Situation Analysis of the Meetup OR Meeting EssieButton

Photo Credit

"Liam Helmsworth:"

"Really?"

"No? Zac Effron for sure. Man.... If i saw him.."

"LOL, you obvious have a type"

There aren't many celebrities I'd want to spend an awkward hour conversing with and thinking that I've met the "real (insert celebrity name here)". I've gone to signings, heard TV personalities lecture, waited by stage doors for Broadway actors to leave for home, but lately, those sorts of things haven't drawn me in. 

Extra points to Steph for looking so adorbs (blurry on the leftside of photo).

On the flip side, pre-teens will wait hours and lose their little minds when catching a glimpse of their favorite stars. Though its been a while since those years, I was down for the ride when Steph suggested we go "meet" Essie along with Vanessa and Jen. 

Meeting Estee was only a partial draw; witnessing youtube/beauty blogger "Meetup" fandom was the real attraction. I was excited to be all meta about it, to analyze the "meet up phenomenon' while contributing to the phenomena itself. (Sometimes David tell me I'm no-fun. Sometimes I wonder if he's right.)

What does a "meet up" even entail? Standing around, gawking? Waiting on the sidelines of concentric fan-circles swarmed around the celebrity? (I'm seeing an image of the poor surrounding Mother Teresa here. I can be surprisingly sacrilegious.) Am I supposed to have signs declaring my love or my want to bare Essie's children? Where's Kate Spade's Etiquette manual for this? I expected at least one person to cry and at least one person to have their life's worth re-affirmed.

Steph and I managed to get in and grab a photo about 10 mins in but there were still many (rough estimate = 200) people waiting for their chance. Vanessa and Jen weren't able to stick with us and had to wait another 1.5 hrs until they got their photo op.

Top contenders for original banter content: "I LOVE your videos" and "Congrats on all your viewers". Myself, I threw in a "Isn't this sort of nuts?" (because...really, this is sort of nuts...) to which she responded in the affirmative. I managed to pass my business card to her. In general I was quite satisfied.

Steph had what almost passed as conversation about Aslan and Essie's interior decorations. Jen got some street cred for having her flawless makeup acknowledged by Essie (who is, after all, OG) and snaps and claps go to Vanessa who couldn't say anything but "Oh my god" a few times over (too adorable).

She's nice! (Is there a no more often-used insert-here descriptor for your friend's new partner that you've met once, or that new girl in class)? After switching venues twice and sitting around as the rain came and went with varying degrees of intensity, Essie met every. single. person. after a little over 2 hours AND she did it with grace.

A quick satisfaction poll yielded the following results: Most people just wanted to see Essie. Some felt that their time in line and eventual 1ft distance from her face had met their expectations. I also overheard some declare how SO WORTH IT the experience had been. All in all, most surveyed rated their experience satisfactory or more than satisfactory. If Essie was Yelp-able, she would have at least a 4.5 star rating, more than one "would go again"s and a handful of "recommended" comments.

Honestly, I found the whole situation quite interesting.

Do celebrities draw you in? Have you "met" one before? Is there one you'd like to meet? Isn't this whole thing sort of weird? Talk to me people!

Let's Connect:

Bloglovin' | Instagram | Twitter