You know that friend that you kind-of like, and you want to like, but they just keep doing dumb shit that disappoints you? Yeah; that’s my relationship with Ipsy.
I looked at various beauty box subscriptions for months, trying to decide which one I wanted to do because I’m cheap (the result of growing up on the less wealthy side of the income spectrum and being a broke university student for four years of my life). So I broke it down and it came down to the fact that I like makeup and I wanted an inexpensive way of trying high quality makeup. In the end, Ipsy won my March Madness bracket and I subscribed.
Here I am, five months down the line and I’m still not quite sure what I feel about Ipsy. On one hand, I’ve gotten to try a few products that I’ve been fairly pleased with. My absolute favorite item thus far was a gel eyeliner by CAILYN from two months ago. If I didn’t already have so many eyeliners and didn’t have a bunch more on my “to try” list, I’d probably go and buy another five of the CAILYN gel eyeliners and I will write an in-depth review of it at a later date.
Most everything else that I’ve received from my Ipsy subscription thus far has been on the “okay” part of the scale. But receiving “okay” things do not drive me crazy as much as you would think. The thing that has thrown me into repeated fits of rage has been the fact that in the five months that I have received Ipsy, I have received one lipstick. One.
If there’s one makeup product that I consistently spend money on, it’s lipstick. There have been three months where getting a lip product was possible. I have gotten an actual lipstick once. ONCE. That was last month when they failed to send me Benefit’s Benetint (another WTH, Ipsy) but at least sent me the POP chubby stick.
Nothing could really compare to my absolute disappointment upon receiving not the “Urban Decay Revolution Lipstick” sample, but a lip balm. Not even one of those “Sugar by Fresh” lip balms but some random $3 lip balm. Let it be known that I don’t care for lip balms; I use whatever is cheapest and on sale at the pharmacy which is usually the in-store brand, Chapstick, or Carmex. I spend $1 on chapsticks. I spend an average of $20-$25 on lipsticks because I have a problem.
I very specifically stated that I like lipsticks and not gloss or balms on the Ipsy quiz. This repeated slight feels like that friend who never listens when you tell them that you like something and then keeps getting you things that you have no use for. It’s pretty annoying when it keeps happening again and again.
I’m pretty sure I want to break off this friendship before I go any deeper. I know, $10 is barely the cost of a lunch, but I anticipate a lot of red in the next few months with trips and Christmas around the corner, I think I would rather save the $40 and buy myself that Shu Uemura palette I’ve been eyeing.
