Sometime last year, my television went kaput, and my heart was left with a void that I slowly replaced with a YouTube obsession. The beauty gurus and their elaborate tutorials are a particular favourite.

To be honest, I pretty much repel colour. My wardrobe consists of strictly neutrals, as well as my make-up bag. I tend to live vicariously through the tutorials rather than try to mimic them, but it’s an art form to admire.

Dustin Hunter’s youtube channel is full of informative make-up tips and drastic yet wearable tutorials. His looks are always very bold and smokey. I find myself constantly on his channel searching for reviews of beauty products, trusting his opinions over store employees.

Heather is a Vancouver based student for special effects makeup. Although her YouTube channel tends to focus on makeup, she also does hair and nail tutorials. Her look is always changing, and her videos never bore.

Cora’s videos are fun and quirky, and she also happens to be hella funny. Her technique is flawless and her artistic capabilities are seemingly endless. Watch one of her Halloween tutorials, but only if you’re willing to risk having your mind blown.

Leesha’s enthusiasm will make you happy, just by watching her. Her makeup collection is massive, ranging from drugstore to designer products. Bonus: Her mother often makes appearances on her channel, with videos and tips of her own.

Nikkie is a 17 year old girl from the Netherlands. Her channel includes a lot of celebrity inspired looks, done in a wearable way. There is a video for every occasion imaginable—though I’ve yet to find the perfect “spending hours on end watching YouTube videos” look.

text by Jessica da Silva

From Mommie Dearest
Photographers Sofia Sanchez & Mauro Mongiello
Stylist Samuel Francois, Model Siri Tollerød
For Numéro 97

When I was small, maybe eight or nine, my mother bought me my first makeup kit. A cheap drugstore affair, it would serve the double purpose of keeping me out of her “good” makeup while teaching me how to use the stuff before I took it out into the world. In the last few months, celebrity mom Katie Holmes has been taken to task for allowing her daughter (age four) to walk around in ballroom dancing shoes – essentially child-size high heels. In my mind, giving little girls (or boys) the tokens of adulthood is mostly harmless; an amusing gesture, a little parental indulgence.

Right?

Created in 2001 by a Parisian digital arts collective called Pleix, the video below shows a series of four imagined “Beauty Kits for Little Girls” containing DIY beauty treatments. But rather than the customary cheap-makeup-and-nail-polish combos, these kits promise breast implants, liposuction, rhinoplasty, and cosmetic dental surgery.

Part kitschy vintage ad, part modern infomercial, the piece takes you through step-by-step guides, juxtaposing playful music, simple images and rudimentary drawings with creepy flashes of bloody scalpels and bone fragments. It’s both amusing and disturbing – an apt commentary on an increasing appetite for and obsession with (arbitrary) aesthetic perfection that, at this point, seems to claim its acolytes almost in infancy.

This work is already nine years old (just a little older than its implied target market), but I think it might actually be getting more relevant over time.

- g.