Stunned with a hammer
This is so depressing I can barely believe it.
Why why why on earth would anyone prefer the zombie blow-job doll to the gorgeous real woman on the left? Apparently lots of people or this “makeup artist” wouldn’t be doing it, but…I can’t understand why. Zombie blow-up doll looks like exactly that – a porn image, a photo from a failing fashion magazine, a completed mannequin for a store window. You wouldn’t want to talk to her, let alone live with her for the rest of your life.
I was so repulsed I went looking, and found a collection of 21 of these nightmares. The ones on the right all look alike, like zombie blow-job doll. The ones on the left all look human. One has a rash or acne or something that I can see why she’d want concealed, but other than that the TransforMations are all a horrible mindless mistake. What is wrong with people?
That’s not merely a make-up transformation; that’s some egregious photomanipulation. Everything from the length of the neck and the shape of the mouth to the amount of hair on the weird new skull has been changed to look inhuman.
I agree that the young women on the left look beautiful. Who has persuaded them that they need to look like porn dolls for their photos? The ‘make-overs’ are horrific.
More like Disney-fication… Reminds me of attempts to look like girls from shoujo manga (they’re pretty damn horrifying).
Without “Before” and “After”, I wouldn’t even know that those are (supposed to be) the same people.
I may not know a lot about make-up, but I know a photoshopped image when I see one. Or, in this case, 21 of them.
I dunno, I think he’s genuine. There are videos showing his process. He does some extreme amounts of shading and drawing features, so the facial structure ends up looking quite different. Here is one such video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeylvuYeVog
I tend to agree that the result does not look particularly attractive. Part of the reason, I think, is simply that it looks so fake.
OTOH:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/04/21/women-turning-away-make-up-lockdowns-change-beauty-habits/
Stepford syndrome.
I’m genuinely baffled by this. Put aside the objectification and pornification for a moment – they’re certainly there, but just park them, because I’ve got a much less sophisticated puzzlement.
We can assume that at some point the prospective groom saw the prospective bride across a crowded room, and something sparked in the more primitive part of his brain which led to a proposal and to marriage. Aaaaaaah. How sweet.
(Presumably, the same thing happened with her – the more primitive parts of her brain fired up in an analogous way- but we’re not seeing groom photos.)
Why, then, would it be considered a good thing to disguise whatever it was that made the more primitive part of his brain go PING! under a layer of this… marzipan? It was the one on the left that he fancied.
I’m noticing that all but a couple of the comments on the article are uniformly negative, and many include the same observation as @8 (in fact one person comments that her sister (?) had her wedding photos taken with this kind of makeup on and ended up just putting them in a drawer since she looked like a stranger). And many of the positive comments are a noncommittal ‘I like the hair’.
But look at how much work this guy does to make sure every woman has a unique look:
‘”When I meet my client, the first question I ask is what kind of occasion are they getting their makeup done for,” Arner once told us. “I also ask my clients if they have any specific requests. For example, if they want a natural or dramatic look.
“Then I ask them [to show me] the dress that they are going to wear. The design of the dress and its details reveal the style of the look the client is going for. Then, I analyze their facial features.”‘
Enzyme, no, that’s my puzzlement too – even if the new looks were like Disney cartoons or Seinfeld episodes I still wouldn’t understand why the goal is to make the woman look completely unlike herself. The porny zombie aesthetic makes it that much worse but the fundamental “disguise her” approach is the real wtf.
And the extremism of it underlines the underlying insult of assuming that women need to be disguised or improved while men don’t. (I suppose we can console ourselves by interpreting it as “men are shallow so they want women to be prettied up for them while women take men as they are because women aren’t damn fools.” But it’s not really very consoling.)
Horrifying. These ‘makeover transformations’ just make the person look artificial, like a Barbie. I suppose this is the point or this look would not be profitable, but with every after photo, I could not help but think of what happens when the groom and bride kiss. How much makeup smears off at every touch?
One falls in love with someone because of their personality, a personality that shines in the face and enchants (in my experience, at least). What Arber Bytyqi does is destroy any sense of a person. One might describe these photos as Before & Arber, and Arber has neither respect nor taste.
Exactly, and so the mystery is why either party wants that. I can see wanting a little glam, even though I think makeup is silly myself, but a total mask – what on earth is the point?
The “afters” look very…trans.
@14 I’ve read people suggesting that ‘normalising’ this makeup style has the effect of making it easier for men to ‘pass’ as women in daily life. (Though as far as I can tell TIMs in general aren’t that interested in putting in that kind of time and effort.)
“One of these is the actual bride’s head,, the other is cake. To make it even more difficult, the bride is made up to look like cake. Can you tell which is which?”
… That’s …
In the Before, I see the person. I wonder what she’s thinking that’s got that half smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
Where is she in the After? Those features that let my primate brain connect to another are absent in that mockery.
Why not go full Halloween or drama class or wax museum? Dress the bride up as Clytemnestra or Sherlock Holmes or a zebra or the Taj Mahal? Or, as Sackbut says, a cake? You could dress her up as the wedding cake – very meta.
(FWIW, I was referencing the many “real or cake?” videos out there, such as this one: https://youtu.be/KIRE8yscK_o .)
Ah, I was unaware of the genre.
There’s a whole Netflix series of it, too
In general I prefer what I might call ‘natural’ over anyone with any makeup (or piercings or tattoos)
There are a lot of industries that are mostly, if not totally, scams.
cosmetics
bottled water
organic food
I could probably come up with a few more
Who are they supposed to be fooling with these photoshopped pictures? Attendees at the wedding — even the ones who aren’t family and friends — will KNOW what they actually look like.
I don’t feel pity or bad for them, only disgusted.
Enzyme, that was my first thought. Why make the bride look like a stranger to the groom? But…in some ways, I understand the phenomenon. We grow up seeing models and actresses held up as standards of beauty, so our face falls short. The wedding has become a performance, an expensive one, performed for one’s own family and friends. It isn’t about the marriage, it’s about the spectacle. I know; one of my sisters did just that. I still shudder when I think of her wedding.
For what it’s worth, my first husband would have been totally behind that. He asked a Mary Kay lady to do my hair and make up for the wedding. He insisted I wear false fingernails (something I never did before and never have since) so no one would realize I bit my fingernails. Of course, almost everyone there knew me, so that was already a known factor.
My second husband? He would select the one on the left. I put on a little make up for our wedding, mostly so I didn’t look washed out in the pictures, but I would never make myself look like the one on the right. I had the natural look…which fit, since we got married outside.
I suspect a lot of it is pushed on women for profit, and they accept it because they’re used to the standards of beauty Hollywood pushes on us. My first husband wanted a trophy wife; he would approve of that look. My second husband wanted a partner, and he got one – lack of make up and all.
Domino @ 23, I don’t believe those pictures are photoshopped. Look up the makeup artist’s work, including videos. He does a pretty radical job of changing the way people look. The people don’t end up looking like they normally do, not by a long shot, but they do end up looking like those pictures.
There is an old children’s book about a lion who was invited to a “come as you are” party. He decided to get all gussied up, and when he got there he wasn’t admitted because nobody could tell who he was.