Non-Gendered Makeup

After looking at agender or people who believe they have no gender in my research I wanted to try an experiment where I take away gender markers such as hair to see what a difference this made to someones gender appearance.

I wanted to create a 'blank canvas' that doesn't have gender markers of normal makeup, facial hair etc. so I made a cap plastic bald cap and blocked out the eyebrows using the pros-aide technique. I chose the pros-aide method as this had worked better than wax in my eyebrow experimentation and I chose a cap plastic bald cap as this had worked better for me from research I did in my Dramatic Contexts unit.

I then used a orange tone to block out the dark hair colour then applied a neutral skin colour matching my models skin all over the face and head, blocking out the lips and eyelashes and taking any colour or unevenness away from the skin.

Overall I was very happy with this makeup. The bald cap was a very good thickness and the edges blended away very well meaning they weren't detectable at the front which I was extremely pleased with. There was one wrinkle at the ear of the bald cap where it could have been stretched tighter or cut differently around the ear so next time I need to concentrate on smaller details such as this. To save time I also did a low ponytail not a hair wrap and as Melissa's hair is very thick you can see a slight ridge in the bald cap where her hair is so next time I need to pull the hair a lot tighter. The eyebrow covering is not seamless but the pros-aide method did work well and blends the brows into the skin, however the hair is still detectable. I could have possibly tried a prosthetic brow piece to make sure the brows were completely covered as it's very hard to cancel brows out totally.

From this makeup I feel that it did cancel out some obvious gender markers and makes it a lot harder to determine gender, however I know from my research that men and women have different bone structures facially and I think that this is made obvious by this makeup. Melissa still looks feminine because of her jawline and brow bone not being prominent or bigger. This means although people may identify male and female adults by hairstyles, facial hair and makeup, sex differences are actually deeper than this and gender cannot just be taken away so easily.