Make Up is touted as a go-to manual for beauty and digital entrepreneurship. Both of these topics are things Michelle Phan is an expert in, being one of the most popular beauty gurus on YouTube and having built her business from the ground up. The book covers many different issues relevant to girls- taking care of your skin, hair, and nails, how to decide if you need certain cosmetic products, how to make great first impressions, and even how to get a job and manage your own business. Special sections on digital dos and don'ts and modern manners explain the best way to keep up appearances in today's era of social media. Michelle explains how she created her online persona, how she keeps readers interested in her content, and how often to post to keep people engaged.
I was particularly interested in reading this book from the perspective of a potential digital entrepreneur. I'm interested in blogging (obviously) and in people, especially women, who eventually make a living simply doing what they love online. Michelle Phan is one of the great ladies of this generation who is doing just that. I was really excited to see if some if the tips she had would help me. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything useful to me within these pages.
First, the good things about the book:
1) It's gorgeous. The book is really quality and heavyweight, with beautiful glossy pages, a pretty, colorful design, and cute endpapers. There is lots of photography throughout the book, along with little sketches and info bubbles defining different terms. The colors and the typography all go really well together, and the whole thing is very well laid out to make this an attractive book you could feel proud to display on your coffee table.
2) It feels personal. You can feel Michelle's voice coming through, with the stories she tells about her childhood, and her own distinct way of speaking. It's cute, informal, and feels like having a chat with an older sister.
Now on to the things I was disappointed about:
1) Generic beauty info. For anyone who's ever read a women's magazine, a lot of the beauty information contained in this book might be redundant. There are no specific tutorials on makeup looks (you'll have to watch her videos for that) and a lot of what Michelle talks about is very generic information that most of us know already. Unless you have never looked at a piece of makeup in your life, you probably know where your t-zone is, what foundation is, and what it means to pluck your eyebrows. This book does cover the absolute basics well, so it might be a great resource for tweens and teens who are just being introduced to the world of taking care of themselves and trying makeup. But if you're already a fan of makeup or Michelle's videos, which I assume most people who buy her book are, you won't find anything new or noteworthy here.
2) Wrong medium. There are a few beauty things mentioned in the book that I don't know how to do yet (for example, a good blowout or a fishtail braid), but a book is not really the medium to learn these things from. Describing a pattern to me just leaves me hopelessly confused. There weren't even pictures or diagrams to help on these parts. It would be much better suited to a video tutorial, which Michelle is already fantastic at anyway.
3) Generic business info. The section I was most excited about, "Turn Your Passion into a Profession", was also very simplistic. The tips provided were common sense things like, "Buy an IP address", "Get money to start your business", "Get on social media". Once again, I think if a teen was reading this and it sparked some interest in them to start their own business, these could be good, valid starting points. But the book doesn't really explain HOW to do these things, or give any information that couldn't be yielded with a quick Google search. If someone has any previous interest on these topics, they will already know these things, and will find nothing new or groundbreaking here.
Overall, I was really hoping to get some unique and useful information from this book. Michelle Phan is a great example of turning what you love into a business, and her story is inspiring, but the book doesn't have anything practical to help others follow in her footsteps. I would recommend this book only to complete makeup novices, tweens or early teens, or someone who just wants a pretty book to display on their table. If you want more than that, stick to Michelle's videos. She really is a fantastic vlogger, but I just don't think a book is the proper medium for what she has to share.
I received this book from Random House, through the service Blogging for Books, in exchange for an honest review. This did not influence the content of my review and all opinions are my own.