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.
Let’s face it: sooner or later, all the well-known / popular beauty vlogs / blogs will be wooed by the big cosmetic companies with sponsorship and free makeup in exchange for promoting their products. It’s the new form of marketing strategy: rather than have a stranger talk endlessly about the latest item, why not have a familiar face do it?
Familiarity increases vulnerability. That’s just the way the world works.
There is an old thread on reddit’s Makeup Addiction (link here) where redditors discussed their favorite and non-favorite Youtube beauty vloggers. One of the key reasons for the dislike? Sponsorship. Some redditors couldn’t tell if a beauty vlogger genuinely liked the product or did it for the money or freebies, whereas the more seasoned ones knew right off the bat and unsubscribed in protest.
But what really got me to consider this topic for this week’s BAFT was a chance reading of a fellow beauty blogger’s site, where she was consistently accused of selling out to cosmetic companies for free makeup.
Continue reading “BAFT: Sponsorships in Makeup Blogs / Vlogs”
Happy Sunday, my Beautiful Blossoms! I hope the week was kinder to you than me, and if not, well, at least you’re not alone in that department.
I wish I was joking about this week’s title. Or had a pun for it. But it jut has me doing this:
Last week, I started to talk about the makeup bubble that’s encased YouTube in the form of hundreds of videos on makeup hauls, tutorials on “looks,” best/worst makeup buys, etc. I also brought up the fact that the words “guru” and “makeup artist” have been carelessly slapped on a lot of YouTubers, who have done mainly tutorial videos on themselves rather than others. There are exceptions, of course, but they make up a small number.
More likely than not, if I search for a makeup tutorial on YouTube, the video will feature a “beauty guru” that demonstrates how to achieve a certain look using themselves as a model instead of another person. And I’ll be brutally honest: I’m not impressed. They leave me wanting for the days when I grew up watching Ricky Reyes showcase his hairstylist skills on TV. You could give him any length or type of hair and he’d somehow make it work.
Granted, Ricky Reyes spent years honing his skill set as a hairstylist and on people of varying hair types. I don’t know how long prominent YouTube makeup “gurus” have been doing makeup and if they’ve ever done makeup on others (Lisa Eldridge and NikkieTutorials are the only ones I’ve seen), so comparing the two would seem unfair, right?
Hello, Beautiful Blossoms! I know I gave a back-to-back entry last week with Currently Obsessed and then got really quiet until today, and I do apologize for the sudden silence. I was able to squeeze an entry early Saturday morning (think 1-3 AM) because I couldn’t get myself to sleep from excitement about the site, discussing Kiko Milano, and my out-of-town trip that day. It was also my sister’s birthday and my grandma had to fly out, so you can imagine how hectic it was in my apartment.
Then it was back to the work grind. I just found myself falling face-first onto my bed as soon as I got home. Staring at a screen for 7 hours does bloody murder to you.
And in the moments of free time that I get during my work shift, I’m trying to figure out a schedule for Currently Obsessed, BAFT, and The Raised Eyebrow – how many days in between should I schedule the posts? What topics do I go over for BAFT and TRE that hasn’t been beaten into submission in the beauty and blog scene? Do I include product recommendations or reviews on the site?
That’s just part of what runs in my head the moment I think about BBA. As Temptalia’s Christine once advised, “remember: content is KING.”
Continue reading “BAFT: The YouTube Makeup Bubble (Part 1)”
I’m kinda glad I missed updating on Wednesday (my body is not adjusting to my new schedule as well as I hoped) because of the newly confirmed suspicion: Kylie Jenner used lip fillers (temporary).
So ladies, you can stop sucking on that shot glass or bottle or can of Coke or whatever it is that you’re using to do the #KylieJennerChallenge. But I also needed time to figure out how to address a rather sensitive issue that was brought up as criticism on the fad and it involved race.
Now, this is probably the closest thing I’ll ever get to discussing race and given the recent events about race issues, I’ll try not to get too deep into it because I know how ugly it could easily get and I don’t want this site to be a political platform discussion because politics has no place here.
That being said, I want to finish my thoughts on the #KylieJennerChallenge because it’s run its course. The big reveal is finally done (though I doubt it’ll stop people from continuing to suck on some object to create a vacuum effect) and there’s not much else to say about it, really.
Continue reading “BAFT: The Kylie Jenner Challenge – Culture Appropriation”
Lately, this has made headlines:
The Hidden Dangers of Dirty Makeup Brushes.
The title seems self-explanatory at a first glance. Heck, if I was obnoxious I’d put this as an article for The Raised Eyebrow for the sheer fact that there is just no excuse behind not cleaning your brushes. At. All.
We’re all guilty of not cleaning our brushes after use at least once, but the most I’ve gone on without cleaning a makeup brush after using it is one day. Just the sheer thought of all the microbes that decided to hitch a ride on the bristles is enough to wake me up when I feel tired, lazy, or just in a procrastinating mood about the thought of washing my used makeup brushes. Along with the couple of bouts of infections on my eyelid that I’ve had.
But it isn’t just about makeup tool hygiene that’s got me writing about the article. It’s also the concept of sharing cosmetic tools in general.
Continue reading “Beauty Advice for Thought (BAFT): Sephora, MAC, and Cosmetic Sharing”
