Friday Night Wisdom

    I couldn't agree with the girl who made that picture more. A couple of weeks ago I started working on a beauty counter for a pretty well known  make up company with a pretty aggressive sales technique. For various reasons, I no longer work there but this post has less to do with them and more to do with the beauty industry in general. Prepare yourself....this may get ranty!

    Working in a beauty hall and hearing dozens of different sales approaches every day, I've noticed that they all revolve around the same idea: making you feel bad about yourself.

    I get that that's kind of obvious and most places have the decency to at least be subtle about it but that doesn't make it less of a problem. The message pervades everything from the product slogans to the training information. In the training manual of the company I worked for, they had two pictures of the same woman side by side. In one she was bare faced with messy hair, in the other her hair was neatly scraped back and she was fully made up with a bright, red lip. The captions read 'Yuck!' and 'Wow!' respectively. I can't begin to explain all the things wrong with that.

    Make up for me has always been a creative thing, its about having fun and the freedom to be as many different people as I feel like on any given day. It's not the same for everyone, but the core value should stay the same, it should make you feel GOOD above all else, it should help you express who you are or who you want to be, it should bolster your confidence, empower and enhance you.

    But a lipstick isn't going to change your life and if loving yourself enough is something you struggle with, no amount of concealer or eye shadow or mascara is going to change that.

   You are so much more than the shape of your eyebrows, the size of your nose or a birthmark on your cheek! The things we use to torture ourselves are design features, unique selling points, not the 'imperfections' we're encouraged by the industry at large to conceal, paint over and distract from. Not that I don't think make up is a fantastic tool for getting rid of annoying blemishes or helping you to feel better and more in control of something that really knocks your confidence, but you get where I'm going with this.

    With or without make up;

Your worth does NOT begin and end with someone else's definition of what's beautiful! 

    It's about time companies stopped trading on making you feel like it does.

   Sorry about that, but I don't think it gets said nearly enough!

 

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MeMeMe Cosmetics Haul and Review

    So, my make up stash has reached critical mass. It's at the point where I pretty much have to blog about it if I'm going to justify even one more gorgeous, creamy lipstick or carbon black liner. A few weeks ago the lovely people at Glossybox were responsible for my downfall. The February box had a bottle of MeMeMe Cosmetics Beat The Blues highlighter nestled in its tissue paper wrapped, neatly beribboned depths and despite initially thinking it was nail polish (oops) I was totally roped in by the cuteness of the packaging!

    Now I'm all for letting a product speak for itself and generally I'm not toooo bad for giving into the need to HAVE SHINY THING NOW! But Glossybox had an ace up their sleeve... a 20% discount... I was helpless to resist. By the time I realised they don't deliver to these distant shores (*ahem* Ireland...) it was too late and my heart was set on their beautiful eye kits, luscious lip creams and an enchanting thing known only as a 'Goddess Rock' (bronzer apparently).

    I was just hooked enough to drag myself over to amazon where I found everything I wanted, though alas that lovely discount was wasted! I limited myself to one of their Long Wear Satin Lip Creams in Morello Silk   (a wonderful dusky aubergine, £5.49 if you're lucky enough to live in the U.K), a set of Goddess Rocks (£12.50), the Ocean Eyes -Get The Look Pack (£12.99) and their Arch Angel brow gel and illuminator(£7). Well I say limited...

 Here are a few snaps of the packaging and initial swatches.

 
   The Ocean Eyes kit is a bit of a joy all things considered. The eye shadows are soft and easy to work with despite being baked, the mascara is quite a dry formula giving lovely, full but natural looking lashes and the felt tip liner is dark, long lasting and incredibly handy for last minute make up on an early morning bus journey!

   The lipsticks are creamy, smooth and highly pigmented with nothing of the thick, tacky texture that some drug store lipsticks present. They are very soft however, so I'd recommend using a lip brush rather than applying from the bullet! The Morello Silk colour doesn't apply nearly as dark as it appears in the bullet but with a little time and effort a lovely rich purple can still be achieved, while Ruby Rich goes on perfectly however you apply it, a wonderful blue-ish red that should be flattering on most skin tones.

   I haven't yet made up my mind as regards Arch Angel or the Goddess Rocks. Both have their good points but overall are quite shimmery for daytime with the highlight end of Arch Angel in particular proving difficult to work with and unfortunately light even against my own pretty ghostly complexion. I'm not really one for bronzer but I've found the Goddess Rocks a pretty gentle entry to the fold, the shimmer can be intense but a nice healthy glow can be achieved with a decent brush and a light hand, with the more pink toned golds in the mix preventing any unfortunate orange streaking!

   The packaging is hopelessly alluring and overall the quality of these products far exceeds the price point. Even a couple of weeks after the initial glow has worn off I find myself turning to their Fat Cat mascara, felt tip liner and Morello Silk lip cream regularly. Should you find yourself with a little (but not a lot of) spare change a little treat from MeMeMe could prove just the thing to put a little spring in your step!

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