Image: Instagram/@_sallyjo_.
From the outside, life as a beauty blogger looks pretty sweet: thousands of adoring fans, free makeup loot, and being recognised for doing something you just so happen to love. Oh, and actually being able to pull off neat winged liner/contouring/lip liner without smudging must be nice.
However, notoriety does have its downsides, as blogger Sally Jo Hickey — known to her followers as simply Sally Jo — explains in a new video.
Earlier this week, the New Zealand-based makeup whiz jumped on board the ‘Story Time’ video trend, sharing the tale of how a run-in with a viewer took a violent turn.
With almost 70,000 Instagram followers and more than 150,000 Youtube subscribers to her name, it’s not uncommon for Hickey to be recognised in public.
Last December, Hickey was out at a club with her boyfriend and some friends in Napier, and recalls being approached by a number of “lovely” fans. The 21-year-old was happily posing for a photo with one of them when the night went downhill.
“Her friend was taking a photo of us and then I heard someone scream my name. They were like, ‘Sally Jo!’ and they sounded really agro. But I didn’t look, I didn’t even think about it because I was concentrating on the camera,” she recalls.
“Next minute, I felt this whack on my head and I looked down and there was glass all over me. I was drenched… I’m actually panicking reliving it. There was a cut on my foot because the glass had slithered into my shoe.”
The weapon had been a Guinness schooner, and Hickey believes if she’d been struck by the heavy bass of the glass she could have been seriously injured. As it was, the top of the glass shattered as it hit her head, while the base cut her leg.
Watch: High-profile female journalists read the nasty, often abusive messages they’ve been sent on social media. (Post continues after video.)
“My head didn’t bleed, it bruised and there was glass in my hair,” she explains to her followers.
“I didn’t know what had happened, but then I glanced up to look in the direction of the girl and I could see her a metre from me, pushing through these people and she was screaming. I was really scared.”
At this point, she claims a brawl had started among some other patrons at the bar, so the security staff were distracted — as was Hickey’s boyfriend, who was on the other side of the venue.
Meanwhile, the fan Hickey had been posing for a photo with tried to protect her from the attacker by rounding her up against a wall. (Post continues after gallery.)
Sally Jo Hickey on Instagram
Despite this, the woman who threw the glass made her way through the crowd and began pushing Hickey from behind until she was removed from the bar by security. “She was like, ‘Fuck you, I hate you, who the fuck do you think you are coming in here?'”, she recalls.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t an isolated incident for Hickey, who says she’s been followed and had her hair pulled by people during other nights out. Her close friend and fellow beauty blogger Shannon Harris (aka. Shaaanxo) has reported being groped in public.
On the way home, Hickey’s boyfriend Tama told her the incident marked “the end of clubbing” for her, a suggestion she agreed with.
“[He said] ‘You and Shannon can’t go out anymore, it’s just getting ridiculous,'” she recounts.
“It’s such a shame — I met four [viewers] and they were lovely but some people are just dicks and they take it too far.”
While Hickey is aware she has detractors, she said the woman’s aggression left her rattled.
“The main thing I was shocked about was that she just hated me so much. I knew people hated me, obviously, I go through all my comments myself,” she explains.
“But I didn’t know someone would go to the extent of physical violence. It was quite scary for me.”
Have you ever been attacked by someone in a public place?
You can watch Sally Jo’s video in full here: