How and why creatives do what they do has always intrigued me. As a creator myself, I appreciate the dedication and persistence it takes to develop one's craft and the courage it takes to put your art into the world. Standing out, building your tribe, and carving a space in what can often be an oversaturated niche is difficult – but doable if you want it bad enough.
As someone who isn't a makeup connoisseur but appreciates the beauty of a well-done beat, I've noticed how the glitter trend popularity continues to rise. I've found myself scrolling through the #glitterglam hashtag and makeup artists' feeds, wondering, "How would I look like with a glitter glam? What's the process like to achieve this look anyway?"
However, the storyteller in me is just as curious about the question: "What's the story behind these creatives creating these looks?"
I decided that I wanted to try this glitter trend for myself and get to know more about the person behind the glitter along the way.
[ia_video https://s3.amazonaws.com/roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/runner%2F9125-glitter%2Beye%2Bshadow_1.mp4 source="https://s3.amazonaws.com/roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms/runner%2F9125-glitter%2Beye%2Bshadow_1.mp4" autoplay=true feedbacks=true shortcode_id=1550773760639 expand=1 ]Meet Beneseth H. – a 20-year-old NJ-based makeup artist and hairstylist, known by her fanbase on Instagram as "@beautyby_bene". Her mother, a hairstylist in Benin, passed on her love for hair to a young Beneseth. Though she loved beauty, as a child Beneseth never saw herself doing makeup or hair. "I always saw myself pursuing a career in the medical field."
Meet Beneseth H.
Credit: Andrew Pompey
When Beneseth arrived in New York from Benin at the age of 14, hair became her first hustle to get extra money to support herself. She practiced on her sister and later began volunteering in a local braiding salon to advance her skills.
"My friends in high school started seeing my progress and told me I should make it a business. In 11th grade, I started doing it professionally. I managed the salon for a summer when my boss went back home. I started getting up to six clients a day. I moved from the salon in New York to New Jersey and continued seeing clients."
The love for makeup came while developing her hair braiding skills. Beneseth was an avid YouTube viewer and loved practicing achieving the perfect eyebrow look. "Sitting down and watching YouTube forever wasn't my thing. These YouTubers are showing you how to do the [look] and are doing the same thing over and over and it got tiring. I told myself if I can put my mind to it, I'll try something myself. So, I started practicing on myself, [my] sister, and friends."
Again, her friends urged her to take these newly developed skills into a business. She started out doing clients for free, then worked her way up to charging for various services including soft glam, full glam – and her signature glitter glam look.
Most of her clients give her creative freedom during makeup applications, but Beneseth also loves to use a client's outfit color or pull from photos for inspiration.
The Process
xoNecole writer Rana Campbell - Before
Credit: Andrew Pompey
I arrived to Beneseth's makeup studio with a freshly-washed, moisturized and bare face. I told her that she could do whatever she wanted. I'd be her muse. "Do you like blue?" she asked.
The rest was history.
For the next hour, my face became the canvas and Beneseth's hands were brushes – transforming my face into a sultry, yet sparkly work of art.
Beneseth worked quietly – but paused from time to time to talk about a few of her favorites. "I love JLaRue pigments when doing my glitter looks. Maybelline SuperStay is a great foundation because it's affordable and available in a wide range of skin tones. Blending is crucial for creating a smooth look. But, eyelashes really transform the face."
It was inspiring to see just how much she loved what she was doing.
In the end, I understood just how magical a full beat can be. Beneseth was able to capture my essence through blue pigments in a way I had never experienced.
You couldn't tell me ANYTHING for the rest of the day. I felt fierce, fly, and ready to take on the world. I took that confidence and was inspired to create my own art with it – something that I've been pushing myself to do more of lately. The worst part of the experience was having to wash my face at the end of the night.
xoNecole writer Rana Campbell - After
Credit: Andrew Pompey
xoNecole writer Rana Campbell - After
Credit: Andrew Pompey
If you’re an aspiring makeup artist, or trying to succeed in any creative entrepreneurial endeavor, Beneseth recommends a few things:
1. Take your craft seriously. Don't be afraid to invest in yourself, tools, and product. On her booking page, Beneseth ensures that she emphasizes her requirements for booking, late fees, and cancellation policies to all clients. Then, there's the smaller details such as having comfortable studio chairs to sit in, glam lights for the application process. Beneseth was creating an experience.
2. Showcase your work. Use social media, specifically Instagram, as a way to attract new clients. Convert to a business profile so that you can get added audience insights. Using industry-specific hashtags is also important for growing within your niche. Videos are good for showing angles and also a way to show how makeup really looks on a client's face. After each booking, she encourages clients to share on social and tag her work in order to drive referrals and new customers.
3. Learn from your inspiration, but never copy. Use your own creative abilities to create your own twist on an industry signature. Beneseth credits @beautyby_melissa and @shirley_beats as makeup artists that have influenced her style.
xoNecole writer Rana Campbell with makeup artist Beneseth H.
Credit: Andrew Pompey
This has become more than makeup for Beneseth. It's a way to support her family. It's a way to pursue her dreams. It's also a vehicle for realizing her own potential for greatness and economic empowerment through her creativity.
The dream for Beneseth, is complicated, yet evolving. While she was in school to pursue a nursing degree – she decided to take the semester off to see what can happen with her career as makeup artist.
"Believing in myself and believing that my work is worth it has been challenging at times. When you're running a business, you need growth in order to [succeed]. Sometimes I feel like my growth is slow, but other people are looking at me and telling me I'm actually growing really fast."
In less than a month, she's added more than 10,000 new followers on Instagram. With a laugh, she adds, "I guess I am growing!"
After I returned to the normal makeup-less Rana, I realized something: It's not the trends that define us. We define the trends. The power lies in our ability to create something special from one small idea acted upon.
Keep creating.
To check out more of Beneseth's work, visit her Instagram @beautyby_bene and website here: https://beautybybene.as.me/
Featured image by Andrew Pompey.
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Ding. Ding. DING.
A life coach by the name of Thomas Leonard once said that “Clarity affords focus” and, believe you me, when it comes to dealing with other human beings, if you don’t get clear on where you stand when it comes to your interactions with them, you can very easily find yourself “focusing too much” on those who don’t deserve it and too little on those who absolutely do. And y’all, this lil’ PSA couldn’t be more relevant than when it comes to what I call “casual friendships.”
Let’s dig — and for some of us, dig our way out of — what it means to have a casual friend, so that you can get clear on if you really need those in your life…and if so…why?
Article continues after the video.
It Can’t Be Said Enough: Always Remember What “Casual” Means
GiphyThere’s a reason why I decided to share two videos by mental health coach Isaiah Frizzle at the top and bottom of this article. It’s because a lot of what he shares in both of them complements a piece that I wrote for the platform last year entitled, “This Is Just What Purposeful Relationships Look Like.”
It’s the author M. Scott Peck who once said, “Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it” and please believe that the older (and hopefully more mature) you get, the more you tend to see just how valuable — and fleeting — time is; and that is what plays a huge role in motivating you want to only involve yourself with people, places, things and ideas that will honor your time — and when something is casual? In my opinion, it’s highly debatable that it’s worth much of your months, days, hours, or even too many of your minutes.
The main reason why is addressed in an article that I wrote back in the day entitled, “We Should Really Rethink The Term 'Casual Sex.'” The gist? When it comes to relationships, “casual” is certainly not a favorite word of mine because I know what it means. Have mercy — why would you want to invest your time, energy, and emotions into something that is, by definition, apathetic, indifferent, careless, lacking emotional intimacy, and/or is without purpose?
I don’t know about y’all but that sounds like a complete and total crap shoot to me — especially if you are going to go so far as to consider this type of dynamic a true friendship (check out “Ever Wonder If A Friend Is Just...Not That Into You?,” “6 Signs You're About To Make A Huge Mistake In Making Them A Close Friend,” “5 Signs Of A Toxic Friendship That Is Secretly Poisoning Your Life,” “12 Friend Facts That Might Cause You To Rethink (Some Of) Your Own,” and “Less & Less Of Us Have Close Friends These Days. Why Is That?” ).
To me, when you decide to call someone “friend,” it means that they are loyal, reliable, consistent, trustworthy and willing to be there to support you to the very best of their ability — even if it’s inconvenient to do so sometimes (check out “Life Taught Me That True Friendships Are 'Inconvenient'”). How in the world can you expect that from something that has the word “casual” in it?
And you know what? That actually segues into my next point about casual friendships pretty darn well.
Ponder the Purpose “Casual Friends” Serve in Your Life
GiphyA couple of years ago, Verywell Mind published an article entitled, “How the 4 Types of Friendship Fit Into Your Life.” The four that it listed were acquaintances (which I actually don’t consider to be friends; check out “6 Differences Between A Close Acquaintance And An Actual Friend”), casual friends, close friends, and lifelong friends. After reading the piece, I think they consider casual friends to be the “pleasure” friends that I mentioned in the article, “According To Aristotle, We Need ‘Utility’, ‘Pleasure’ & ‘Good’ Friends.”
And although I certainly get that, I think my “cause for pause” is calling those people “friends” when they probably should be called something like an associate or possibly even a buddy instead. Why do I feel this way? Well, I’ve shared in other articles that I think social media has jacked up vocabulary words and their true meaning on a billion different levels.
Take “friend,” for example. Facebook had us out here calling everyone we connected to on their platform “friends” when some of them, we’ve never even spoken to before — and I personally think that influenced, affected and perhaps even infected our psyche to the point where we will call folks, both online and off, “friend” even when they haven’t earned it and/or who possibly don’t deserve it.
That said, do I think that we all could use lighthearted interactions that don’t go very deep and are filled with not much more than fun? Sure. However, if we were to move this over into a sexual thing — those types of people would probably be called a sneaky link, and there is nothing significant or substantial about ‘em. In fact, if anything pretty much automatically comes with an expiration date, sneaky links would have to be it.
And that’s kind of the point that I’m trying to make about a casual friend — so long as you know that the word “casual” is being used to describe them, while you may enjoy the people who fit that bill, they aren’t really anything that you can or even should fully rely on. Instead, take them for what they are and don’t really expect much more than that. Otherwise, you could be in for some profound levels of disappointment. And who wants that?
Final point.
How a Casual Friend Can Become a Huge Red Flag
GiphyI’m telling you, y’all gonna quit clowning Tubi. LOL. To me, the best way to describe it is it’s the Cricket of current streaming apps. What I mean by that is, back when Cricket (the cell phone service) first came out, people, like me, who used it service got incessantly clowned because it was seen as a bootleg provider. Now it’s owned by AT&T, and as someone who has rocked with them since I was in my 20s, I don’t have one regret for doing so. Cricket has always been good to me, chile.
And Tubi? Well, when you get a chance, check out CNBC’s article, “CEO at 33, Tubi’s Anjali Sud on success hacks she learned at Amazon, IAC on way to top of Fox streaming” — take note of the moves the streaming app is making and the quality of programming that is transpiring in real time.
Anyway, I find myself bringing up Tubi more and more in my content because it helps to amplify some of the points that I like to make. This time, it’s a movie that’s (currently) on there calledRight Man, Wrong Woman. If you haven’t seen it before, I don’t want to give too much of the film away. What I will say is that the main female character, she had a casual friend and then she had a close friend.
That casual friend—the one who liked to kick it all of the time—was a lot of fun; however, dealing with her came with a ton of semi-unforeseen consequences. Meanwhile, the close friend? She’s what the Aristotle article (that I mentioned earlier) would call the “good friend” because she tried her best to hold her friend accountable.
And really, it shouldn’t be a shock that the casual friend turned out to be a plum trip because if someone is loads of entertainment and pleasure and yet they are indifferent towards you, they make careless decisions around you and/or they don’t really make known the purpose for you being in their life other than to pass some time — where really do you and that person have to go past drinks after work or dinner on a rooftop restaurant from time to time? And if that is all that the two of you are doing, again, why are they deserving of the word “friend”?
Hmph and don’t get me started on the lack of reciprocity that typically transpires when it comes to dealing with people like this because, while they won’t mind you spending your coins on them, taking their calls in the middle of the night or listening to all of their issues — when it comes time for them to show up for you, they very well may gaslight you into thinking that you are being dramatic, clingy or “doing the most.” Why? Well, it’s mostly because the two of you never really established what the hell the both of you are to one another.
And so, while you’re somewhere taking them seriously, they are out here seeing you casually, and as much as it might hurt to hear, that doesn’t automatically or necessarily make them a bad person. You shouldn’t expect much where no clarity is involved. After all, casual is just that: CASUAL.
____
I’m hoping that you can now see why I entitled this piece in the way that I did. It’s because a red flag is pretty much a warning, and to me, a casual friend is about as big of an oxymoron (again, to me) as casual sex is. Friends and sex are both too intimate to be seen or treated casually. Oh, but if you step out and take that risk, you could find yourself getting far more involved than the other individual ever wanted to go, because casual is how things have always been. “Friend” was simply to get you more mentally and emotionally invested. SMDH.
American columnist Walter Winchell once said, “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” A wise person once said, “One good friendship will outlive forty average loves." Former President Ulysses S. Grant once said, “The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity.” Does any of this sound casual to you? Yeah, me neither.
Again, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have people in your life who aren’t on deep levels. I’m just saying that you might want to consider putting them into another category than friend, because what friends do for people? There ain’t nothin’ even remotely casual about it, sis. Not even a lil’ bit.
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