“Girls like grossing ourselves out too.”
June 19, 2017 6:30 AM   Subscribe

Some makeup bloggers are a little more... intense than others. Jezebel takes a look at "The Rising Gore Girls of Instagram". (Content Warning: fake but convincing blood and guts)
posted by Etrigan (19 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
I spent about 2 seconds in the article, that was long enough to be convinced that their work is both impressive and not to my taste at all. The content warning is spot on.
posted by RolandOfEld at 6:47 AM on June 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Disgustingly skillful and great.
posted by oneironaut at 6:53 AM on June 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


And a lot of special effects makeup bloggers say that commenters—particularly men—are confused as to why these young women are prioritizing guts and gore over traditional makeup.

...

“Horror is for everyone,” Elly Suggit says. “Girls like grossing ourselves out too.”


Some day, hopefully not too far in the future, we'll finally understand that people are themselves first, and their identity attributes second, often a distant second.

There are very few things out there where you inherently need to be a particular gender, race, sexuality or age to enjoy.
posted by explosion at 6:54 AM on June 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


One of the many things I love in life is Hallowe'en. I am a member of a group of home haunters in Los Angeles and we do a monthly event. Every month someone teaches a new skill like building pneumatic pop up ghosts or how to build a fog chiller or how to use arduino or carving tombstones. Every year there are a number of haunt cons that we all attend, including one in about a month where the people who do this makeup get to really show their skills. There's a whole makeup show area where a lucky few get makeup done by these folks. I am always unbelievably impressed, since I have never been able to figure out eyeshadow.
posted by Sophie1 at 7:07 AM on June 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


My 14 year old daughter does this, and has for a couple of years but I had no idea it was a 'thing.' For her, it's a kind of CosPlay (which she also does), but with more immediate results and a greater ability to try ideas, toss them out and start over.

She aims for realism rather than what is shown in the Jezebel article. Scratches, blood, and bruises, rather than amputation & disfigurement. Early on she posted a particularly life-life picture of her bruised face on her Instagram with comment, and actually frightened her Grandmother who thought it was real! She's now quite vigilant about saying "don't worry, just makeup" on every post.
posted by Frayed Knot at 7:19 AM on June 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


Heh, this stuff is great. Into every generation a Stan Winston is born.
posted by cortex at 7:25 AM on June 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


This part was interesting:

The future of practical effects in movies has been compromised by the increasing usage of CGI effects in recent years. Suarez and Breault still remember the wave of fear in the 2000s, when creature effects in movies like Lord of the Rings and Avatar led them to think their industry was dying. But both believe that special effects makeup will never go away.

“If you look at CGI, it gets dated in two years,” Breault says. “Your eyes know something’s wrong. But you can watch Aliens or Predator now and it looks the same.” And an influx of big-budget fantasy television like Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, and American Gods means that there’s a return to the practical effects of of the ’80s and ’90s. “I have been more busy in the past four years than I have in years,” Breault says.


At the risk of derailing, it is funny how practical effects don't set off the Uncanny Valley alarm bells that CGI does, even when they (practical effects) look really convincing like the pictures in the article.

But this was a fun read. I'm a big fan of the show Face Off and this subculture feels very similar.
posted by Cash4Lead at 7:31 AM on June 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


From the comments: When I was 13 I used to have to melt the skin off my own hand with a blowtorch, take a picture on film and get it developed at the drugstore, and then mail copies to all my friends.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:02 AM on June 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


^ That's pretty funny.

Kids these days!
posted by amanda at 8:29 AM on June 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I really liked learning about this. Not to my tastes, really, but I admire the artistry and the weirdness that goes into this. I've gotten to a point where I've begun to enjoy more horror movies (still not keen on a lot of gore, though, and I never will be) and I'm intrigued by women who are doing their own things in horror.
posted by darksong at 8:54 AM on June 19, 2017


All my life I've heard people - men and women alike - say that horror was only for males.
posted by doctornemo at 10:03 AM on June 19, 2017


A someone who was into special fx makeup as a kid—I went as a "dead cub scout" to Hallowe'en in elementary school once—I support this fully! Glad to hear women and girls are such a big part of this community and getting the respect they deserve.
posted by defenestration at 10:06 AM on June 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I am loving this as an antithesis of the more traditional makeup bloggers.
posted by Samizdata at 10:40 AM on June 19, 2017


On YouTube, Glam and Gore did some great horror versions of Disney princesses and how-to videos for infections, popped out eyes, scars, shedding skin, etc.

Next Halloween I'm thinking of doing her horror snowman.
posted by hydrobatidae at 10:45 AM on June 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oh, cool to see this pop up here. I'm not a fan of gore either (horror is like my haunted lil wheelhouse, but gore belongs out in the schlock shack, thankyouverymuch), but I like seeing the wild and imaginative things people can do with makeup. UnconventionalMakeup on Reddit is a good community to follow for this kind of stuff; on the whole it leans more toward "Lisa Frank IRL" than gore but there is some overlap. Gory posts hide their thumbnails though, so it can be a better way to filter for things you'll enjoy than the raw open firehose approach of Tumblr and Twitter.
posted by byanyothername at 11:41 AM on June 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


This isn't my thing to create, but during a brief stint working as a civilian casualty victim, I was made up with some nasty wounds and burns and such for military training purposes. The artists' skills I saw then were very impressive, but these photos are much more intense than most of what I remember from that job. The more realistic, the better! The idea is to provide the most lifelike (or deathlike) training scenarios possible within budget and time constraints.

I hope some of the women and girls developing these techniques find good jobs doing makeup work if they're interested -- this kind of makeup isn't just found on movie sets or at cosplay conventions. It's an important skill that can help train emergency personnel to do triage and evacuation work, and thereby save lives.
posted by asperity at 2:09 PM on June 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


I definitely had a phase of playing with makeup when I was 10-12 where I would make huge, gross-looking bruises and terrify my mom. I'm a little bummed it was before YouTube (and even before I got into usenet and the other early-internet stuff, in depth) so I never went further with it. I've also never liked horror movies and especially not the gory ones. I haven't even thought of that time in years and years until reading this article.
posted by jeweled accumulation at 2:19 PM on June 19, 2017


These are really cool. I'm one of those girls who LOVED horror anything from a young age and grew into an adult who loves it but has a hard time finding friends who will go to scary movies with me.

I've dabbled in (very basic) scary makeup and am overall pretty terrible at doing makeup, but I also love photography and have been dabbling in horror photography (not my photos) for the last couple of years. All my other photography friends like to take pictures of landscapes and babies and im like, why don't we find an abandoned dungeon or something and take pictures of each other wearing Soviet gas masks. And they're like, nah, I'll pass. I'm holding onto hope that people will get interested in these kinds of things before I lose interest.
posted by triggerfinger at 5:35 PM on June 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


I went to a stage makeup class (maybe a summer camp?) when I was a teen and learned how to do some of those stuff. The cuts and for are great for grossing people out (always fun) but bruises were my favorite. I did them every now and then, for fun, rather the way a six year old plays dress up. But with more worried adults. The colors of fresh bruises are so pretty and old ones just fascinating. Now I just need a good excuse to make some lovely bruises, I wonder if my daughter wants one...
posted by Margalo Epps at 8:40 PM on June 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


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