A Beauty Blogger With an Identity Crisis

I wouldn't be surprised if you've completely forgotten about me. It's been a long time since my last entry and a lot has changed since then. Last year, at the beginning of 2016, I became intrigued with the idea of minimalism, which is kind of peculiar seeing as how I run a beauty blog and a beauty channel on YouTube. The Beauty Blogger/Vlogger groups aren't particularly aligned with your typical minimalist since a makeup collection for one of us tends to be worth thousands upon thousands of dollars with hundreds and hundreds of items.

During the past 14 months I've been on a very interesting journey of self discovery, and although it pains me to say it, I must be true to myself - the standard frame for a beauty enthusiast no longer fits me. My ideals have shifted since I first began blogging about beauty back in 2011 and the way that the beauty community has evolved over those 6 years has left me feeling uninspired, bored, overwhelmed, and frankly quite annoyed. The current atmosphere is choked with coupon codes, recycled warm smokey eyes, and overly filtered content. I no longer see passion, enthusiasm, excitement... instead I see a mechanical, money-making, formulaic repetition over and over and over again spanning across so many different channels, blogs, and accounts and it's just depressing.

Even I have found content creation to be a burden due to the standards of the community today. I've barely touched my makeup collection regularly in the past year - heck, I've utilized it more in the past week because of a decluttering method I've been trying out than in the two months prior. I don't hate makeup, in fact I still rather like it, but having so much of it has made me feel overwhelmed and uninspired. Keeping things "just in case" or because they were good dupes of products I already had or "because I need a drugstore option" made me resent what I had. I've been holding on to so many products for so many years that I don't particularly like, but feel like I have an obligation to because pretty much every other content creator does the same and I'm sick to death of it. I'm done. Done with holding on to or buying popular products because it's "what people want to see", when in all honesty people rarely view my content. Done with having multiple lip options when I actually only like a handful of what I own. Done with following trends I don't give a shit about. I'm just done.

And honestly, I'm not even sure if I'm done or not with this. A radical overhaul of what I do and what I write about needs to happen if I'm going to be zealously reapplying myself in the beauty world. I've gotten more fulfillment in the past week doing my "FOTD February Experiment" and having less than 5% of my YouTube subscribers watch it than I've gotten from pretty much any other videos I did in 2016, and that's because I'm being true to myself. I'm doing things that I want to do, using products that I like, and getting rid of everything that doesn't work, pathetic performance be DAMNED. I'm no longer going to blog or vlog about PR items that I receive that I don't give a shit about and wouldn't purchase with my own money just because they're sent to me. I'm no longer buying stuff because it's new or because it's a hot product. I'm only going to do things and post about stuff I'm passionate about.

I'm officially breaking up with the "Beauty Blogger" identity, and I'm gonna do me.

2 comments