beauty

This Makeup Tutorial Deserves an Oscar

Tiffany
Tiffany “New York” Pollard. Photo: Fenty Beauty By Rihanna/Youtube

There exists within the vast, churning content wheel of YouTube beauty tutorials, a contingent of clips known specifically as haul videos. These videos may or may not teach you how to achieve a cut crease or make your highlighter so blinding it serves as a homing device, but they will try to help you navigate the newest products on your local beauty counter’s shelves. Until this point, however, what these videos have not done is star Tiffany Pollard, a.k.a. New York from any number of VH1 shows. Fenty Beauty has stepped up to rectify this grave, grave error.

Rihanna’s namesake brand enlisted the reality veteran to present the ins and outs of its holiday collection, and as Jezebel points out, the end result is nine minutes and 52 seconds of high art. Whether or not you were planning on gifting your loved ones Fenty this holiday season — to which I honestly ask, why not? Do you love them? — Tiffany’s commentary on everything from the Gloss Bomb lip luminizer in Fu$$y to the new Killawatt highlighter pallette is inspired, quotable, and wholly engrossing. Also, it’s straight facts.

“You have to pick this up, for your grandmother, your uncle, your sister, your brother, and even, like, stepchildren. I don’t care who you’re related to; they are going to appreciate this palette,” she points out about the latter product. And it’s true! Why should your youngest cousin be the only person to benefit from colors like Subzero, Stone Cold, and Heart Burn?

Another benefit, according to Pollard? “All these colors work. I don’t care what side of the prism you fall on, if you’re lighter toned, darker toned, deeper toned, if you’re deeper shaded like me, it works.” This, of course, is in keeping with Fenty Beauty’s industry-changing standard to provide makeup for people of all skin tones.

It’s Pollard’s enthusiasm for Fenty Beauty that truly wins you over. Sure, she may have collaborated with the brand to make this video, but her joy at hypothetically finding Stunna Lip Paint under her tree is contagious. (“Grandmothers, this is what your granddaughters want! We don’t want anything else in our Santa’s stocking. Do not put tampons in there, grandmothers; we want Stunna Lip Paints!”) These lines are art, and free Instagram photo captions waiting at the ready.

If the Oscars are still looking for a host, I humbly suggest hiring Pollard to do to the job. Better yet, give her all of the Oscars, and the tiny edible Oscars Wolfgang Puck is probably cooking up right now. It’s 2018; why can’t the Best Picture be a YouTube video?

This Makeup Tutorial Deserves an Oscar