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Who Is Ingrid Nilsen?
Ingrid Nilsen is taking the YouTube makeup community by storm.
She is best known for her YouTube makeup channel, but she is also an actress and director.
In the past, Ingrid dated Hannah Hart, another YouTuber, and Julie Kart, a blogger and Instagram influencer, but her current girlfriend is Erica Anderson. You can follow Erica on Twitter @EricaAmerica.
Ingrid was born on February 2, 1989, and is 5′ 4″ (or 1.63 m).
She was born in California and currently lives in New York, but her father is Norwegian and her mother is Thai.
The Ingrid Nilsen YouTube Channel
Ingrid’s YouTube channel has over 3.7 million subscribers. She usually uploads a new video once a week, with videos usually lasting between 10-25 minutes.
Her videos mostly feature makeup tutorials, but she also reviews makeup trends and specific products.
Some of her videos cover tips for living a better lifestyle.
For example, one recent video is titled Overcoming Procrastination, while another is titled How to Make Friends – As An Adult.
Some of her videos are updates on her personal life, such as the Things Are Changing… and Moving Out – Vlogmas In July #1.
Ingrid came out as a lesbian in 2015, and some of her videos focus on the LGBTQ lifestyle and her dating life. For example, one video is called 3 LGBTQ People Who Inspired Me.
Some videos even include recipes.
Ingrid’s channel features playlists to help fans find videos they are looking for.
Playlists include, but are not limited to:
- Routines, Tutorials, and More
- Makeup and Skincare
- Style
- Hair
- LGBTQ+ Videos
- Travel
- Sense of Self
- Ingrid Dishes
- Holiday Hot Chocolate Recipes
As you can see, fans love Ingrid not just for the helpful makeup tips she shares but also for her perspective on life, dating, and the LGBT community, as well as her life advice and recipes.
According to Ingrid, she is “figuring out life with a teen heart in a 30-year old body.”
Ingrid’s Second YouTube Channel
Not many people know this, but Ingrid has a second YouTube channel.
If you’re a true fan of Ingrid, you should definitely be subscribed to this channel, The Grid Monster, otherwise, you’d be missing out.
The Grid Monster is where Ingrid posts all of her “extra” stuff that she can’t put on her main channel.
It focuses less on actual makeup tips and tutorials and more on Ingrid as a person.
On The Grid Monster, Ingrid posts vlogs, humorous rants, personal perspectives on makeup trends, and other issues, and interviews with other personalities and YouTubers.
The Grid Monster has over 800,000 subscribers.
Although it hasn’t been updated in several years, there’s no telling when Ingrid will suddenly start posting again, so it’s worth subscribing to stay tuned!
The One Step Podcast
True fans of Ingrid will be familiar with her podcast, One Step.
This podcast also does not place a focus on makeup, but rather on personal change and transformation.
The podcast can be listened to on all the popular podcasting channels, including Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Soundcloud.
Listening to these podcasts will give you a level of insight into Ingrid’s personal life and views that you will not be able to get even from The Grid Monster, her second YouTube channel.
For example, in the episode from October 9th, The Sober Life, Ingrid reflects on addiction. She interviews her girlfriend to hear about her story of how she overcame addiction.
The podcast might cause you to look at addiction in a new light and shatter any assumptions you previously had.
In the episode The Money That Changed Everything, Ingrid talks about what it was like to have a parent who grew up during the Great Depression.
She talks about how that influenced her parents’ perspectives on money and how that filtered down to her.
In that episode, she also shares personal financial stories submitted by listeners and fans.
If you want to hear a personal story that Ingrid never shared anywhere else, listen to the podcast titled Sharing The Thing You Want to Hide the Most.
The podcast isn’t updated as often as her YouTube channel is.
Ingrid Nilsen’s Instagram Account
Ingrid Nilsen has an Instagram account with the username @ingridnilsen.
If you want to keep up with Ingrid’s everyday life, this is the best way to do so – it is updated the most often.
Ingrid posts pictures of herself trying out new makeup tricks, at conventions and meetups, and with her lovely dog.
She has over 1,850 posts and 1.3 million followers.
Make sure to watch her disappearing Instagram stories for even more personal stuff, such as her evening routine!
Finally, her podcast, One Step, has its own Instagram account with the username @onesteppodcast and over 6,000 followers.
There, she shares behind-the-scenes sneak peeks into the podcast recording studio, as well as motivational quotes, tips, and memes.
Ingrid Nilsen On Facebook
Ingrid’s Facebook page has almost 700,000 followers.
She posts about new videos on her YouTube channel, upcoming events (such as parties where she is present), and other updates.
Ingrid Nilsen On Twitter
You can also follow Ingrid on Twitter @ingridnilsen.
She mostly posts updates when videos come out, as well as posts about makeup and wellness trends.
Ingrid’s Acting And Directing Career
Ingrid has been involved in several movies and films as an actress or director, according to her IMDB profile.
These films include Alex Strangelove, Asteroids!, and Make Me Over.
Ingrid also became a judge on Project Runway: Threads, the reality TV show.
Awards Ingrid Has Won
Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]
Ingrid has received many awards for her videos and other work.
She was named in 2016 as one of SuperSoul100, Oprah Winfrey, and OWN’s list of Innovators and Visionaries Aligned on a Mission to Move Humanity Forward.
She was included in 2016 on OUT Magazine’s OUT 100 List, which features LGBT celebrities and influencers who “came out.”
In 2016, she was awarded the Trevor Digital Innovator Award by The Trevor Project, due to her using her digital platform to encourage LGBTQ expression and advocate for equality.
In 2014 and 2015, she was nominated for the Choice Web Star: Fashion & Beauty award at the Teen Choice Awards.
In 2014, she won the Best Beauty Program Streamy Award. She was again nominated for this award in 2015.
Ingrid’s Partnerships
Ingrid has become so popular and well-known that she partnered with several large brands who asked her to help them out.
For example, she started working with CoverGirl in 2014. She was the first YouTuber to represent them.
She also partnered with bareMinerals to be the face of its best-selling foundations.
Ingrid’s Interview With Barack Obama
Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson
It’s not every day that a YouTube personality gets to interview the President of the United States, but Ingrid Nilsen has done exactly that.
In a 2016 YouTube interview that was posted on The White House’s YouTube account and live-streamed from the White House, the interview featured questions from three YouTube personalities.
The President talked about everything from Trump, dog pants, and tampons.
Ingrid was the one who brought up tampons – and for good reason.
In 40 states, taxes are imposed on feminine hygiene products such as tampons, and Ingrid wanted to know why; after all, these aren’t luxury items but necessities.
Obama answered that he suspected it was because men were making the laws when those taxes were passed, and he said that he believes women should start advocating for removing those taxes.
Ingrid also asked the president to show off an item of personal significance.
Obama pulled out several items that he said reminded him of people he met along the way.
These included rosary beads from Pope Francis, a Buddha statue that was given to him by a monk, a poker chip that used to belong to an Iowan biker, a Coptic cross from Ethiopia, and a Hindu figurine.
Obama made it clear that while he is not superstitious and did not carry around these items for luck, they did remind him of the long path he has taken during his presidency and the people he has been trying to help.
Ingrid Nilsen: The UN Ambassador
Did you know that Ingrid was named as one of the United Nations’ Change Ambassadors? One of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals in 2016 was global equality, and Ingrid, together with six other female YouTubers, was assigned as an ambassador to join the fight for this equality.
This was the first partnership between the UN and YouTube (or YouTubers).
The goal was for these seven ambassadors to create content that raised awareness about gender discrimination to help fight it.
The Power To The Period Campaign
Power to the Period was the first nationwide campaign to help homeless women deal with their periods.
Nilsen launched this campaign together with Do Something, a global non-profit, and U By Kotex, a brand that sells feminine hygiene products.
Ingrid asked her fans to donate tampons, pads, panty liners, and other feminine hygiene products to their local homeless shelters.
Many homeless women can not afford period products, and the campaign succeeded in having almost 240,000 products donated in just two to three months.
To encourage people to donate, participants were entered to win a $5,000 scholarship, with a new entry for every 10 products they donated.
Ingrid Nilsen’s Coming Out
Ingrid Nilsen came out as a lesbian in 2015 in an emotional, 19-minute video.
This video has almost 18 million views (it got around 900,000 views in just a few hours) and is one of her most-watched videos.
The video is titled “Something I Want You To Know (Coming Out).”
Ingrid starts by saying, “Ok… I’m doing this!”. She continues, “There’s something I want you to know… and that something is… I’m gay! It feels so good to say that!”, as tears start to well up in her eyes.
Ingrid explained that it was as if there was a wall or barrier between her, and her friends, and the world.
This barrier did not let anyone see her true self.
She continued that she didn’t want to lock this part of herself in a closet anymore and that it was time for an honest start.
As she ended the video, she said that she was proud of who she is and that she was not going to apologize for that.
Many of her LGBTQ+ fans felt that Ingrid’s coming out allowed them to find the courage to do so themselves. Many commenters on her YouTube video “came out” in the comments, while others said that this video gave them strength through difficult times.
Ingrid later granted Women’s Health Magazine an interview about her coming out story. She gave some insight into how her coming out was related to her cutting her hair.
Ingrid used to have very long hair, which she explained she used as a security blanket and to give herself an identity.
Once she came out, however, she wanted to do away with this “security blanket,” so to speak, so she cut her hair into a crop cut.
In the interview, Ingrid also mentioned how she has seen firsthand how her video impacted others. “Just this weekend,” she said, “I had a girl come up to me and say that she felt she had never seen herself reflected in someone who was more of a public figure.”
If you want to know everything about Ingrid’s relationship with her girlfriend, watch Ingrid’s YouTube video Meet My Girlfriend!, which was posted in January of 2019. Ingrid also often posts other videos with her girlfriend Erica, such as a recent one called My Girlfriend Does an Unboxing.
Erica was also one of the organizers of the famous Google Walkout – you can read about it in her article on The Cut.
Ingrid continues to be an inspiration for her followers and fans and continues to influence makeup trends and motivate people through her YouTube platform.