How Stixx Mathews Is Making Room for More

The beauty writer, strategist and multi-media creator is turning Boy Beat into a cultural platform for more expansive conversations about beauty, identity and the freedom to become who we already are.

Beauty has always been more than products. It is a language we use to communicate who we are, how we want to be seen and where we feel we belong. It can offer freedom, but it can also reveal the rules, expectations and systems that decide who gets to access that freedom in the first place.

These are the tensions that have shaped the work of Stixx Mathews, a beauty writer, strategist and multi-media creator whose career has moved fluidly between brands and editorial. After working at L’Oréal and Glossier, Stixx built a byline spanning Hypebae, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Into The Gloss, Fashionista, Ebony, Essence and more. Now, Stixx is bringing those experiences together through Boy Beat, a new culture-forward platform rooted in beauty without being confined by it.

Part podcast, part cultural salon and part living archive, Boy Beat creates room for conversations about identity, culture, masculinity, femininity, queerness, relationships, power and memory. Beauty may open the door, but what happens once we step through it is far more expansive.

“Beauty may be the root, but the platform is ultimately about the full lives growing from it,” Stixx tells The Beauty Brief.

A Name Waiting for Its Moment

The name Boy Beat first came from someone Stixx dated years ago, during an earlier chapter that included a lipstick and lip gloss line. At the time, Stixx had yet to fully understand branding, media or the shape their own creative world could take, but the name stayed.

“I always felt there was something bigger inside it,” Stixx says.

Around four years ago, that instinct began to take form. Stixx knew it was time to create something capable of lasting beyond a single byline or moment on social media, something with enough room to evolve alongside them. Boy Beat became the container for that vision.

Even the name resists one fixed interpretation. “Boy” points toward gender and the expectations attached to how people should look, behave and express themselves. “Beat” references the language of beauty, but also rhythm, pulse and the subject a person continually returns to.

“Boy Beat isn’t about defining what a boy should be,” Stixx explains. “It’s about expanding what freedom can look like.”

Beauty Is the Entry Point

Mainstream conversations about men and beauty have expanded, but inclusion does not automatically create nuance. Too often, Stixx observed, the category still relied on a narrow construction of masculinity. Men may have been welcomed into beauty, but the conversation frequently assumed there was one acceptable way for them to participate.

That framing left little space for the ways race, sexuality, gender expression, class, geography and identity shape a person’s relationship with grooming and appearance. It also kept much of the conversation centered on consumption: what to buy, how to use it and which look to achieve.

Boy Beat begins where those conversations tend to end.

A discussion about skin, hair, fragrance, makeup or personal style can become a route into belonging, desire, respectability, protection and power. A routine can reveal what someone has inherited, what they have been taught to conceal and what they are finally giving themselves permission to explore.

For Stixx, separating the personal from the political would mean missing much of what beauty can tell us. Culture encourages us to discuss beauty through products, trends and appearance without always asking who defines its standards, who is rewarded for embodying them and who is excluded for expressing themselves differently.

“If Boy Beat can help people understand their own experiences more clearly and recognize the forces shaping how they see themselves and others, then it can move beauty beyond the surface and turn it into a tool for greater freedom,” Stixx says.

Beginning With Permission

Stixx’s own relationship with beauty began not with a restriction, but with permission. As a child, they were free to gravitate toward the colors, interests and forms of presentation that felt natural, without being told those choices belonged to a particular gender.

Books widened that world further. Reading offered access to new people, places and perspectives, while early life experiences showed Stixx that beauty could live in culture, ritual, imagination and daily life as much as physical appearance.

That foundation continues to shape both their work and Boy Beat’s point of view. Stixx is less interested in arriving at one definition of beauty than exploring what beauty reveals: what we value, what we protect, what we inherit and who we feel free to become.

The show also challenges the belief that masculinity requires distance from softness, experimentation or visible effort. Caring for one’s skin, wearing fragrance, using makeup or playing with personal style does not diminish masculinity. These are tools, and the meaning of each should belong to the person using it.

“Beauty should not be used to reinforce another set of rigid rules,” Stixx says. “It should give us more language, more choice and more room to become who we already are.”

Come Sit in the Room

Boy Beat’s ambitions may be big, but its tone is intentionally intimate. Stixx wanted enough structure to guide each episode without making the show feel overly scripted or produced. The aim was a real conversation, one listeners could imagine themselves joining.

A friend once told Stixx that they rarely listened to podcasts because the conversations did not sound like discussions they would ever be part of. The observation stayed with them. Boy Beat was designed to close that distance.

Listeners are invited to laugh, think, respond out loud and perhaps reconsider something they have long accepted. The show can be welcoming and familiar while still making space for disagreement, complexity and ideas that ask more of its audience.

That same standard guides the guest list. Stixx is drawn to people with a clear point of view and the ability to add nuance, regardless of whether they are the most recognizable name in the room. In a culture where conversation can quickly become promotion, Boy Beat looks for guests willing to sit with difficult ideas, challenge inherited norms and remain open to having their own thinking challenged in return.

The four-episode pilot grew from conversations Stixx had already been having for years with trusted friends and industry peers. Recording them did not create one singular lightbulb moment. Instead, it confirmed that thoughtful exchanges like these deserved to leave the group chat and enter a larger cultural space.

“Too many thoughtful ideas stay between friends, in group chats or behind closed doors,” Stixx says. “Now, I’m giving them room to breathe and allowing other people to sit with them too.”

Everything Is Connected

When asked how Boy Beat fits within their wider body of work, Stixx offers a fittingly playful answer: “It’s a little like Hannah Montana; everything is connected, just expressed in different ways.”

As a writer, creator, strategist and storyteller, Stixx has built a career around translating beauty and culture across formats. Their editorial work, brand experience and cultural observations all feed Boy Beat, which sits under the larger Stixx in the City umbrella. The show is not a departure from what came before. It is a place for all of those threads to meet.

That is also why success cannot be measured by downloads alone. Stixx chose a four-episode pilot to test the concept, learn what resonated and understand how the existing community would respond. The enthusiasm surrounding the first teasers quickly affirmed an appetite for what they were building.

But the deeper measure will be what remains with listeners after an episode ends: a question they cannot stop turning over, an old belief they begin to reconsider or language for an experience they had never been able to name.

Boy Beat Is Just the Beginning

Although podcasting is its first expression, Boy Beat was never meant to remain solely a podcast. Stixx imagines a multimedia platform unfolding through writing, video, partnerships, events, live conversations and community experiences.

Most importantly, they want the world of Boy Beat to extend beyond the screen and become a place where people can gather, exchange ideas and recognize themselves in conversations they may not find elsewhere.

There is no strict roadmap or ceiling for what that future must look like. The format can evolve as the community does. The purpose is what will remain: creating thoughtful work, bringing people together and expanding how beauty is understood within our lives.

Boy Beat may begin with beauty, but Stixx Mathews is making room for everything that grows from it.