has transcended trading cards to on-screen adaptations and the explosively popular Pokémon Go. In 2025, it became the highest grossing media franchise of all time.
For South Korea, such popularity has been distilled into one word: Hallyu. Also known as the Korean Wave — and recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary – Hallyu describes content like music and television that surpassed domestic interest to attract international attention in the late ’90s. “People used to think of Hallyu as entertainment,” Cha Woo-jin, a Seoul-based music critic, told the New York Times in an article last June. “But now, it’s a lifestyle.”
The most immediate explanation for East Asian cultural products’ sudden explosion in popularity is, of course, social media. Experts with Vogue, the Guardian, and independent researchers have cited social media as the driving force behind K-beauty’s popularity. And some of East Asia’s marketability can be explained by the transition from nascent-stage Internet resources to the more accessible technologies in use today.
While the dominant media of the past like radio and print magazines were overseen by centralized distributors, social media is more democratized. “The ‘90s was still the world of monoculture… There were only four networks and PBS,” says Chuck Klosterman, author of New York Times Bestseller The Nineties.
In contrast, social media allows for more exposure, content, and diversity – largely because its technical capacity is higher. Content is posted globally. Occupation, level of education, and socioeconomic status have less bearing on who gets to create content. And perhaps most importantly: viewers see creators’ faces. At its core, social media offers a fundamentally personal (or at least parasocial) experience. It is this focus on people, on life, that facilitates a market for not just entertainment, but lifestyles.
For Western countries where diversity is of greater concern and focus, such capabilities have translated to an increased appetite for diversity, and a higher chance of meeting it. The West’s embrace of East Asian culture, of which makeup styles represent just one part, requires looking at a cultural landscape more open to diversity in general. A 2024 study found that over 40% of consumers enjoyed following content creators to learn about different cultures, and found social media to be a more diverse outlet than traditional TV shows or movies. Among Gen Z, the proportion shot up to 60%.
Social media has engendered pushes for inclusivity in numerous fields, and in the beauty industry its effect has been particularly marked. “Cue globalization, which has led to an increased awareness and demand for broader representation in the beauty industry,” writes Danielle James for Vogue. “As demand for inclusivity grows, US-based K-beauty and Korea-based brands are responding differently.” The piece was titled How Inclusivity is Driving K-Beauty’s Second Wave.
The question then becomes, why is inclusivity not driving others? If social media – and with it, an increasingly tolerant market – were the sole or even central cause of K-beauty and other East Asian cosmetics’ success, why has such success been so disproportionate? In spite of relatively equal access, no region has managed to capture comparable international attention. Certainly no other country has emerged from the level of cultural marginality that China has to see virality in an otherwise unsympathetic Western market.
Consider Southeast Asia. A 2025 report found that Southeast Asia is TikTok’s largest advertising audience, demonstrating online presence. Its cosmetic industry is growing, particularly in Vietnam and Indonesia, confirming supply. Calls for more representation in Western beauty campaigns remain steadfast, signaling similar openness to inclusion. Yet East Asia consistently outperforms, because social media and diversity initiatives remain a conduit for existing momentum, not the cause itself.
Some of this can also be attributed to East Asian beauty standards’ compatibility with existing Western ones. While campaigns for diversity do reflect authentic consumer desires (and have seen commercial success) characteristics of East Asian beauty standards gel particularly well. Namely: thin and pale. Still, by this logic, Western products and makeup styles would represent an ultimate control for alignment to Western beauty standards – and K-beauty has surpassed even this in some ways, overtaking the US in cosmetic exports.
The main cause of East Asian makeup’s soaring popularity is, fittingly, intention. It is the cultural exports behind the cosmetic industry and trends that serve as scaffolding to boost the appeal of a country’s visual looks. (Karina from Aespa wore blush on her nose; fans want to try nose blush now.) And while such success draws on the work of industry experts and employees, much of this scaffolding has been engineered by the governments themselves.
Japan’s 2013 “Cool Japan” initiative (yes, that is its actual name) funded anime, manga, and other cultural cornerstones like cuisine. While the project’s actual success rate was varied, it certainly helped generate cultural momentum. Even now, Japan has plans to reboot its original Cool Japan campaign. By 2033, the government hopes to quadruple its overseas content, focusing on anime, manga, and video games.
The South Korean government has also recognized the power in cultural exports, investing millions of dollars into K-pop and K-dramas through its Ministry of Culture. In fact, newly elected President Lee recently appeared on the show K-Pop: The Next Chapter, stating, “The Republic of Korea has entered the path to becoming a global cultural power.”
Their efforts are gaining ground in the literal sense. Olive Young, the infamous South Korean health and beauty store, will open its first U.S. location in Los Angeles in 2026. The cult-favorite brand Beauty of Joseon is currently in discussion with Sephora to expand merchandise in-stories globally. J-beauty giant, KOSÉ, opened its first standalone store in the U.S. in 2024 and has since gone on to partner with Los Angeles Dodgers players. Nowadays, anyone might be walking and – struck by a spontaneous burst of inspiration – purchase a snail-based serum, no algorithm needed.
For both Korea and Japan, the stakes are predominantly economic. Cultural or soft power represents a path to economic growth. While strides in diplomacy are an equally recognized cause and goal of cultural funding, so far both Korea and Japan have largely used their resulting bargaining power to advocate for stronger economic ties.
This explains why a country like China, with a large enough domestic market to sustain cultural endeavors internally, has not seen beauty trends and products blow up in the West like Korea and Japan have. Neither government nor companies see a need to match Korea and Japan’s outreach efforts. And this framework is helpful when considering a market like Taiwan, which still lacks government-sponsored initiatives that might promote “T-beauty.” While China may not target Western audiences as Japan and Korea do, its development of technology giants like TikTok and Douyin alongside sheer population size allow for global virality to an extent that Taiwan’s government has not yet shown interest in striving for, in the beauty space or otherwise.
The fact that governmental intervention is largely responsible for the proportionate popularity of the beauty industry reaffirms that its trends, products, and companies are channels of soft power. Governments may still prioritize nurturing cultural exports like music and television, yet it is precisely these investments that have created an environment beauty trends can thrive in – both technologically and through a continuous stream of inspiration in pop culture.
Thus, beauty trends represent a sort of second-generation cultural export. Governments do not have to fund such initiatives directly. The trends reveal traditional cultural exports achieving such a high level of esteem amongst Western audiences that they take on a life of their own, organically accepted into Western visuals, ideals, and self-identity. In this way, the perpetuation of soft power becomes self-sustaining. Makeup serves as an example of how cultural movements – and the positive associations with that culture – can go on to be created by Western audiences themselves.
Of course, these trends will fade. It is in their nature, and a hallmark of the beauty industry in general. The favorability of East Asia, however, appears to be much more durable, if nothing else because countries like Japan and Korea have publicly made it their mission to maintain that favorability. Market fickleness aside, the region has already seen dominant success. Future trends are likely to continue; for as long as Western audiences are willing to be held captive, a new trend will replace what is cycled out. Soft power provides means for a country to get others to “want what it wants.” And who doesn’t want to be beautiful? ~
