The Blogging Revival

I just saw a post on instagram from Jane (British Beauty Blogger) on the chatter she’d seen on THREADS surrounding a blogging ‘revival’. Jane is one of the few OG beauty bloggers I’ve known to have pushed through the age of short form video and still be publishing regular written reviews. I find myself on her site more often than not before making a beauty purchase and I absolutely see the value in it as a consumer but because I was always a video first creator, it just.. faded for me.

If I really look at the timeline, I suspect that my love for blogging first waned while I was doing some freelance social jobs, when taking photos and writing captions became work. Obviously everything a creator does is ‘work’, but the reason we persevere through the months - even years - of no money, and very few followers, is passion. Once you make something you love your job, there’s a risk you won’t love it quite so much.

I continued talking about beauty in videos but the landscape was changing. YouTube was becoming an uber glossy kardashian-esque world of heavy, almost theatrical, makeup with more eyeshadow palettes than the 2010 beauty enthusiast could have ever dreamed possible. Skincare was becoming a focus and everyone was an expert. Hair videos were no longer exploits in poorly lit bathrooms but professionals with models in studios. Where did the average beauty lover belong?

I always felt like a misfit anyway. I was 10 years older than most people doing what I was doing online and 10 years younger than the average person married with 2 kids in real life. It was around 2018 and I just.. fell out of love with it all. Blogging dropped to here and there, I kept at videos but my heart wasn’t in it and I think you could tell.

My warts-and-all ‘aesthetic’ (as the kids would say) wasn’t on trend anymore and about a month ago I started to wonder whether it might be time to call the whole thing. Had I just been kidding myself that it would pick back up and I would hit my stride again or was it dead? Was I done?

Then Vlogmas happened. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a daily December video blog. It can be whatever you like but they have become highly edited and sleek over the years and, although I could never keep up with that, I used to work myself up to having to create something super festive every day. It’s exhausting posting every day when you worry so much about how it’s perceived and whether it’s ‘good enough’ and so this year I decided to just post clips of my regular day. I haven’t made plans to take you on a snowy walk or to see the lights.. I’m literally in my office, working from home, showing you what I’m having for dinner and occasionally putting on moisturiser. It’s not exciting, I’m not exciting.

I discovered that a lot of my favourites had decided against vlogmas this year in favour of TikTok or instagram reels (which is telling!) and so I asked my viewers, ‘who are you watching?’ - and this was a REVELATION.

The regular names that were coming up were people I hadn’t watched before but they were doing exactly what I was doing. EVERY DAY STUFF. They didn’t live in impossible apartments, with boat loads of unexplained cash funding their lavish lifestyles. They were makeup free, tired and just trying to get by. THESE WERE MY PEOPLE.

Get this - they weren’t renovating any houses and they didn’t have kids. I KNOW! I didn’t think these mythical creatures existed but there are real life people on the internet showing you their real life lives and they revived my enthusiasm for the whole damn thing in one fell swoop.

A month ago I was ready to shut down this site. I have been paying a monthly fee for years while running no ads and rarely updating the blog, it just didn’t make sense to keep it. Then the wonder women of YouTube came along to remind me that I’M not dead yet and Jane reminded me that BLOGGING isn’t dead yet and I’ve never been happier to be financially irresponsible and have let this go on as long as I have.

For 13 years I’ve been talking to you in one medium or another and a lot of that is recorded here. I didn’t appreciate the outlet that writing was for me because I associated it with trying to remember how to spell fuchsia and find new ways to describe mascara for a beauty brand that left a very bitter taste in my mouth. Much as I still enjoy makeup, beauty was the key to this house but after 13 years, I want to move things around a bit and see if there’s still a life here for me before I sell up and move on.

Thanks, Jane!

..for those still reading

When I won a beauty award - back in the day - it was so unexpected, I wasn’t even listening when they called my name, someone had to nudge me to go up and collect it. Jane text me to say she’d known I’d win (I’m sure she says that to all the girls) but she really did stand out as a supporter for me when I felt a lot of imposter syndrome as a girl from the North in a sea of cool London students. She also once came to my defence when a commenter said they could tell I hadn’t been to university. Isn’t it funny what you remember? Either way, in my poorly educated ramble, I just want to say - Jane is an OG and someone I’m very pleased to have known so I shouldn’t be surprised that well-timed motivation came from her.