Edward Avila is a Filipino-American beauty YouTuber, musical artist and social media star who is known for his self-titled channel on which he primarily shares beauty, makeup and fashion content. He also occasionally posts vlogs, reactions, and reviews, and has documented him getting a nose job through several videos. He has collaborated with other social media and K-pop stars on several songs.
Early Life
Edward Avila studied art, filmmaking, and video-game design in college, but never graduated.
Career
Edward Avila joined the YouTube platform with the username mrpanda101 on April 7, 2006. He initially wanted to post random funny videos that he wanted to share with his family and friends, but eventually started to watch beauty and style videos and became interested in making similar content himself. He later deleted his early contents and his earliest video currently is Valentine's Day Look for Guys (Makeup, Hair, and Outfit Ideas), inspired by that year’s Spring Korean Fashion, which was posted on February 12, 2013.
While he started out making hair tutorials, he soon moved towards skincare, makeup, and review videos about related content. Despite him not having any professional training in the field of makeup, he has been able to amass a large number of followers on his channel and accumulated hundreds of thousands of views on each of his videos. He also started using Korean beauty products after he moved to the country and has endorsed many products through his social media. He was one of the beauty-related content creators affiliated with the YouTube program Beauty Beasts.
Apart from showcasing looks inspired by popular K-pop idols, he has also tried his hand at music by collaborating with Trophy Cat on the English-Korean song Body on August 21, 2017. They again collaborated on April 14, 2018 to release Beauty and released their album XO, consisting of the title song and Lonely Night, on March 29, 2019. Along with three other online famous Korean stars, he released a remix of KAACHI’s Your Turn in June 2020.
Controversy
Edward Avila has been involved in a few controversies over the years, including being accused of fat-shamming Kyla Massie, a former member of the girl group PRISTIN, when she was 15. He subsequently made a lengthy video trying to justify his action as “caring for her well being”. Despite being half-Filipino, he has also drawn the ire of Filipino people after he criticized their skin complexion. At other times, he has been accused of bullying, harassing, and criticizing anyone not fitting his ideal beauty standard.
Family Life
Edward Avila is half-American and half-Filipino who was born in Guam but was mostly raised in South Korea. While nothing is known about his parents, he once mentioned that as a child he didn’t have a fashion sense as he was dressed up by his mother and grandmother. He has a younger sister whom he has featured in several videos. He has admitted to dating a boy once and shared his coming out story in one video.
