"who do you want to be today?" self portrait: short film

transforming myself into three facets of my personality using makeup as a tool

“Who do you want to be today?”

Let me just touch on the disturbing yet dynamic vanity of this world, including my own, and the loss or displacement of identity that has become an epidemic in the western world. I’ve worked as a make-up artist for close to a decade now, transforming people into their every whim and desire. From brides and prom queens ‘needing’ to look picture perfect, expecting that by the wave of my makeup brush I can bewitchingly turn them into the exact tear-out of a magazine they’ve presented me, airbrushed excuses for celebrities they aspire to emulate. Distastefully, I’ve even encountered bridesmaids stating quite clearly that they wish to upstage the bride. There have been many women going on first dates wanting to make the ‘best’ first impression, with false lashes and unnaturally exaggerated eyes and lips (whom call on me for their second, third and fourth dates terrified the curtain will fall and the object of their desire will flee exposed to their unmasked faces). Drag kings and queens with precise visions, looking to me to transform their external identity to match their internal craving. I’ve worked with men insecure about their acne or dark circles, had mothers bringing their teenage boys to me, trying to save their social and sex lives, boys whose awkwardness can be felt a distance away, angst ridden and ashamed, they fight looking me in the eyes, paralyzed with fear of judgement. There are people of all kinds using Halloween as an excuse to be whomever or whatever they entreat.

It’s been an interesting career, but one I don’t mind leaving behind. I’ve met personalities who I would be happy to never to cross paths with again, and others that surprised me with their warmth and pleasant personalities. I’m not a particularly talkative or probing person, especially whilst working with strangers, I get quite perplexed at how much personal information they divulge voluntarily, I've stifled back tears by some of my client’s tales, and silently angered by the ignorance and misconduct of others. I become an unwilling therapist, perhaps this occurs because I enter their personal space, face to face with them, inches away, mimicking a sense of comfort and familiarity; or does this uncomfortable closeness I produce cause them to chatter uncontrollably to avoid an awkward silence? Little do they know that I truly focus on getting their eyeliner precise and a relative silence would not be unwanted. I must say though there is nothing more uncomfortable for me then when a client doesn’t say a word but stares at me with a fervent intensity, their eyes dodging from my hand to my mouth and directly into my eyes as the distance between us shortens and I move in to apply eye shadow, their gaze molesting me. Through these personal encounters inevitably a transference occurs as I find myself answering questions to complete strangers that would leave me speechless under other circumstances. I am forced to talk, remember and inevitably feel.

In my experience, people whom wear an excessive amount of make-up on an almost daily basis, fall into two categories either; they are insecure and uncomfortable in their own bodies and they wish to portray an image of themselves to the world which in their mind is idealized; or else because they are extroverted, expressive, confidant and using it as a tool to highlight their creativity and identify themselves from the masses, (still, perhaps shielding something). The rest, including me, fall into neither of these two extremes, though I was the latter of those two extremes once upon a time ago, discarding an exoskeleton, a crypt housing my addled teenage years, has allowed me to probe inward and wear my skin unabashedly. I firmly believe natural beauty is the most coveted and precious kind, it’s particularly exquisite when a fragrant allure permeates from the core and delicately mingles with an aesthetically pleasing exterior.

Nevertheless I can’t denounce the power of the perfect shade of lipstick or a tube of mascara; it can undoubtedly be an empowering thing.Sometimes it just feels so good to pop the top off and move this smooth surface across my lips and see them transform while inhaling a pleasurable scent. A reference can be made here to the women of the great depression, buying lipstick where money for food was scarcely available, a symbol of their tenaciousness and ferocious disposition. Makeup has the most efficacious results when the subject’s confidence can stand independently without any crutches; makeup as an accessory rather than a cover.

To have the ability and ambition to role play from time to time is a wonderful thing; we are multifaceted beings after all, striving in a world that can become bleak and unbearable. There are days I want nothing more than to be my naked self stripped of everything, other days I feel androgynous, almost masculine and play on that. Periodically I feel ambitious and powerful in my femininity, I echo the vagabonds of the 1920’s or Marilyn Monroe and her jaw dropping red lip and bedroom eyes, superbly elegant Audrey Hepburn and her prominent and pristine eyebrows, or infamous muse, Edie Sedgwick and her definitive 1960’s look. In this short video I explore three facets of my personality using makeup as my medium, three different characters that inhabit my being, I experience and act on them in more subtle ways, usually not showcasing these characters so obviously in the public sphere. I metamorphose from my external being to internalized versions of my personality, all whom fight to find a compromise and balance within each other.

happiness as intoxication...reality as hangover

.....an activity in spying