This Columbus native and TikToker is turning her online fame into a new skincare line
A few weeks ago, the Ledger featured a handful of social media influencers who were making their mark in online entrepreneurship. Among that group was Ashley Shelton Mixon of the Mixon Method, who has recently made a huge mark online with her clever mix of beauty expertise and community building.
No madness in this method
Shelton Mixon has almost 500,000 TikTok followers who depend on her advice for all things skin and beauty, and that number continues to grow. She’s carved out a niche for herself using her own “glass skin” as an example of her technique to rehabilitate troubled skin and maintain a healthy glow.
Her many fans and followers have come to depend on The Mixon Method, a multi-step skincare routine that is based on a Korean beauty method, sometimes referred to as K-beauty. In this routine, you “flood” your skin with nourishing ingredients by layering them with products from the thinnest to thickest.
Because her online presence relies on her charm and “big sister energy,” The Mixon Method became more and more popular, gaining traction across online platforms, catching the attention of many famous creators. About her method, Shelton Mixon acknowledges, “My skincare routine has its own personality and can definitely raise some eyebrows,” but “I find that education mixed with entertainment will always move well. I try my best to make everyone feel seen, heard and understood.”
The demand for her method continued to grow, so Shelton Mixon felt compelled to produce her own line, dubbed Afterglow, which she started in her kitchen. She is now in production of the multi-use umbrella product and hopes to have it in consumers’ hands in the near future.
The Mixon Method mission
You don’t often hear about people having a positive experience with social media platforms, but Shelton Mixon immediately picked up on “the kind of intimacy” she felt with the people who watched her videos. She understands that “influencers have an incredible amount of responsibility” and that is why she wanted to take “a totally different approach” in which she fosters an open dialogue with the followers.
The Mixon Method mantra is to “empower everyone to feel confident and beautiful in their own skin. We believe that beauty comes from within and we strive to help everyone embrace their unique selves.”
K-Beauty (Korean Skincare Beauty)
One of Shelton Mixon’s mentors and now close friend, Charlotte Cho is the co-founder of one of the most successful Korean beauty brands, Soko Glam. Once of the main tenets of this “skin-first” beauty philosophy is that “skincare should be enjoyable and it’s an investment in [your] overall beauty which is also a belief that Cho shares with Shelton Mixon.
Shelton Mixon was first an ambassador for the Soko brand and then an affiliate, and in the recent months, she has become a full on collaborator and colleague of the K-beauty mogul. Shelton Mixon believes that she should “always be evolving, and the word ‘expert’ is limiting because it really caps your ability” to outdo yourself.
She has brand partnerships and sponsorships from some of the most successful brands across the globe including La Mer, Skims, Iope and recently visited the Ipsy studios in Los Angeles, where she attended a dinner as a guest of Charlotte Cho. Her method has popped up in the skincare routines of celebrities like Hailey Bieber, Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga, and she promises there is more to come.
Big Sister and the “Mother”
These days, the Mixon Method and the Afterglow line has cultivated Shelton Mixon into an authority in the skin care corner of the internet. However, she is quick to correct critics who think she may be overstepping:
“I am not a dermatologist or an esthetician. I just know my skin and I know what works for me. I try products and between my experience and my intuition, I have success. If I wanted to be a dermatologist I would have gone to medical school.”
Because she has fostered such a community, she is often tagged or stitched in her videos as “big sister” and, as she jokingly relates, “the younger followers sometimes like to refer to me as ‘mother.’”
She’s a hometown girl
Shelton Mixon moved to Columbus when she was very small and attended Columbus High School, graduating in 1998. Not much sooner than she entered tenth grade, she was “discovered” and recruited to be a model. At 15, she began her career and for the next 20 (or so) years, she traveled all around the world appearing on magazines, runways and commercial ads.
She returned home from Los Angeles some years later to fulfill her “life’s purpose” of becoming a mother after living an exciting and eventful lifestyle. She tells a story about making dinner for her idol, Cindy Crawford in her apartment in LA, executing a style she calls “Southern and very much me.” Although her life often seemed too good to believe, she always tried to maintain an energy that recalled who she’s always been. Several times she referred to herself as “just a girl from Georgia.”
She returned home to wind up marrying the boy she had a crush on in high school, Bentley Mixon; buying a house in beautiful Pine Mountain; and having two children, Cash (10) and Monroe (8). She takes her children to baseball and dance recitals, and only works from 9 to 2, so she can live the “family lifestyle” she longed for as the “it” girl in New York and LA in the early 2000s.
Those early days online
Sadly, her mother died in 2022, and as grief tends to do, it changed her whole life. Trying to keep herself distracted from the loss of her mom, she started making TikToks. She made videos of their (giant but lovable) Cane Corso, Romeo, of her fitness routines, of her daily life, but it wasn’t until a video of her skincare routine went viral that she finally found her niche.
After teaching fitness classes at the local YMCA and then transitioning to online videos once COVID forced the Y to close, she discovered her passion for skincare and shortly thereafter discovered how much she enjoyed connecting with others via social media.
She felt unafraid to be herself and connect to the viewers because she admits, “the worst thing had already happened to me: my mom died, so I’m not scared of anything now.”
To the naysayers
Social media influencers and creators are notoriously trolled and get a disproportionate amount of negative feedback. However, Ashley takes a fairly well-adjusted position on it: “what other people think of me is none of my business.”
She reads, and tries to engage with or at least like, every comment on her posts and understands that “people are going to think what they want to think, so you might as well let them.”
To the people who accuse her of having lots of plastic surgery, Botox or fillers she is quick to say “I haven’t had Botox in many years, but I’m not against it. I might get it again later, but it is not a replacement for skincare.”
As a successful entrepreneur she is savvy in the new media and found a way to adjust to the changing retail space. You can find information on the Afterglow product, the Sleeping Beauty Silk Mask, her methods for healthy skin and advice on everything from sunscreen to dandruff to heatless curls on her website, her TikTok page and her Instagram.
Questions or ideas about the Mixon Method? Email me or find me on Instagram.
This story was originally published May 22, 2024 at 4:52 PM.
