Stories of Us: Amanda Ensing | Stories of Us

Sephora had sponsored me, but whenever I started speaking up on my views, they said I didn't fit in with their values of inclusivity that they disaffiliated with no explanation. My name is Amanda Ensing, and this is my story. So I was born in Richmond, Virginia, but as a baby, we moved to Tennessee, so I don't remember anything about Virginia. All my memories are growing up in Tennessee. Growing up in the South, you know, these are the nicest people I've ever met. They are kind. They are welcoming. You know, we call it Southern comfort here, and they say, saying, I don't see color is racist. I think it's racist to say I see color because we are all human, and when you come to the South, people just treat you like people. We're all people. We're all human. So I grew up in a very conservative household, and you know, my mom worked multiple jobs, so she was always for the working class, for hard work. We're pro-God, pro-family, pro-freedom. My mom moved here from Puerto Rico, and the whole reason she moved to America was for the American dream. So my mom coming here was a big deal, and coming to college and getting a degree and being able to send money back to her family and then get her family to come here, and it was a huge accomplishment. I've always been into makeup, but I wasn't allowed to wear makeup until I got a little bit older, but I remember once in a while, my mom would take me to like salsa dancing, and she was like, you can wear makeup just tonight. So I would wing out my liner, put on a red lipstick, put on, and we would just go salsa dancing, and it was just, that was one of my favorite memories of my mom was doing stuff like that. Growing up in a small town, it was kind of like, do you want to be a doctor or a lawyer? You want to have a good job. Before I stumbled across the whole YouTube platform, I was getting ready for law school, and the things that we were learning in these college classes, you know, it was all very progressive and very liberal, and I thought, hmm, you know, is there something to this? I'm progressive. I want everyone to be involved. I want equality for everyone. So I started to question a little bit, and then you see the way that the media and the news spins things to where it's all very liberal-leaning. I thought, am I wrong? And it just made me doubt myself. It wasn't until I stepped away, and I got out of college, and I was like, I'm definitely conservative. Once I graduated college, I thought, you know what? I want to be happy. I don't want to go to law school just because I grew up in a town that says you need to get a good job, and my parents had encouraged me to. So I decided I'm gonna give myself one year to make a job in beauty somehow, whether it's online or working for a company. So I started applying for cosmetic companies. No one got back to me. I just started creating content, and then I had one video that hit a million views and went viral, and my channel kind of took off from there. And I remember getting my first sponsorship. I got an email saying, hey, we want to pay you $250 to use our product in a video, and it was a product that I loved. And I said, oh my gosh, someone wants to pay me? So I responded, and I said, $500, and you got a deal. And that was my first sponsorship, and from then on, I couldn't be stopped. So I was able to work with all kinds of cosmetic brands, but whenever I started speaking up on my views, all of a sudden, the sponsorships were a little bit quiet. I'd always talked about faith, but never about politics. I never felt the need to speak on it until I saw what was happening in our country last year, and now I'm very outspoken. So Sephora had sponsored me, so I did a video on my skincare favorites, and once the video went live, I mean, my comment section was great on YouTube. I even had people saying, oh my gosh, they sponsored a conservative. I'm so proud of Sephora because conservatives are the ones being canceled. So they got a few comments on their page, and the first comment was, oh, I don't like Sephora anyways, but after sponsoring Amanda Ensign, who's part of a dangerous MAGA group, I'm out. And they responded, and they said I didn't fit in with their values of inclusivity that they disaffiliated. I get blown up with phone calls, you need to remove the video, with no explanation, no reasoning. So I uploaded a video to my Instagram as soon as this thing happened with Sephora. I decided to make my video telling my story. I didn't expect it to blow up the way it did. I just wanted people to know, you know, this is not okay. Later, the next day, they said, well, you know, we don't have to pay you, but we can pay you if you take it down, but this time, and there's no price on your values, there's no price on your voice. You can't pay me to be quiet. You know, the truth is the truth, and I wanted to share the truth, so I shared what they did to me. I shared email receipts, I shared everything, so people would know what these brands are doing. So it's just really sad, because these people get away with just defaming people on baseless accusations, and they're never held accountable. I learned a lot about the beauty industry as I started speaking up for my views. You know, these people knew who I was, and then the moment I spoke up that I'm a conservative, it's like the perception of who I was changed overnight. They couldn't attack my message, so they just wanted to attack me. They attacked, oh, you're not Latina anymore, oh, you're racist, oh, you're homophobic, oh, you're a white supremacist. All of a sudden, I was no longer a person of color or Latina just because I didn't vote how they did. I think there are people in the beauty industry that are racist, and I actually had responded to someone who said something racist to me, but because she is a Black American, she apparently can't be racist. In the beauty industry, I noticed that there was a narrative being driven of people of color or Black Americans, do not ever say anything to them, don't question them, you have to do whatever they say, I mean, it didn't make any sense to me. We're all, like I said earlier, we're all human, and in the beauty industry, again, it's very thoughtfully. If you don't believe in BLM, if you do your research, if you go against them, you know, Black lives matter, of course, they've always mattered, but all lives matter, but then they want to say all lives matter as racist, but how do, you know, all lives do matter, but calling everything racist as a lot of people do in the beauty industry takes away from actual racism. Cancel culture is destroying our society in a lot of ways. The whole idea of holding someone accountable for a tweet from years ago, from something they said, you know, that is holding people hostage to public opinion versus, you know, as a Christian, I only bow down to God, I don't bow down to what people think of me, but this whole idea of cancel culture cancels everything. You know, no one can run away from cancel culture, and it's a very slippery slope. If you want to start canceling people, you try to cancel businesses, you try to cancel, you know, sayings, next thing you know, there's nothing left, and I think the whole idea of cancel culture is nothing more than a political smear campaign, but on the people. You know, be careful or you might be canceled, and I started getting to a point where I would second guess, questioning every little move I made, everything that I said, am I going to offend someone? It's an awful way to live your life, to have to wonder, did I say that wrong? Did I get that right? You know, this almost a strive of perfection, but not just perfection, also not offending anyone ever. Make sure you don't ever offend anybody. You know, we have this just very weak society, I feel like, and a lot of these people are offended by everything, and being offended does not make you a good person, and I feel like people are always looking, what can I be offended by today? But I think that a lot of people in this country need to grow a spine and start standing up. Speaking out was the best decision I ever made. Me being able to be unapologetically myself and to stand firm, that was scary, but I don't regret it at all, because now when you come to my page, you know where I stand, you know who I am. You speaking up will be the most liberating thing you will ever do, and bravery is something that, you know, we are seeing a deficit in this country. I think we all have to do our part, and we all have to be brave, take everything we have, because if we want to keep America, now is the time to stand up for our values, and for what we believe in.