August 19, 2021

Reminding Myself I Don’t Need a Label

Yesterday I posted an old logo from Musings of a Muse on Instagram because I was questioning why I ever changed it. If you go back with me far enough you remember Musings of a Muse with it’s catch phrase of “A Blog from a Cosmetic Whore�. I changed that many years ago when my dev team at the time told me it wasn’t a good message and how “politically incorrect” it may be. I question why I agreed to that change. It wasn’t authentic for me. I liked it and I hate I felt somewhat shamed into believing I should change it.

I’ve always said that inspiration strikes in weird places and this particular post comes from a a deep, thoughtful discussion with an online friend late last night.

We spent many hours deep into the early morning talking and many things we’re discussed but one thing that applies here was our chat about labels and fitting into a box that perhaps someone puts you into or maybe society puts you in. I truly believe things don’t need to be labeled and don’t need a name. You don’t have to validate your feelings or emotions by giving them a name or fitting them into an organized little box. Who you are, who you aim to be, doesn’t need to be identified. You don’t need to name it, you don’t need to label it, you don’t need a little sticker on your chest saying, “Hi my name is Jane and I’m an over thinker or a bookworm or a nerd or an empowering woman (or man)….”

Don’t let someone convince you in your life or in the world that you need to fit into a box because it’s the right box for you and it has the right label on it that suits you. I feel like when I dropped that catch phrase I was letting someone tuck me into a box that felt better suited. I fit into the “beauty blogger” box and I had the “beauty blogger” label. And I don’t know if I liked that!

You don’t need a box, you don’t need a label, you be you and embrace who you are. You can identify with any number of things without every putting a name to it.

You’re you and that’s all you need to be.

Don’t name it, don’t label, just be.

Well, unless you want to be run around being called a cosmetic whore like me. In that case, eh, we can stick a label on it haha! 😀

Stay well and be good humans today! I know you already awesome humans but a gentle little reminder never hurts.

Thanks for always reading my babble.

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August 19, 2021

Krispy Kreme Prices Are Going Up And Your Makeup and Beauty Purchases Are Probably Next

As we continue to venture and navigate our new world we are learning many different things about each other, about society, about working from home, about interacting with each other at a distant, and of course, we now have to learn to live with inflation.

Krispy Kreme announced today they are raising prices in September because of inflation and as we already know many feminine products are already experiencing price increases. We’ll continue to see this as the pandemic rages around us. It’s a very classic care of supply meeting demand.

Right now the current inflation rate is at around 5% and we keep hearing promises of it dropping back to a more normal rate sometime in the near future. But it is here now and it is something we have to deal with. In the grand scheme of things, worrying about how much your makeup or beauty purchases will be effected by this in the future is probably not as important as how much gas costs or groceries for your family. But makeup is our game here so, we’re going to touch on inflation in the beauty world.

If you purchased a $20 piece of makeup back in the 70s with the current inflation rate as it is, pre-pandemic, it’ll probably set you a bit over $50 bucks. We’ve discussed the beauty bubble breaking for a very long time and that maybe just maybe COVID might have helped that along a little bit. I do backtrack on that idea a lot. If anything we’re noticing that COVID has literally helped certain brands a lot and their sales in 2020 rose instead of dropped due to consumers having more leisure time to explore self care and there seems to be a lot less resistance to paying higher prices for items as some people had a bit more disposable cash. The lipstick index is actually no longer a relevant way to measure how our beauty world is doing simply because the self care revolution came about.

But the important thing here is we still suffer an issue of supple and demand which you see in stores where it would be typical to see shelves lined with a variety of items and now are experiencing low inventories especially during seasonal releases. The fact we are seeing less could mean that prices will raise in the beauty world. And this could be attributed to many factors one of which could be the fact importing certain items is a lot slower than it was back before all of this started.

We’ve discussed how late seasonal releases are this year and this is probably a good case study in how things may pan out in the beauty world going forward. We can hope it’ll be temporary but it’s always a good idea to be prepared for a rainy day.

I expect slower releases this year and I do expect to see some interesting prices on items going forward. I also believe that limited edition might just come to mean something once again.

What do you think?

Are makeup and beauty purchases going to be hit by inflation?

7 Comments

August 18, 2021

A Tale of Writer’s Block

Sometimes ideas float around in my head and I have to write them down before they disappear just as quickly as they come to me.

Other times there’s nothing. A void that if you should yell into it you’ll hear an echo return.

With the delay in Fall and Holiday Collections and a case of writer’s block, I fear I haven’t been putting my best into Musings of a Muse lately and I’m really sorry about that. Lately, I feel a little overwhelmed. I’m so behind on approving comments and replying to them, so behind replying to comments and direct messages on Instagram, and forget emails and tweets.

My grammar and spelling are notoriously bad too. It happens because I’m typically doing at least five hundred things at one time and I hit that post button so hard before proofing myself.

I’m human. Welcome to my hot mess of a blog.

Please forgive me?

Writer’s block can hit from time to time but this is probably one of the worst times I’ve had with it. I feel very uninspired lately and I can’t pinpoint why that is. There are ideas floating around in my head but nothing in the beauty world has really captured me enough to write about it lately.

I’ve been thinking really hard about Musings of a Muse lately and one afternoon, several weeks ago, I was texting with Christine (Temptalia) and I said, maybe I should do more lifestyle posts. I mean, I’m doing them already, right? We chat slow cookers, avo toast, and a host of other things why can’t we do more of that? It’s not that makeup won’t be here! It’ll always be a major part of Musings of a Muse I am, forever, always, a complete beauty h0r but what if we did more of everything here. Remember this blog started with that catchphrase: “Musings of a Muse: Musings from a Cosmetic Whore”. It changed a few years ago because my dev team told me it wasn’t exactly politically correct to have whore and makeup in the same blog title. I keep asking myself to this day why I ever changed it when I loved it?

Cooking, travel, books, tech, gaming, it’s endless what we can discuss. Actually, we do already discuss most of that already!

Before the panoramic started I was an avid travel but what I posted about was limited to a few Instagram posts. What about all the times I’ve burned boiling water? Don’t you want to hear about that? Or my huge to be read pile of books and how I met Dena on “booktock” and she opened my eyes to an entirely new way of enjoying reviews on books.

We can do all those things, can’t we? I don’t want to take away your safe place. I think of Musings of a Muse as a place that everyone can come, joke, share anything and everything without the fear of judgment, and just enjoy themselves. I don’t personally like change which is why I’m asking if I change a little bit would it upset you or could you embrace it?

As I struggle with my writer’s block just know that inspiration will strike. It always does, From interesting Tiktok interactions, I have to wild and crazy food things I eat to that next great concealer I love I always have something to tell you.

This is my story and I like telling it to you. As I always say, time is precious, thank you for spending some of your precious time with me.

With all my love and respect.
Your muse.

50 Comments