A Norwegian “Carrie Bradshaw” was invited to the show with her writing-pad in the bag, wearing a smart outfit and too high heels… People were drawn to the side to pose for the press photographers, celebritites were coupled up and you could sense the emerging gossip in the columns the next day under giveaway headlines: “Love Is In The Air At Cosmopolitan”, or something related.

All dressed up I met a man from the marketing department of Cosmopolitan who escorted me to the show at Ballroom. The event included a show with hot artists, award show, champagne, snacks and vouchers for goodie-bags – and – a nachspiel where you could mingle and dance. For starters I felt exclusive expecting a seance resembling “Eyes Wide Shut”, where you had to give a mysterious password in front of security-guards wearing carnival-masks to be let in to the premises. (So I put a note in my pocket saying “Fidelio”, just in case…)

(Press Photo)

I had a new role for this occasion – not as a performing artist or “the woman from the bachelor”. I entered the scene as a kind of “Carrie Bradshaw”, observing and taking notes to give the show and Cosmopolitan Beauty Awards an honest and edgy review – sparkled with some humour. This is the way I write, and at this event there was quite a lot to comment on for better and for worse – especially the latter…

I helped myself greedily at the snack-stand (those Anton Berg chocolates are heaven!) before showstart. Some artists were really good – I have to be careful not to be talking down about my colleagues in the music business. The Norwegian ESC-winner of 2010, Didrik Solli-Tangen, impressed me when singing rock – for a classically trained singer he did really well. This was the best performance all evening, just a pity it was at the very start of the show, from then onwards it all went downhill… The sound was terrible (stone surfaces are not the best conditions for amplified sound) and this affected the performances all through the evening.

There was a weird fashion show in the middle of the show that nobody understood the point of – where did THIS come from? I was not sure whether to laugh or cry at this ridiculous thing. The models were skinny teenagers not carrying the (small) weigh of their bodies very well. They were hunched “Haute Couture-wannabe’s” looking like kids gone berserk with mummy’s make up. The line showed off just ordinary clothes. They must have thought spicing it up with highly aggressive styling would help. Sorry folks: Me – no buy!

What I expected to be class, Rolls Royce, Cosmopolitan-exclusive from manicured fingernails to stiletto-heels fell together like a house of cards. It was noisy, messy, and looked like the inside of a party-tent at a college campus. The 500 guests did not seem to give a damn about what went on up on stage. The guests standing in the rear were more engaged in having their free drinks, chitchat, giggle, mingle and take photographs, and treated the show as background entertainment. They literally turned their rear ends to the whole thing while the editor of Cosmopolitan screamed in the microphone that this award is the Oscar among beauty awards. Cosmopolitan simply lacked a professional frame around such a pretentious event.

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Cosmo-conclusion: The people at Cosmopolitan need a serious evaluation of this year’s award show. There is room for big improvement! They should really go for a show that holds utmost quality throughout all links in the chain – something that one becomes happy and proud to be associated with, something that makes the guests actually feel exclusive and special. I believe they also learned that contents of more educational value (information about the beauty products) should not be mixed with alcohol and partyfacts, that is just unprofessional.

My critique is not meant to be harsh – just constructive. Setting critique aside, I had a nice evening and met a lot of lovely people. One lady dumped herself on a chair next to me and talked enthusiastically about a new organic brand within cosmetics that I grew very curious about: Maria Åkerberg (produced in Sweden). A young male stylist passed by and gave me the best compliment that night: I was so beautifully made up that I looked… retouched! Haha! Thanks! Another “high” was the female DJ who played Michael Jackson and pop hits from the 80’s. Still haven’t picked up my goodie-bag – I am waiting for an invitation to visit the Cosmopolitan office downtown – but if they read this they might decide to hang on to it…

(Photo: Johs Bøe / Above photo: Morten Bendiksen)