Cedar Lake Estates is the Waldorf Astoria of camping: the food is gourmet, the bunks are air-conditioned, and there are bathrooms and, you know, four walls. We're barely getting our shoes dirty. Phyllis Nefler would live here if she had room service and a Barney's down the road.
While our bags are being dropped off at the cabins, contestants split into their respective teams, The Voice-style: there's Team Starrr, coached by Patrick Starrr; Team Mean, coached by Jasmine Brown; Team How You Doin', coached by Nicol Concilio; and Team Amorcitos, coached by Mariale Marrero. As each team member is announced, they make their way to the stage overlooking the lake to meet and get a photo with their mentor for the week. "Y'all better FaceTune us!" quips Concilio.
Camp is less about the activities and more about being selected out of 17,000 entries: being here is a win in itself. Building a relationship with your coach, or any of the coaches, is like One Direction competing on The X Factor: you don't have to win to achieve massive success when Simon Cowell is on your side. For the 20 contestants, working with the coaches is like hitting the social media lottery: Starrr, Concilio, Brown, and Marrero each have over 1 million followers on Instagram and more than 700,000 on YouTube. Even a post with them on their Instagram Stories or Snapchat could catapult a person into the beauty stratosphere.
The contestants understand how high the stakes are and how this opportunity — the $50,000, the six Instagram Stories with Benefit, and getting featured at Benefit boutiques — could launch them to the next level of Insta fame. Many influencers on this trip are considered micro-influencers, sitting below 100K followers. The person with the most followers (at 250K), Cohl Woolbright, says that he has a car and home because of his fans and supporters but that winning the Brow Search would take him to the next level.
There are 14 women and six men competing, with two of the men returning from last year, which has raised some perfectly groomed eyebrows. But by the end of tomorrow, the pool will be narrowed down to 12 by the coaches, based on the following criteria: 50 percent makeup technical skill, 25 percent artistry/creativity, and 25 percent Benefit DNA/storytelling ability.
After the teams have been announced, it's time to create a team chant and get ready for the first big event of the competition: Arch Tank — Benefit's take on, you guessed it, Shark Tank. It requires the contestants to give a three-minute presentation on a new product, new brow service, or social episode for Benefit's channels to the coaches and Jared Bailey, Benefit's global brow expert and our camp leader for the week.
As campers are released to their rooms to get ready, we have our first drama: not one but two makeup bags went missing between arriving at Camp Benefit and Arch Tank. I was a little concerned with how chill the Benefit team and the two contestants were about the missing bags. Granted, we're at a cosmetics Summer camp; it's not the worst place to lose your kit. In the vein of many competitions, you're not there to make friends; you're there to carve some brows — isn't losing your makeup kit a major disadvantage? To be fair, this camp may be about winning, but everyone here seems to be genuinely thrilled that they were even asked to attend. Nobody is bad-mouthing anyone — I'm genuinely surprised that I haven't heard a catty comment, especially with the prize at stake. The contestants appear to truly like and support one another, which is smart, given they can each help one another thrive in the future.
