Last week, D Magazine published a fluff piece about Mary Kay Cosmetics. It’s no surprise that a publication from the Dallas area writes positive things about Mary Kay. The company makes billions of dollars off women who can least afford it, and if profits are the measure of success, then Mary Kay wins that one hands down. The article said?

That’s not to say the company is without problems. One of the top hits on Google for a search of “Mary Kay” brings up PinkTruth.com, a collection of blog posts by former consultants who became disenchanted with the company. Some claim the recruiters aren’t clear about the steep hidden costs of starting one’s own Mary Kay business, and others dismiss the cosmetics giant as an unsustainable pyramid scheme. In a model with more than half a million independent reps in the United States, there’s bound to be the occasional blowback. But Holl doesn’t let it faze him.

“I think every company nowadays has to be aware of all the different ways your message gets out there and the way it’s perceived, and blogs are certainly one of them. You’ve got to have thick skin,” Holl says. “But the fact is, we’ve got 2 million people that are active in our business and a lot of people [who] are now inactive. We do our own exit interviews; by far the vast majority have a great experience within Mary Kay and stay customers. There’s always going to be some negativity out there, and we just have to focus on what we’re doing right.”

It’s a shame the writer of the article didn’t spend some time actually looking into the claims we make here. We were summarily dismissed without any critical thinking. Why not ask Mary Kay how many women are actually making money in MK, and how much they’re making? Why are tens of thousands of products listed on eBay at a fraction of the wholesale cost at any given time? Why are tens of thousands of products being sold to liquidators at a fraction of wholesale cost?

Why does this site have tens of millions of page views and thousands of members? It’s easy to dismiss us as losers who couldn’t make money in Mary Kay, and now just have an ax to grind. If I had a penny for every time we’ve been dismissed as disgruntled ex-consultants…

Except many of us are very successful at our real careers. We have started real businesses that don’t take advantage of anyone. The things we say about Mary Kay are true, and they’ve been said over and over by thousands of visitors to this site. This isn’t just a handful of losers who want to complain. The horrors of Mary Kay are very real, and I remain as committed as ever to making this information available to anyone and everyone who may want to research Mary Kay before they get involved. I don’t care if no one else is willing to tell the ugly truth about MK. I will continue to do it.