Girls are willing to do anything to get rid of cellulite, pimples, and wrinkles. We’re even willing to believe in miracles! Well, it’s time to face the truth: beauty miracles don’t exist, but we can fight all our insecurities with very good products. Where does this wisdom come from? From the ultimate Italian Instagram beauty guru, that made her cynicism her signature. The Blonde Salad meets Estetista Cinica (some kind of “cynical beautician”) for a super fun time of chats and laughs about beauty, social, and myths to dispell. Read our interview now!
Tell us the story behind Estetista Cinica, if there’s someone that still doesn’t know it…
I only wanted to make a restyling of my beauty salon with some funny cartoons. I was bored with all the Tibetan Mandalas and Botero’s paintings, and I thought it could be a great idea so to draw some sketches about a cynical beautician. I explained it to my friend Veronica, aka Spora, who said: “OMG, this is a wonderful Facebook page!”. She took a pen, she drew this character, and she put it online, obtaining soon positive feedbacks. In the beginning, followers couldn’t realize if Estetista Cinica was actually a real person or another meme. The more the page grew, the more we started working on beauty posts, videos, the blog. We also launched e-commerce, that is my core business now.
How much of Cristina Fogazzi is inside Estetista Cinica?
Everything. Estetista Cinica is none other than Cristina Fogazzi! She’s a kind of alter-ego since the first days I started working in this segment, in the first 2000s. I opened my first beauty salon only in 2009.
How much social networks have changed the way women approach beauty? Is it better now or worse?
Of course, we experienced a positive change. Thanks to social media, many young girls started to discover what beauty and wellness are. In the past, girls in their twenties weren’t interested in beauty treatments, probably because they had some prejudices or they only feared them. Today it’s so easy to see all these influencers showing to their Instagram followers their beauty routine and all the treatments they do. It’s much easier to be informed on everything, and of course beauty products and treatments: we can see girls like us having their facials or massages, and then they also review them, with positive or negative feedback. At the same time, everything is much more complicated because of all the fake news we read on the Internet. Women are so willing to believe in miracles when they talk about beautiful things. We love easy things. Worst case, we spent only a few euros.
It’s fall now. What do your clients/followers ask you the most?
Everyone is thinking about face, now. After the holidays, someone realized to have some wrinkles, others to have many pimples, others are full of brown spots. Many girls are also interested in body treatments because they want to lose some weight. In September, women make two promises: go to the gym and to the beautician. In many cases, they “forget” the gym, but they are so loyal to their Estetista Cinica!
A woman that enters your beauty salon knows she will find exactly the same beautician she sees on Instagram…
My beauty salon worked very well even before social networks, but of course today the feedback is much wider. I think is very important to stay true to yourself. If I were different from the woman everybody sees on Instagram, probably I wouldn’t have received so many positive feedbacks. To be honest, I think that women are so enthusiast about Estetista Cinica because I don’t feel them guilty. I terrorize them, but I always make them laugh so much!
Three sterotipes you cant hear anymore.
All the women have cellulite, and it’s possible to beat it drinking water or running. The answer? No, no and no (to discover more, see our Stories on The Blonde Salad Instagram account).
You started as a beautician, and know you’re a great businesswoman with a super successful store online… tell us more!
We launched it three years ago. I used to create beauty products for my beauty salon, and after all the positive feedback I received on the Internet, we decided to open our own shop online. Today, it’s my core business. We began with stocks of 30 pieces, now we produced thousands of them. My creams? I think they’re honest. I can’t promise you Penelope Cruz’s skin, but I can assure you’ll have good results.
Lately, everybody is talking about body-shaming on social networks. Why is so easy to badmouth other women on the Internet?
Because we do the same thing in real life. We usually say three things to badmouth a woman: ugly, old and fat. Unfortunately, it’s a matter of mentality, and social media are a reflection of what we do in our everyday life. Actually, we can’t separate our life on Instagram it’s not so different from real life: haters don’t think about that there could be a girl who can feel sad for a bad comment, behind the screen. I used to feel bad for every negative comment I read, now I’m more accustomed to that. That’s why I admire Chiara Ferragni so much: shes teaching u show to feel confident on Instagram, and to do whatever we want to do. We don’t have distorted yourself for others. We should never, ever, questioned our identity!