I will be writing about some relatively deep subjects in some of my upcoming articles and am finishing up my book, which can be kinda dark in places, so I needed a lighter subject matter to keep me off the edge. As many of you may know, when that feeling comes, I usually start talking about skin care, music, movies or books (unless the book or movie was, in fact, dark).

With that in mind, I am going to discuss a little controversy going on in the beauty/skin care world and express my opinions. If this sounds like something boring to you, I will tell you to go ahead and skip this one. I will make the next one a little more mainstream. Ok, I will try to make it more mainstream, but no promises.

Without further ado, let’s discuss/dish on this controversy.

The Situation

Popular beauty YouTuber, Susan Yara, started promoting a new skin care company called Naturium on her channel. When asked how she found it by a follower, she claimed that PR sent her a few samples to try. This seems believable. Susan Yara is known for her fair and thorough product recommendations. Sending her a sample of your product and having it reviewed (especially positively) on her channel would be huge for any up-and-coming skin care brand. Susan Yara also suggested to some of her other YouTuber friends write in for samples… or something to that affect. Next thing you know, several YouTubers Susan is friends with are singing Naturium’s praises.

Come to find out, Susan Yara co-founded the brand and she alleges that she wanted to get fair and unbiased opinions from her community about her products and if she told them it was hers, they may just say they liked it and moved on and she wouldn’t know if they liked it because it was a good product or if it was because her name was attached to it.

The Problem

There are rules. Susan broke them.

I have done some affiliate marketing in the past and can attest to the fact that you are supposed to disclose your relationship with the company you are marketing for up-front. You also have to say whether or not there are affiliate links or if it is a sponsored post and so on. Apparently, this is even more strict on YouTube. You can’t just write it in the post underneath the video. You have to actually say it within the video, preferably more than once.

Susan alleges that she was not officially a co-founder when she first started discussing the products on her channel. Once she realized she would be an official co-founder, she stopped promoting the brand immediately until she could make an official announcement.

She really got called to the proverbial carpet on this one. Her followers were disgruntled to learn that she had a relationship to the brand and didn’t disclose it. A lot of them even went as far as to trash her and her brand on multiple media outlets. She lost followers and it hurt her reputation.

My 2 Cents

Susan is a smart woman. She has been on YouTube for quite a while now. She knew what she was doing. It was a calculated move in my opinion and it violated business ethics.

It does not tarnish my opinion of her much though.

I am not going to play armchair attorney. Maybe there was some legal stuff going on behind the scenes that made it so she didn’t have to disclose the information. I don’t know. If so, she probably should’ve waited until it all fell together, but again, I don’t know that answer from a legal standpoint. I am sure that if it were illegal enough that she could get in trouble, she would be, but she isn’t on house arrest or anything, so there likely was a legal loophole we don’t know about it. She is a smart woman after all. 

Secondly, it may have been unethical from a business standpoint, but it wasn’t immoral. I can understand where she is coming from. If someone read my book and thought it was trash, I would want their (constructive) criticism. Yeah, I might go cry in my shower after, but I value honesty. I understand that Susan felt she probably would not get that based on her influence in that community.

And it is a beauty community. I am not saying it should just be some anarchistic free-for-all, but it is cosmetics. Not medicine or dentistry or something of that nature that could seriously mess up someone’s health or life. No one is going to die if they get the wrong eye cream. I really think people need to chill a little. And this is coming from someone who is Uncle-Jesse-from-Full-House crazy, only about my skin and not my hair. Like, I won’t-even-let-a-professional-give-me a-facial level skin nut. If you don’t have an MD, you aren’t coming at my face, and even then, my dermatologist just looks through the little magnifying glass, she doesn’t actually touch me. If you don’t have a license, you aren’t touching my skin or eyebrows, either. I have a schedule for my actives.

I don’t play.

Thirdly, the brand looks solid. They focus on pH balances and the acid mantle of the skin, active ingredients and not a lot of unnecessary water, harsh chemicals or fillers. Also, the brand is affordable. Susan Yara always says ‘why pay more when you can pay less?’ (paraphrase) As I was researching them, I decided to go ahead and buy a couple of their products to try. One of them was retinol because my prescription is almost out and I don’t want to make a vanity trip to the derm during a pandemic, so I bought Naturium’s because it seems like a good formula and is the same mg dosage as my prescription.

That’s about it really. The proof is in the proverbial pudding, and their pudding seems more like chocolate than tapioca. I also don’t have to shell out a lot of money? Win. Game, set, match.

If the formulas are good, ethically sourced and affordable, I am going to jump on that bandwagon, no shame.

I will let you know how it goes!