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The other thread was getting too long and difficult to load!
So what are your beauty pet peeves? What grinds your gears? Share your stories!!!
I'm an almost exclusive iPad user these days. It's way too convenient. The desktop only comes out if I wanna watch something that requires Flash.
I can see the security benefits of periodically signing you out on your phone just in case you lose it, but I'm thinking security is a measure people should have the option to take their own risks with.
Then again, I assume most people have passwords in place so people can't access the contents of their phones in the first place.
@heartsmyface There's an iPad app called Puffin, that lets you use flash. Super convenient! Hope that helps! If you have a lip balm that's not too melty, you can stash it in your nursing bra; I used to do that.
So I thought the SF Give Me Some lip was back only to click and see it wasn't there ...booo!!!
I saw one of the Ciate palettes come in stock, added to my cart right away and checked out, then it was back to being out of stock again. I'm scared that I might have just bought a palette that didn't exist/vanished before I checked out.
Edit: EEEK!! I just got a shipping confirmation! 😄
Woohoo!!!!!
@k617, which palette did you get? I think there was originally 3 different ones in the sale section. Only only one is available now.
Score! 😄
So I wasn't sure where to stick this... so since a few things are just "ugh" lol I decided to stick it in this thread.
So I read an article yesterday on TWJ about people who go to Sephora (daily) and do their whole look there... makeup, nails, hair... they even bring their own brushes. They don't buy anything at all... they just use up the stuff... am I the only one who finds this completely wrong and absolutely disgusting! YUCK! You know how much bacteria is on those testers... gross!
This quote also PO'd me... like what??? Ugh. Just zip it!
"Alana Hope Levinson says she has been mooching off Sephora testers since she was a teenager. The 28-year-old writer views the practice as something of a feminist act—a reaction to the high expectations of being a woman and the expenses that go along with it.
The old-school feminist response would be to forgo wearing makeup at all. But this is 2015!,” she wrote in a blog post last year."
The title to her blog:
On Stealing From Sephora (Kinda)
Tester mooching as a feminist act
FULL ARTICLE - (Copy and pasted)
By
Khadeeja Safdar
Aug. 30, 2016 11:06 a.m. ET
Jayda Boyce has a bag full of cosmetics at home, but there’s a much better selection a few miles from her house. Best of all, it’s totally free.
The 18-year-old student, who lives in Jacksonville, N.C., helps herself to the smorgasbord at the local Ulta Beauty shop, which offers testers for just about every kind of makeup product.
“It’s not like I’m trying to rob them,” she says. And she isn’t. Like many people, she’s just mooching off the store’s displays.
Beauty retailers such as Sephora and Ulta have been gaining on department stores. Part of their strategy is to let shoppers try out thousands of shading, sparkling, contouring and highlighting products—including Urban Decay eye shadow, Chanel perfumes and Smashbox lipsticks. There are no pushy salespeople. Just bright lights, open containers and plenty of mirrors.
Their self-service stations invite people to test the limits of what’s free—and many do, treating the places as extensions of their own bathrooms. Shoppers waltz in and spritz on dry shampoo (a powder that makes dirty hair look less greasy). Some use concealers to cover up undereye circles, others pamper themselves with a manicure. A few commuters drop by on their way to work, as if stopping in for a morning latte.
Ms. Boyce even brings her own makeup brushes for painterly sessions. Buying stuff isn’t the point. “I will occasionally leave with a product—and have like 70 on my face,” she says.
Keara James, who spent nearly three years working at a Sephora in New York City, is all too familiar with tester junkies.
“They would walk in bare bones, douse their bodies in perfume, walk out with everything on their face,” she recalls. “Some people would go through this whole shebang and act like they want to buy the product.”
Other particularly brazen women would dab and blot numerous samples onto brushes and then station themselves in front of a mirror to take care of business. Rarely, if ever, did they make a purchase.
“There was no shame in it,” says Ms. James.
Ashley Berrios, 24, confesses trying on high-end makeup without buying it. One of her friends goes too far even for her liking when they visit the Sephora location in Wesley Chapel, Fla.
She “paints every single nail”—with two coats and a top coat if it’s available, says Ms. Berrios, a medical assistant. “She hasn’t done her feet yet. I would abandon her for sure if she does that.”
Dymin Hayes, 23, doesn’t just use testers for herself—she goes to the stores to apply makeup on friends. She recently performed a full-face makeover at the Ulta store in Carbondale, Ill.
The regimen included Becca foundation, Laura Geller highlighter and Anastasia Beverly Hills eyebrow enhancers. If purchased individually, the products would have cost more than $100.
Store salespeople didn’t seem to mind, she says. “They’re not in your face.”
Beauty retailers do little to discourage freeloading. In fact, both Sephora, which is owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, and Ulta Salon, Cosmetics & Fragrance Inc., pride themselves on how much product they give away. They both say they train employees to let customers do as they please—so long as it isn’t too gross.
Ulta, which recently added 2,000 testers to its arsenal of more than 20,000 products, says it limits the practice to “products that can be kept sanitary, do not require water to rinse off, and do not create an unsafe shopping experience.” Hot tools like flat irons, for example, are off limits.
Biology professor Elizabeth Brooks and her team of researchers at Rowan University examined beauty testers at retailers a decade ago, ranging from high-end department stores to drugstores. The results from the oft-cited study showed that testers from more than 50% of products were contaminated with bacteria.
Dr. Brooks, who now works at Thomas Jefferson University, says she lets her daughters experiment with testers so long as they first ask store associates to clean them. “It’s all surface contamination. If the ladies wipe it off, we can get it near zero,” she says.
Mascara is one tester everyone should avoid, says Dr. Brooks, because of the risk of conjunctivitis.
For some women, a used container of lipstick is a no-go. “I would never use the blush,” says Brittaney Check, a 26-year-old who works in strategic communications. “There’s something about things people touch with their fingers.”
Sephora says it has “the strictest hygiene standards” and teaches employees how to prepare items for testing. “That includes using disposable applicators, cleaning all brushes before each use, how to ‘shave’ powder-based products, using sharpeners or alcohol to freshen pencils and lipsticks,” says Julie Taing, a member of Sephora’s PRO Artists team of makeup experts.
Ms. Check recently popped into a Sephora location to apply foundation, mascara and lipstick before a last-minute date. “It’s essentially a public rejuvenation station for women who wear makeup,” she says of Sephora. “I think you would be hard pressed to find a girl who doesn’t refresh in there.”
Alana Hope Levinson says she has been mooching off Sephora testers since she was a teenager. The 28-year-old writer views the practice as something of a feminist act—a reaction to the high expectations of being a woman and the expenses that go along with it.
“The old-school feminist response would be to forgo wearing makeup at all. But this is 2015!,” she wrote in a blog post last year.
Ms. Levinson’s go-to spot is the Sephora at Union Square in New York City. Recently, on her way to performing a literary reading, she freshened up there with a Giorgio Armani foundation, Nars blush, Chanel perfume and a Bumble and bumble hair spritzer—using products worth a total of $200 individually.
“It was really hot and I just looked disgusting,” says Ms. Levinson. “Thankfully, Sephora is there for me.”
I don't really care about "expectations" I love makeup and I do it because I love it! I am so sick and tired of people thinking we do it for other reasons.
This just reminds me that my husband subscribed to WSJ for years and rarely opened the darn thing. Now, I click through and cannot read the story without subscribing or logging in. If they had articles like this back when he subscribed, I would have read them more often.
This has been a topic of many rage texts to my bestie when I've been in Sephora. In my local Sephora, good luck finding a mirror near Urban Decay, KVD, Nars, or Benefit. It seems like every time I'm in the store, there is always a gaggle of teenagers/early 20-somethings jostling to get a mirror because they are doing their entire freaking face of makeup. I have watched them do their face and walk out with no purchases (yes, I spend way to much time in Sephora). It drives me bonkers. Getting a makeover is a different thing. I don't think anyone is going in and getting a makeover every day.
The sanitary issue. GROSS. I usually do swatches on the back of my hand to get an idea of the product. But you had better believe that if a SA comes at me with an unsanitized product I stop them. I don't need pink eye or whatever else could be lurking in the testers.
To refer to this as a feminist act is complete crap. A real feminist act would be to do whatever you want to do. If you want to wear makeup do it for you. As a feminist I'm kind of offended she is co-opting the term for this type of behavior. Call it what it is, selfish and gross.
OH.MY.GOODNESS
I have so many reactions, I don't even know what to say. I'll pick the one that thing that really made me angry. "I think you would be hard pressed to find a girl who doesn't refresh in there."
I would be willing to bet money that the majority of people on BT don't do this. I have never used Sephora as a way to refresh and reapply makeup and never would. If I ever try on a product, it's because I am genuinely interested, not to free load. Ugh some people have no shame. This just makes me really upset because it's why stores hate teenagers sometimes(not that these are all teenagers, they are grown women for godsakes) Being a teenager myself, it's just annoying when I hear people doing such immature things.
I find it gross, and she'll probably end up with dermatitis, an eye infection or something worse, but whatever. I take bigger issue with her justification. I embrace the F word but I'm old school. And I was raised by a feminist that wore makeup and high heels. So I don't see her point. This is just another example of a woman using feminism as justification for her selfish behavior. Me, me, me. And I dare say, if she was truly feminist, she wouldn't give a flying fig about other people's expectations. But what do I know, I'm old.
BRAVO!!!! A million hearts!
@pixiedust2, Your mom rocked and you my dear are not old!!
Funny thing @NancieNano I never wore makeup until a few years ago. I was a surfer chick in the 70s and we didn't wear make up. We just had a great tan and rosey sunburned cheeks. Now I appreciate the effort my mom put in every day.
@pixiedust2 I was raised by a feminist also. My mother during the 60s went braless hahaha BUT she got up at 4 in the morning to have time to put on a full face of makeup, bright lipstick including false eyelashes and always a very stylish outfit and matching heels and then left for work at 5:30 am for a 2 hour commute on the I5 to down town LA to work. She supported our family of 5 always making the effort to look like a million bucks 🙂
edited: I guess the burning the bras and bralessness must have been on the weekend LOL
@PaletteAddict99, now I know where you get your love for makeup:)
@PaletteAddict99 4 am AND a two hour commute?? Your mom is a superstar. My mom loved makeup and she passed that on to me. I still remember her and my aunt touching up each other's eyelashes every weekend LOL. It was this hardcore black glue, those lashes stayed put for weeks. I seriously don't even know if they still make that stuff!
@pixiedust2 Yes I remember the black glue haha. They got it at the beauty supply store.
And us kids used to freak out finding those lashes here and there thinking they were spiders LOL
@PaletteAddict99 OMG someone remembers the black glue LOL!!! Yep, same here about those little spider lashes. Used to scare me to death haha!
This is why I think feminists are just a bunch of twats!
On the other hand, Testers are just that! For people to test. There is no limit or buying expectations. It is what it is!
If you don't like....Stay away! Stop worrying about the people that use the testers. It is none of your concern.
If you like...then 'test' away!
If I worked at Sephora and saw one of these 'daily testers' I would just laugh! Just please, don't act like you are going to buy something and waste my time. I am too busy secretly hating and laughing at you.