Jolie in NYC, as outed by the Post

T.S. Eliot famously claimed that April is the cruelest month. For your ol’ Jolie, it’s always been March.

Ever since I was a pre-teen, I’ve had a thing for March–or, rather, it’s seemed that March has had a thing for me. March, for me, signals a cold, dreary month: the excitement of the holidays has faded, New Year’s resolutions have long been tossed aside, and the hot, steamy promises of summer are mere quivers on the horizon. March is just an in-between month, a blah month, a month when I’ve broken up with loves and abandoned cities and learned of cancer diagnoses and battled the blues and just generally wondered What’s It All About.

But as a result of that personal March madness, one very good thing was borne; a game-changer that I never could have expected would lead me here today. Obviously, I’m talking about this beauty blog, which I started on a bored, boring afternoon in March 2005.

Seven years! Who’d have thunk it?

Jolie in NYC 1.0 - Remember her?

At the beginning of the month, I spent several hours scrolling back through my email archives from both March 2005, when Jolie in NYC (as she was known) was birthed, and July 2005, when Jolie was–as you may remember–swiftly outed by the New York Post as the magical mystery beauty blogger everybody was talking about. Those few months were a whirlwind of gossip and advice and celebrity outreach and book deals and press. Now, when I’m talking about that time period–how I was told I’d “never work in this town again!” and so decided to make a go out of beauty-blogging full-time–I sort of feel like Norma Desmond, sighing wistfully as I smear Vaseline on the lens and dream about faded glory.

I can barely reconcile that naive little ball-busting 24-year-old with the kinder, gentler Jolie of today, but I’m so grateful to her for being a complete and utter idiot and thinking, “Hey! Let’s start a blog about the beauty industry!” I often wonder what might have happened had I simply plodded along in my magazine job: eventually a beauty director, maybe fired in the great magazine purge, and now, probably, toiling in obscurity at an online beauty mag, thinking, “I really should have hopped on that blog trend…”

You, my loyal and awesome readers, have been the best part of this journey. (And does anybody else feel like Chris Harrison should pop up with roses whenever the word “journey” is uttered. Anybody? Just me?) It’s been a trip to watch how the beauty industry has completely changed as social media consumed our lives, and sometimes I think it’s becoming increasingly common to forget what we’re all doing this for. Sure, for money–it’s a job, after all! Of course, a little fame and recognition is fun, too. But at the end of the day, it’s about entertaining, educating and getting to know YOU–and I occasionally need a little smack upside the head to remind me of that.

So, if I haven’t thanked you enough, thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading. I know you have lots of beauty blog choices, so it makes me happier than you can know that you keep coming back to see moi. Big kisses!

xoxo, Jolie