Hello, Beautiful Blossoms. I wish I could say “Happy Sunday” like everything is fine and dandy, but I’m sure the whole world has been informed about one of the roughest weeks in recent United States history. I don’t intend to get political with this blog post, but I can’t deny just how deeply hurt I felt last week by the tragedy that’s taken place. And the ongoing rhetoric of “with us or against us” doesn’t help either – what if I’m both pro-BLM AND pro-police? Where does that place me in this chaos of both sides clamoring for support for their own cause, when they refuse to begin the change that’s needed by looking into their own ranks first.
Neither group seems to be aware of the fact that their respective causes are undermined by people who claim to “support the cause,” and until both sides are aware and admit it, I don’t expect things to get better. Not all black people are criminals, thugs, or hoodrats. Not all cops wake up from their beds wanting to kill black people. But why are the ones who want to divide and hate given audience by the media?

And now, back to my regular scheduled beauty blogging.

Gen Beauty 2016 is happening again this year and according to its website, the event is going to be hosted in Brooklyn. If I recall correctly, the event was hosted last year in one of Manhattan’s West Side piers. The only reason I became aware of Gen Beauty was because of two fellow makeup enthusiasts who attended and posted pictures about it on Facebook before I left.

Gen Beauty seemed like a promising event to attend – after all, there weren’t that many beauty conventions that were open to the public AKA PROs ONLY. And because I had a fun experience at IMATS this year, I figured that Gen Beauty would be the same, if not moreso because it was an event tailored by YouTube beauty vloggers.

Until I popped in to see how much the tickets would cost. The cheapest ticket at $79 before taxes was already sold out and the more expensive tickets were left for sale. Not wanting to take a gamble like I did with IMATS (I blindly bought a ticket, not knowing what to expect), I decided to do some research and see if the more expensive tickets were worth the price.

I was disappointed, to say the least.

Seeing through the lovely pictures of people who attended Gen Beauty, I felt myself channeling The Rock’s iconic eyebrow look and an eye twitch: I’m supposed to shell out at least $100 for SAMPLES? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

Of course, for people who don’t have the luxury of living in close quarters to a Sephora or Ulta, Gen Beauty sounds like an awesome sauce deal because they get access to products to test before they buy the full size and go through the possible hassle of returning it. But holy cow, people better be able to bring home a trunk-full of samples to justify the ridiculous ticket prices that are being charged. Fuck, I PAID LESS FOR IMATS and I got FULL-SIZED PRODUCTS.

And price wise, I’d rather drive out to a Sephora that’s in the middle of nowhere and get free samples and an adventure to boot than to fly from all over the country for what’ll most likely be a measly amount of itty-bitty products. It’s even more worse if people have to use an unfamiliar transit system, which I’m pretty sure A LOT of people are gonna get screwed over with – Brooklyn ain’t as transit friendly as people make it out to be, folks. Fuck that.

But this year seems to be different – I popped in to Gen Beauty’s site to see people’s pics to see if there’s been any improvement. The vendor list grew to include e.l.f.,Royal and Langnickel (which is honestly surprising. I guess they haven’t gained as much traction as they liked by doing business with Walmart), and the Estee Edit (not surprising since Gen Beauty has their target customers). I guess Gen Beauty is finally realizing that samples aren’t enough to soothe the burn that their ticket prices are causing.

If you Beautiful Blossoms are planning to attend, I’d love to see and read about your experience with Gen Beauty 2016! I still find it strange that Gen Beauty would opt to host in a city where there’s a Sephora in one of its boroughs every half a mile XD.

Take care, Beautiful Blossoms!