Image Source: MAC Cosmetics

Social media exploded in a craze of glossy pigments and matte puckered lips around National Lipstick Day this past weekend.I really don’t know why there are so many “National _____ Days” nowadays. I figure it might just be some device to make a random day fun, or quite possibly a ploy from corporate masterminds in a capitalist society to promote their sales– either way it was working.

MAC Cosmetics in particular, conjured a huge social media storm as they announced that they were doing a giveaway for free full-sized lipsticks. MAC’s lipsticks are normally valued at $17, and have a reputation for having especially snooty store associates. The information online said that any lipstick shade was available while supplies last, which seems too good to be true, but none the less my best friend and I decided to give it a shot.

On the quest for free lipstick, we left for the mall at about 9am for a MAC in Nordstrom that opens at 10am. We got there around 9:30am and a line had already started to form outside. It became a complete madhouse when it drew closer to 10am and teems of women started flooding into the Nordstrom. Many women (with small children and families) took this opportunity to cut and rush in before people like us who had waited in line.

Image Source: The Daily Mail / Instagram: @glittermepinknz

We bolted into the store and discovered that another line had formed into the Nordstrom from the mall. The line was crazy long already and it was looking a bit hopeless. The mall itself didn’t open until 10am so we weren’t expecting that it would have opened the doors to the whole mall for the Nordstrom in the corner. At 9:58am, two minutes shy of the store’s opening at 10am, a store associate began shouting that they were out of free lipsticks. “While supplies last” meaning, they probably only had 30-50 to giveaway.

The people who did receive a lipstick, looked like they all got the same color– so it was factually incorrect that we could get “any shade”. My friend who managed to get one said that she got to choose– out of three shades, which were blue, yellow, and some other out there color.

Conclusion? We didn’t get anything! Wasn’t worth it, but was a pretty fun Black Friday-esque adventure. Post National Lipstick Day, news articles took to say that “thousands were left empty-handed from MAC“.

My super sweet awesome friend did end up giving me the one she received though. MAC “Indigo-Go” Matte.