"Be yourself" is a phrase I've heard so many times that I sometimes wonder exactly what it's supposed to mean. Now that life can easily be filtered in an Instagram photo or shrunk down into a 140-character Tweet, the meaning behind that message isn't always entirely clear. For the new faces of Bvlgari's latest fragrance campaign — Margaret Zhang, Amanda Steele, and Madison Beer — being themselves can be challenging, especially as three influencers who exist in front of a combined audience of 12 million followers.
Margaret started her a blog when she was 16, and has since gone on to become a renowned, multi-hyphenate creative. Amanda launched her "Makeup by Mandy" YouTube Channel when she was 10, which earned her over a million followers before she'd even started high school. And Madison was discovered at 13, when Justin Bieber found a video of her singing a jazz solo and Tweeted it out to his fans. While the three approach their respective fields in different ways, they recently came together together when they landed their latest gig as the faces of Bvlgari's new fragrance, Omnia Pink Sapphire. I caught up with the trio to talk about the challenges they've faced in reflecting on their identities in front of a massive audience, how they deal with their doubts, and how they push past them.
Teen Vogue: All three of you started your careers early on. Did you ever experience self-doubt?
Amanda Steele:“I didn't doubt myself at first, which is a great thing, but then I started to. I was getting a lot of hate because I was so young — Everyone was like, 'What are you doing?' I definitely got discouraged for a little bit, but it was what I liked to do."
Madison Beer: "I like feeling vulnerable and putting it all out there [in my songs], and I think that's important to really get a true version of me. It's scary being in a room with producers and saying, 'Here's my idea,' when I'm scared to get shot down. But, it's all about going for it."
Margaret Zhang: "I feel like because I started so young I kind of left myself open for a lot of opportunities. I think being young is helping because you don't really have fear and you're not afraid of judgment; you take a lot more risks than you would [otherwise]. I encourage people to just start just doing stuff."
TV: How do you push past doubt, especially when so much of your career takes place in front of an audience? What advice would you give to those who might not be sure of themselves?
AS:"I think that it takes a lot of courage to be super confident in yourself and express yourself as you. Over time you learn that if you take a chance, put yourself out there, and be 100% you, people will respond to it — and you'll feel so much happier.”
MB: “Never be afraid of who you are. You should realize that there is only one version of yourself in the world, and that your flaws make you beautiful. It's easy to say, but to really live by that — to come to terms with who you are and accept your flaws and accept your imperfections and put that out into the world — is something that takes a lot of time and effort."
MZ: “Self-educate on something hands-on that you've never thought about learning before — like Chinese calligraphy or touch football or a ceramics class. I think it's really important to challenge yourself because it kind of opens up so much opportunity in your mind.”
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TV: Did working on this campaign bring up any first scent memories for you? Do you have any weird scent associations?
AS: "Going to the mall with my friends, being in the department store, and just smelling everything and spritzing it all over myself. Probably annoying everyone that works there.”
MB: "My weirdest scent association is probably Axe Body Spray, because every boy I know wears that stuff and the smell is SO specific! And the loud noise when you spray it! My little brother used to wear it and the whole house would reek of it for days.”
MZ: "I feel like I'm quite a sensory person, so I think scent is quite a fascinating one for me. I first smelled [the Bvlgari fragrance] when we were shooting the campaign in the south of France and it was very atmospheric. I was driving this crazy pink Barbie kind of vehicle that I had learned to drive, stick shift, literally two hours before on the highway. So I feel like I associate the fragrance with that — it's summer, in Europe, with the girls hanging out."
TV: How would you describe your relationship with beauty and how do you approach your routines?
AS: "Beauty is an outlet for me to feed my creative self and express myself, and it's been that for a long time because I've been making makeup tutorials and doing makeup since I was 10 years old. I think it's really interesting to see how I've changed, — and how I do my makeup — over time."
MB: "I have a kind of weird relationship with beauty — makeup and haircare and fragrance — but I feel like it's kind of a way of expressing yourself, and that's what I'm going to use those things for. I think it's important for people to be themselves and express themselves through their makeup or their hair or their perfume or whatever it may be. I try to not take it too seriously."
MZ: "I grew up training to be a ballet dancer, so I had a lot of stage makeup on my face, and when I stopped doing my performance stuff I said, 'Never again will I ever wear makeup.' My approach to beauty is a lot more informed by nature and looking after my skin. Because the sun is quite intense in Australia, staying sun safe is very important to me. Hydration is very important to me. I spend my life on a plane, so I'm always the scary person wearing white sheet masks on the plane while watching films."
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TV: You've spoken on some of the issues that surround social media. How do you deal with balancing identity and reality on Instagram? Is it ever difficult to stay true to that?
AS: "It's okay to edit your photos, but take the time to show your viewers what's real and what's not. It's really easy for people to just be like, 'Why does my body not look like that?' But nobody's really does. It maybe does for the one photo that they got a good angle. I want other people on social media to just be honest and show [what's] behind the scenes.”
MB:"The battle with social media is that influencers are portrayed as ‘perfect' because their photos are perfect, but you don't know how many photos were taken or how many hours of editing they went through. I try to always show that that's not reality, and that's such a small fraction of who someone really is. I've definitely gained a lot of confidence in the past few years but, I'm still human and I doubt myself and I have my moments. I compare myself to people a lot, and that's something I've struggled with. The other day I was putting my hair up and I was like, 'Oh my god, my ears are so big!' And my friend was like, 'Do you even hear yourself?’"
TV: Last question: What advice do you have for other young people trying to break into any creative industry?
AS: “Just believe in yourself. I look back on all the times in my videos when I would let the haters be right and change myself to make other people happy, and think, 'Wow, I should have just kept with what I thought was right from the beginning.'”
MB: "I definitely didn't think that I was going to get discovered or anything was going to come from putting a video online. You can't ever get in your head and say, 'Well I'm just a random kid, there's no way that I'm going to be famous.’ I say just go for it, and you never know what's going to come out of it; better to try than to never know what could have been.”
MZ: "I always encourage young people to just kind of get rid of labels because you stand for something much bigger than that. Society generally puts things into boxes. You do whatever it takes to prove yourself, and you use every hour of the day to your best capacity."
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