IN THE PRESS: HOW TO START WEARING MAKEUP

Forgive this late uploading of a post but I felt that I just had to share my thoughts. Whilst going through my blog feed I noticed Jane from British Beauty Blogger had written a post titled 'Are You A Selfie?' which I immediately clicked on. Forgive my naivety but I originally thought it was a post about self-photography which is something I'm currently much interested in because of my taking part in the 365 challenge (posts on this coming soon). It actually contained a rebuttle to the recently published 'How To Wear Makeup' piece in the Guardian. I love Jane's posts on these kinds of topics because not only can she construct a coherent argument she makes it witty and wry at the same time. I read Jane's post and then I read the piece from the Guardian. I mulled on it for some time. The entire length of a movie in fact. Then I decided to write and publish this post.

Firstly I want to make you all aware that the writer and journalist behind this article is in fact someone I enjoy reading the work of. She has written for several major newspapers, one of which I received regularly on a Sunday at one stage and devoured with avid enthusiasm. The writing is centered around an email from a reader asking where to start when it comes to products because the beauty halls intimidate her (don't they intimidate us all sometimes?). The writer then goes on to talk about her own wariness of beauty products and her own personal recommendations before mentioning where to get the best advice on beauty from. That's when this little paragraph pops up:

For tricks on application and unexpected product finds, the best thing to do is to find beauty columnists and bloggers you trust, though God knows that isn't easy. To be brutally honest, many beauty blogs consist of little more than selfies and uncritical gush about whatever free products the blogger got sent that morning. But there are good ones out there.

To be brutally honest this journalist needs to do some more research on what she considers to be 'beauty blogs'. For starters beauty blogs contain 'selfies' because who better than the authors of these blogs to display the products they're talking about? Also, I personally can't hire a model to shoot professionally every time I want to show what a product looks like - can you? I like to show products on the actual part it's meant to be used on instead of using the back of my hand for swatches all the time. A lot of bloggers feel this way and this includes a lot of the respected and most established bloggers on the internet too.

As for the 'uncritical gush about whatever free products' I got sent that morning? I can count on one hand the samples I have been sent specifically for blogging purposes. Many other bloggers I know have been sent the same amount and even less. As lovely as it would be to receive a product specifically for gushing over (what a happy problem that would be) unfortunately we bloggers know all too well how hard the race for PR approval is and the blatant ignorance some PRs show towards us including the disregard shown for all of the hard work that we put into each of our blogs because they'd rather keep sending samples to land on the desks of beauty editors which might never feature the product at all.

If and when I find a product that I like I am very 'gushy' about it purely because it works. I like it. The shade suits me. The formula works. You get the picture. When I find a product that I dislike I sometimes write about it too. I say 'sometimes' purely because I have written negative reviews in the past but who wants to be a Moaning Minnie all of the time? There are plenty of products that I actively avoid but just because they don't work for me, my skin type and tone and tastes or doesn't meet my standards doesn't mean that it won't work for someone else.

Yes there are some bloggers out there that gush over their most recently acquired products for the sake of being sent more and there are bloggers that might as well be living in their own advertisement campaign. However everyone in the blogging community can spot them a mile off and we know not to trust their opinions implicitly even if their photography is amazing. 

Back to the article and the writer goes on to mention all of the bloggers that she thinks are worth a browse. I agree that they are great but she's also included a couple I scratched my head at and consider to be boring. That's just personal taste though. After reading Jane's view of it all I agree that evidently the journalist behind this publishing has obviously just written from her own perspective and that's not something I would judge her for but, big BUT, she obviously, like Jane points out, doesn't know what it is to be a beauty blogger or about the amount of work that goes into writing one.

For those of us not on the mailing lists of the most desirable brands - or any brand for that matter  it's our own unpaid time and effort going into the writing, it's our own money being spent on the latest products and camera equipment and it's our own emotions that get severely stung when someone simply writes off us bloggers off as freebie-grabbing and selfie takers. Bloggers have a real impact on the beauty industry and I know I would trust the word of most bloggers over the magazines any day, including taking a good hard look at everyone's selfies.