Anyone who sees me un-madeup and flustered on the daily school run may be surprised to learn that I am something of a Beauty product enthusiast. Though I don’t bother to slap it on for the benefit of the kids and fellow parents at the school gates, I love make-up and its ability to make a weary mummy feel moderately glamorous for a rare night out, to enhance and show off one’s favourite features (cheekbones and eyes in my case), and purely for the artistic pleasure of creating and experimenting. During my three years at The Body Shop HQ, I learned an awful lot about skincare and make-up, and was lucky enough to work with some of the industry’s leading make-up artists, beauty bloggers and vloggers, not to mention the talented store staff with whom I collaborated to create inspiring beauty video content.
Since departing from that world professionally, I have continued to take an interest from afar. I regularly watch YouTube videos, though very rarely comment and interact. One of the reasons for my silence is that I cannot bear to associate myself with the frankly horrifying level of vitriol that pervades the YouTube comment boxes of beauty vloggers (and no doubt in other areas, too). Many of these young people face a daily onslaught of hateful words, criticising their looks, views, personalities, sexual orientation and anything else the perpetrators can think of to slam. Thankfully there are usually plenty of positive comments to balance out the hate, and most of the vloggers try to focus on these and ignore the haters. But sometimes it goes too far, and they are compelled to speak out. I was terribly saddened to see this recent video from make-up artist Wayne Goss, in response to the highly personal attacks to which he has been subjected online.
I cannot understand what makes people think it is OK to abuse others online, when I doubt they would ever dream of doing the same in a real word context. Imagine sitting in the hairdresser’s and saying everything negative that came to mind about the person cutting your hair. You just wouldn’t. Even if you dislike their choice of clothes, or think their laugh is too screechy, you keep it to yourself; it’s called internal dialogue. Of course there is a place for constructive criticism, but there is a big difference between saying you didn’t like the make-up look someone created, and attacking them personally for being too thin. These are human beings with feelings, and such behaviour is directly damaging to their self esteem and mental health.