Not Just Beauty by Western Standards: When all rules fall away, makeup Transforms Into Freedom, Therapy, and Identity That Runs Skin Deep
Makeup to Express: Leigh Bowery
It was the 1980s when the gray rooftops of East London welcomed Leigh Bowery, for whom the label “artist” feels far too limiting. Driven by an irrepressible desire to see new things and explore the world, Bowery had left his native Australia behind. In London, he became a beacon of the Blitz Kids: a community hungry for self-expression at a time when extravagance and colour were often met with suspicion. Theatrical and cathartic, Bowery’s genius reverberates even today, inspiring fashion houses and makeup enthusiasts alike.
The history of clubbing and drag competitions has shaped many of the makeup techniques we embrace today, amongst them, cut creases and contouring. In the 1970s, Harlem, New York, was home to ball culture, documented by Jennie Livingston’s film, Paris is Burning. Balls weren’t just about dancing: they were about transformation. Makeup and costumes became tools to blur boundaries and create new identities. Hidden and important, these events of grandeur gave people a safe space to be themselves in a world that refused to see them.
Makeup became another tool in the quest for reinvention and individuality. Clubbers practised at home until they reached professional levels of application and experimentation.
-NJ Stevenson
Makeup to Experiment, Isamaya Ffrench
What distinguished Bowery, at the height of his exuberant creativity, was the regard he had towards his material body: a blank canvas to be used as a means of artistic expression. In fact, beyond makeup and self-produced fashion, we can find documentation of his piercings and flesh manipulation (at Leigh Bowery! Currently shown at the Tate Modern, you can find footage of @abinniepaperandskin piercing through Bowery’s cheeks). Years later, perhaps subconsciously, I see Bowery’s influence in Isamaya Ffrench, beauty expert, renowned for her boundary-pushing creations, featuring iridescent colors, facial prosthetics, and boundless imagination.
Marked by a slick and metallic look, Isamaya Ffrench’s brand challenges the beauty world, transporting it to a surgical theater where the power of self-sculpting, transformation, and defying the unexpected takes center stage. Isamaya doesn’t question who we are, but rather what we can become. “What my beauty brand is about is challenging perceptions…”, she told Models earlier this year, “Beauty has limitations. With grotesque, you can really go deep.”
Makeup to Reconnect, Emily Wood
Emily Wood is a British makeup artist whose portfolio covers international movie stars, artists, and her ultimate muse: her nana.
You’ll see her applying purple blush and lip liner while waiting for the Tube, on the rocks of a seaside town, or in the company of wild sea thrift. A communicator of absolute freedom – and extraordinary technical skill, Emily takes refuge in makeup, treasuring the process. “I restore through being by myself and making art. I’m not even thinking when I’m doing it; I’m just doing. It takes me out of things like health anxiety and into nature and creativity. It’s escapism, I guess,” she tells Francesco Loy Bell for Off the Block magazine.
Makeup to Reinvent: Pamela Anderson
When I first saw the images of Pamela Anderson arriving makeup-free at a high-fashion event, I immediately applauded what I interpreted as a brave and feminist statement: presenting herself unapologetically confident in front of an industry notorious for scrutinizing women with the eye of a cosmetic surgeon. While not exactly pioneering, Pamela’s choice was unexpected and sparked broader reflections on identity, celebrity stigma, and the role of beauty standards in publications and media worldwide.
However, in an interview with British Vogue, Pamela herself dismantled the meaning I, perhaps guilty of over-interpreting, had assigned to the no-makeup look. For Pamela, the choice to forgo makeup came from various factors: the passing of her trusted makeup artist, Alexis Vogel, and a desire to reinvent herself outside the characters she plays in her professional life.
I’ve always been a little bit of a rebel. I decided that I don’t have to wear makeup every day or be in a hair and makeup chair every day […] I’m trying to find what my next incarnation is. I’m a farm girl, but I love glamour, and I love beauty – Pamela Anderson for ELLE Magazine.
Eschewing the pencil lip and smokey eye look that so many people associate with her, she now gives makeup a transformative power: not to confine her, but rather to serve the purpose of re-imagination and creativity, while walking down the path of self-research. Because sometimes, to explore the multitudes of our persona, we first need to take it all off.
neunmagazine.com 