Ellis from Glow Up

[BigWholeBean]

Hi everyone,

I was watching a makeup competition on Netflix, called Glow Up. You know the drill, each week someone is voted off until the best make up artist remains.
One of the contestants, Ellis, is a man who clearly enjoys wearing a lot of makeup. This is what he said about not being trans, “ I thought I was transgender before I started my makeup journey. I explored my gender through makeup to make me feel as beautiful as I wanted to feel. Makeup brought me to drag and helped me find confidence in myself. I realised that I’m not transgender, but makeup gave me the empowerment to be who I want to be.”
He was just a boy who wanted to break through the artificial gender barriers, and enjoy a traditionally female activity. I thought it was interesting.

I found the series on iPlayer and it’s well worth a watch. Ellis reminded me of some of the people in the New Romantic scene on the 80s like Steve Strange.

It's really good to see young men pushing gender boundaries without pushing women's boundaries. My young teen son enjoys playing around with makeup, so he enjoyed watching Ellis.

I watched this series when it was on iPlayer

I thought all the female contestants looked really uncomfortable on the drag make-up week, and all seemed to dodge creating a full mtof drag look in the challenge.

I felt really pleased for Ellis though and that he found a creative & healthy career path.

Yes I really like Ellis. At first I admit I thought he was an attention-seeking OTT drama queen, as those drawn to reality TV often are but he's really grown on me. He's very thoughtful as well as genuinely artistic and I also noticed what he said about realising he wasn't trans.

It seem so obvious that while "trans" exists and is so applauded as an option by many, it's going to be one of the first ideologies people turn to when they don't fit into strict gender norms - and that's a lot of people. When actually, it's so much more constructive to just question gender norms and then challenge and change them. I like Glow Up (stupid name though!) because it shows make-up as a fun, creative thing for anyone who's interested, whether as a hobby or a career.

They were all crap at the drag make-up though, as I recall. Which seems odd as it seems such an obvious style, but maybe it's harder than it looks. The drag guest judge was also awful and not at all helpful, unlike some.

I agree that the drag make up week was bad for all of them! It’s almost not a make up challenge, but a face paint one, you know?

It was interesting that one of the first ideologies that Ellis turned to when he felt he didn’t ‘fit’ was the trans one. Is it because it’s the most well publicised? It’s so extreme to be the first place people turn to.

I also wondered that. In the 80s we had lots of ‘gender benders’ (hope I don’t get a warning for that, I’m sure it was what we called them!) like Boy George and many male stars wore make up - Adam Ant in his Prince Charming era, Nick Rhodes in Duran Duran, and later glam metal lads like Poison -- and I think we learnt from them that you could look as outrageous as you liked without having to change your sex. These days gender roles feel much stricter so maybe someone like Ellis who is drawn to make-up and non-stereotypical ‘man stuff’ looks first to trans ideology. I haven’t expressed that very clearly, sorry. I think it’s partly about role models.