The Evolution of Justin Bieber: From Super Star to Beauty Blogger

What stage are we at with Justin Bieber? Eight years ago he was a smooth-faced pop chipmunk, exquisitely hateable, Yung Donny Osmond singing ballads to teenage girls. Then he became a predictable tearaway, thumping into puberty with all of the elegance of a train derailing, pissing in buckets and vandalising Brazil. And then, like a phoenix from the ashes, he was reborn: Justin Bieber rocked up with the absolute greatest male hairstyle ever worn in all of history (*1) and released like ten bangers in a row. The rest of the world finally cottoned on that teenage girls were right all along, a King was anointed.

And then now what, two years on: he's… I mean, he's the most Christian it is possible to be. It is impossible to be more Christian than Justin Bieber is right now, without being Actual God. And he's… he wears these nerd glasses a lot and like a thousand layers of streetwear. Looking at 2017 Justin Bieber is like looking at a complex optical illusion: is he… cool? Or is he deliberately uncool? What am I looking at here? It's very difficult to tell. It's possible he's the coolest man on the entire planet. It's also possible that he's not. It's possible he is both.

Listen: we're at a complex point with Justin Bieber, so here's a video of him washing his face:

(Caveats: this video of Justin Bieber washing his face is taken from his Instagram Stories, hence the recursive loopiness of the whole thing, plus the filter, plus the kind of crappy quality, plus the fact that it is a literal video of him washing his face: the very nature of the medium lets us peek inanely behind the curtain of fame, for good or for ill. In this case I am saying: for good!)

So I enjoyed this video of Justin Bieber washing his face, and I enjoyed it for a number of reasons. One: I have that exact same special face washing machine (shout out to my unpredictable breakout boys, woo–hah!) and every time I have used it since watching this video (three times) I have repeated the words "SHABLAM! All. Over. The Dome." in my head like a mantra, and it is possible – extremely possible – I will now do this every time I wash my face every day for the rest of my life, this is who I am now, shablam all over the dome, amen.

Two: you have to respect anyone who ever gets to a level of mega-rich where their very dressing gown pulls and drapes in a way that just screams "I AM MADE OF EXQUISITE FINE FABRIC". That dressing gown Justin Bieber is casually wearing is nicer than every suit I have ever worn in my life, combined, and it's being worn by a kid who does not seem to currently have an actual creditable haircut.

Three: the very honest forehead-zoom close-up at the end; it is clear the man's skincare routine does not currently work, we have an oil situation, I have been there my brother.

And four: shablam all over the dome. So combined we have a very captivating video.

WATCH:

I'm going to give Bieber a mid-career review based on this video alone, and I'm going to give him a B+: doing pretty well. Eight years as being the most famous person on the planet – from the most formative hormonal maelstrom years right through to young, young adulthood – I think it probably does something unquantifiable to the human psyche, mangles it in ways it is hard to comprehend.

Put it like this: at this exact stage in her career, Britney Spears experienced a phenomenon known only as "the year 2007". Anyone who goes through the "child star–ultra-famous pop idol–cold descent" fame cycle and is still able to talk and walk deserves some sort of lifetime achievement award, whether they are 23 years old or not. That Justin Bieber is, at this stage in his career, a glassy-eyed mega-Christian washing his face on Instagram is actually pretty good going. He could have given himself diamond teeth and a gold skull. He could very easily have shot someone by now, to death. I think he's doing OK, under the circumstances.

The question is, though: is this cool? I am going to go out on a limb here and say it is. Bieber's normie Instagram presence is akin to performance art at this point: there's this, which is "your mum just signed up to Facebook and keeps posting this sort of shit on your wall" behaviour; his conjunctivitis quadriptych, veering between black and white and colour, could easily form the spine of a short-run exhibit at a gallery somewhere in Hoxton; the way he crops screenshots of other Instagram posts is actively infuriating, somehow.

Bieber has 91.6 million Instagram followers and he posts like that kid from your school who got held back a year after discovering weed midway through his GCSEs; who has the teeth and bone structure to be one of the cool kids but instead chooses to slum it with the Warhammer club. What I am saying is: he is an oily-faced enigma, and he should be treasured as such. That he is the most relatable mega-famous pop prince in the game, somehow; a grown-out haircut in an $8,000 robe.

Unsure where his career really goes from here – it's either "six month social media blackout, high-gloss relaunch, multi-platinum studio album" or "releases three shit songs in a row then, five years later, somehow appears on Dancing with the Stars" – but for now he's doing OK. Shablam, Justin Bieber. All over the dome.

@joelgolby

(*1) I am very serious about this hairstyle claim. You think I am not being serious but I am being deadly serious. Maybe River Phoenix in his prime, and David Beckham has come close a couple of times. Every hairstyle Zayn Malik has ever had has been pretty spectacular. But fundamentally men only have access to about six haircuts and all of them are more or less the same, apart from Justin Bieber's Nirvana shirt American Music Awards haircut, a kind of floppy blonde situation, literally every hair on his head the perfect length, in the perfect direction, the perfect ombre, the perfect haircut. They should have scalped him that night and put the result in a museum. Or taken hundreds of photos of it, whatever.