Happy Sunday, Beautiful Blossoms! And yes, today is Valentine’s Day. But in my case, it’s Single Awareness Day. If you’re in a relationship, happy for you. If not, well misery loves company as they say. With that aside, this week’s TRE topic is provided by Mashable’s interview with Michelle Phan.

Yes, THE Michelle Phan. The YouTuber who started the trend of creating makeup tutorials on YouTube. And now, she’s biting the hand that fed her: L’Oreal Cosmetics.

In her interview with Mashable, Michelle candidly explains that L’Oreal limited her creativity during their business partnership. You see, Michelle made a deal with the cosmetic giant to create her own cosmetic line, Em Cosmetics, while she provides L’Oreal the ideal target audience: young, impressionable girls and teens who will follow everything their YouTube idol does onscreen.

But a quick Google search reveals that Em Cosmetics struggled to gain traction – the quality was subpar (yes, even drugstore products can beat Em’s) and the price point turned away a lot of Phan’s fans. So L’Oreal decided to cut their losses and ended the agreement between them and Phan. Obviously, Michelle isn’t one to let anybody, let alone a cosmetic giant like L’Oreal, make a fool out of her.

So she decided to make it seem like L’Oreal was the bad guy by stating that “how can you control the destiny of your career if you have other people putting red tape around you?” (Mashable) For a girl that’s been pegged as special snowflake by r/makeupaddiction, she sure got some balls to bite the hand that fed her. This girl managed to beat out THOUSANDS of beauty aficionados whose ultimate dream is to have a cosmetic line named after them.

Only to claim that it wasn’t her fault that Em Cosmetics failed – apparently, L’Oreal “provided little to no resources to help it grow, a former employee tells Mashable.”

So lemme get this straight: from the money she got creating ipsy and the videos she made on YouTube, Michelle is saying she didn’t have the resources to grow her cosmetic line? Is she FUCKING SERIOUS? Now, I don’t know exactly what the agreement between her and L’Oreal was, but clearly she demonstrated enough business-savvy skills (she was able to get enough investors to fund $100 million into the company) that L’Oreal was willing to take a chance with her.

Bobbi Brown and Kat Von D had to wait YEARS before they were able to make her own cosmetic line without any backing from the bigwig cosmetics. Pro makeup artists have to jump through hoops of fire (i.e. work as many events as they can) to even get noticed. Michelle didn’t have to do either.

L’Oreal was gentle when it described the termination of their relationship. They could have trashed Michelle’s makeup skills to boot – and no, her fans boycotting in response isn’t going to dent their sales. The company’s too big to fail and let’s face it: eventually, those girls are gonna end up coming back to what L’Oreal sells in the drugstore because they can’t afford to buy the mid to high end makeup – just look at Em Cosmetics for proof.

Michelle believes that she could have come up with better products had she not been “restricted.” Girl, you got your ass beat in the cosmetic scene because you don’t really know the market you got into as well as you’re supposed to. Rather than try to clap back at L’Oreal for the failure of your cosmetic line, swallow your pride and admit that you were clueless in making cosmetic products.

And now, rather than work on what went wrong with Em, you’d rather dive into the comic book scene with your artwork, Helios: Femina. Clearly, you did not learn from your mistake of stretching yourself too thin and focusing on something new rather than making repairs.

Curious as to what will BBA have its eyebrow raised next Sunday? Check back for the next entry or hit the Follow Button on the top right corner of the site!

Until the next entry, Beautiful Blossoms! Stay blooming!