Over the last month, I've spent several days cleaning out a nasty, bug-infested garage in 95-degree heat and draining and cleaning a frog and algae-infested pool. It has not been glamorous work. I'm not afraid to get dirty and sweaty and deal with nasty little creatures. Heck, even when I'm not doing dirty jobs like that, my hobbies require me to get pretty nasty at times. But if you met me out on the town, you'd never know it. I love makeup and skincare and nail polish and dresses as much as I love raising farm animals and digging in the dirt. I've always considered those things just part of the female experience for many of us gals. (Not all. Some girls don't love that stuff, and that's okay, too. Ultimately, makeup and dresses don't make you a woman.)
That means I shop at stores like Ulta Beauty and Sephora fairly often. Or I used to. I soured on Sephora a bit a few years ago when they seemingly went after a conservative, pro-Donald Trump influencer. In most cases, I think business should trump politics (no pun intended) — green should be more important than red or blue — but something about that situation hit me the wrong way. I didn't boycott Sephora or anything, but I started buying products straight from the manufacturers when I could.
And now I don't think I want to spend much time in Ulta either if this is what's going to greet me when I walk into the store.
ULTA is about to be broke. pic.twitter.com/lD1rmaZrEp
— ❤🎹 Ames 🎹❤ (@Real_Ames) August 3, 2025
Because I'm sick and tired of men throwing on a dress and thinking they're women. Makeup and skincare and nail polish and dresses may be part of the female experience for many, but they're not the entirety of it, and no person who was born a man can ever truly know what it's like to be a woman. I mean, I don't consider myself a man because I do the dirty work around the house that men traditionally do. Heck, if I had a husband who'd do it, I'd probably be more than happy to stay inside and make him some of my famous fried chicken while he cleaned my pool out for me instead.
I just saw someone on X call it "gender appropriation," and that's about the best way I can think to describe it. But that's enough ranting. Let's look at the facts.
In case you're not familiar, this person is Jonathan Van Ness. If you Google his name, one of the first suggestions is "Jonathan Van Ness pronouns." That's pretty much all you need to know. He claims he's non-binary and prefers he/him pronouns, but he also uses she/her and they/them at times. On his Instagram account, he has his pronouns listed as "they/he/she." In a 2019 interview, he said:
The older I get, the more I think that I'm nonbinary -- I'm gender nonconforming. Like, some days I feel like a man, but then other days I feel like a woman. I don't really -- I think my energies are really all over the place. Any opportunity I have to break down stereotypes of the binary, I am down for it, I'm here for it. I think that a lot of times gender is used to separate and divide. It's this social construct that I don't really feel like I fit into the way I used to.
Fun fact: Being a woman is not about your "energies." It starts with your chromosomes and maybe your body parts. Everything that comes after might feel like one thing or another, but at the end of the day, biology is the truth. Or it should be. I've never seen a karyotype test on Van Ness—nor, thank God, have I seen him naked—but I'm fairly certain he doesn't have either of those things.
Anyway, Van Ness is married to another dude named Mark, and he's been openly gay and feminine all of his life, he says. He was a cheerleader in high school and in college, has dealt with drug and sex addictions, and had quite a tumultuous past. Eventually, he turned his life around to become a hair stylist. Today, the world appears to have embraced his mental illness. He's a "media personality," a member of the cast of "Queer Eye," and he's written some books, including a children's book about a nonbinary guinea pig. (Yes, HarperCollins thought the world needed a picture book about that.) He also appears to love attention.
Ultimately, though, I don't care about any of that. What I do care about is that a company I sort of respected and shopped from is now embracing and flaunting all of this. They're telling this guy it's okay for him to insist he's a woman and giving him space that a female business owner might otherwise benefit from. Last month, Ulta signed a contract with this guy and now sells his hair care line. But that alone wasn't enough. It appears that the company has also decided to make him something of a spokesperson. He's been all over social media and, apparently, he's doing in-person events, as well.
shorting this thing called ULTA pic.twitter.com/9bQ27485O4
— bishara 💰 (@bishara) August 4, 2025
Does this make you want to shop at Ulta? pic.twitter.com/CLTehWFxPO
— Dr. Jebra Faushay (@JebraFaushay) August 3, 2025
Ulta could’ve celebrated real women.
— Nancy Mace (@NancyMace) July 24, 2025
Instead, they chose a man in makeup and called it “progress.”
We're tired of seeing women being sidelined in their own spaces.
HOLD THE LINE. https://t.co/sSA86yYhwa
Sorry, Ulta, but this doesn't appeal to me in any way. I can't relate to it. It doesn't make me want to buy these products. I don't want to walk into your store and see a display with a bearded man who has a face full of makeup and calls himself a woman depending on hoe his "energies" flow that day. It's disrespectful to real women everywhere.
I'm sure the same crowd who has gone after American Eagle for its Sydney Sweeney ad over the last week or two will totally embrace it. Maybe that's your target audience now? If that's the case, I guess you've lost a customer.
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