Bratzchallenge

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The Bratzchallenge is a hashtag makeup challenge where people paint their faces to look like the plastic Bratz dolls, then post the result next to a photo of the specific doll they copied. It first hit Twitter in September 2017 and went properly viral across Reddit and Instagram in January 2019 after major beauty press picked it up.

Overview

The Bratzchallenge is a hashtag campaign where people apply heavy, cartoonish makeup to look like the plastic Bratz dolls that peaked in the early 2000s1. Participants recreate the dolls' signature features, oversized glossy lips, dramatic winged liner, and big shadowed eyes, then pair the finished face with a side-by-side photo of the exact doll they picked as their reference2.

Bratz dolls launched in 2001 as a sassier alternative to Barbie, and the challenge trades on that early-2000s nostalgia while pushing modern makeup techniques to their extremes2. The finished looks tend to distort human proportions rather than flatter them, which is part of the appeal, users lean into the plastic doll effect on purpose1.

How It Spread

Days after KaaylaDee's tutorial, beauty YouTuber dope2111 posted a video titled "BRATZ DOLL Makeup Transformation!!!" and it racked up over 14 million views, giving the format its first mainstream beauty-scene audience4. The tag then went quiet for more than a year before catching fire again in January 2019.

On January 13, 2019, Twitter user @aryarose6 restarted the trend with a fresh entry3. Less than two weeks later, on January 26, Redditor taybrittney posted a Sasha recreation to r/MakeupAddiction that earned more than 8,000 upvotes and 95 comments3. Three days after that, Instagram user @lenkalul dropped a version that pulled over 54,000 likes in about 48 hours3.

Beauty press moved on the trend fast. PopSugar ran a roundup of the strongest entries and framed the wave as revived affection for the doll's Y2K style1. Cosmopolitan UK covered the Bratzchallenge the same week and noted that YouTuber NikkieTutorials had joined in on Instagram, which pushed the tag deeper into the beauty influencer circuit2.

How to Use This Meme

To try the Bratzchallenge, people typically pick one specific Bratz doll (Sasha, Yasmin, Cloe, Jade) and use it as a direct reference. The common convention is heavy contour to slim the face, oversized shimmery eyeshadow blocks, thick winged eyeliner, and high-shine lip gloss on overdrawn lips2. The finished shot is usually posted as a side-by-side with the doll under the #BratzChallenge tag1.

Frequently Asked Questions