Dear Celebrities: Please Stop Churning Out Beauty Brands

Anya Dua, the 17-year-old founder of Gen Z Identity Lab, an online platform for Gen Zers to express their views on politics, mental health, climate change and culture, remembers the first (and last) time she bought makeup from a celebrity beauty brand.

She was 12 and used her mom’s credit card to order a $29 Kylie Lip Kit in Candy K, a matte pink liquid lipstick and matching lip liner. Kylie Jenner’s debut makeup product famously sold out in seconds when it went on sale in 2015 (the website crashed, too), catapulting the youngest Kardashian Jenner sibling to beauty mogul status at age 18.

“It was a huge thing,” Ms. Dua said. “You needed to have one.” Lip Kits became so popular that they hit the New York City bar and bat mitzvah circuit. M.C.s would toss the liquid lip colors and liners into a sea of dancing tweens in bandage dresses.

Fast-forward five years.

The global beauty market, which last year generated nearly $500 billion in sales, according to Euromonitor, a research firm, is teeming with celebrities, inundating social media feeds with lip gloss, face lotion and, most recently, vibrators (not technically beauty but beauty adjacent), with the promise of plump lips, glowing skin and a better sex life.

New lines are coming out at a dizzying rate. There’s Harry Styles’s Pleasing, nail polish in tiny glass jars that look like old-fashioned perfume bottles; and Machine Gun Kelly’s UN/DN LAQR, nail polish with “paint splatter” shades and brushes for nail art.

Ariana Grande has a new makeup line, space-themed, as does Chiara Ferragni, pink and sparkly. Billie Eilish and Addison Rae have released their first fragrances. There’s Lori Harvey’s (daughter of Steve Harvey) SKN by LH skin care collection; and Demi Lovato’s Demi Wand, an eight-speed vibrator (created with Bellesa, an internet pornography site marketed to women).