Wanted: Courage.

You better not be dressed like a sexy inner tube when I get home.

Well, I’ve enjoyed my extended holiday thanks to Gregg Wallace sinking Masterchef like the Titanic and leaving John Torode to drift around the Atlantic aboard a deconstructed cheesecake (biscuit base unbuttery). I’m rested, replenished, trying my best to ignore the state of the world and… not entirely sure I remember how to do any of this? But I would like to thank WordPress for not logging me out, you did me a solid.

Anyway, Glow Up is back! You’d be forgiven for not realising that and thinking this was instead a repeat because this year’s contingent of MUAs do feel like they were made up of the collective cell scrapings of everyone that came before them. So let’s meet our lab-grown cast of make-up artists and of course because if I’m left to my own devices for more than 1 week I do begin to hyperfixate on Animal Crossing, so here they are as their Animal Crossing villager counterparts:

as you can see, we’re back up to a cast of 10, however they are still making Leomie Anderson stand with the contestants instead of the judges during the challenge briefings for some reason

I’m convinced it’s because Dom’s a short king and it triggers his threat response but I can’t find any information about his height except this sentence that implies his height fluctuates and he owns a nebulous 62kgs

also, this was a suggested Google search so I think we might need to sit someone down while we explain a few things to them

I’m choosing to believe they think Dom and Val are married. In which case, I wish them all the best in their AU WattPad life.

HARRI Up

For their very first Industry Challenge, the MUAs were having to do the makeup looks for HARRI’s latest latex fashion – HARRI being the designer famed for having Sam Smith turning up to The Brit Awards looking like a Rorschach Test got botox

I see… the nose of a dog that got stung by upwards of 15 bees?

Of course for such a couture, high fashion runway you need an equally couture, high fashion makeup look – sadly you can’t really do the bare minimum and carry off looking like a cunty inner tube, just ask Sam Smith! The look the MUAs were instructed with recreating was a very goth-inspired look in which the models had to look like the corpse of someone who died of shame because they didn’t fully think through shaving off their eyebrows

and to create the look of All Stars Gollum, the MUAs were having to apply brow covering prosthetics which does feel a bit like a baptism of fire, the first challenge on this show usually just calls for foundation matching and being at least mildly competent at doing eyeliner.

Of course Kat was extremely excited and nervous by the prospect of a goth-inspired anything because somewhere there’s a shopping centre carpark missing the girl that hisses at anyone wearing a cardigan

sadly Kat did underperform in the eyes of the judges and key makeup artist for the runway, Isamaya French, with her “not goth enough” look

I think there’s a lot we could unpack about the look on the one black model being the one seen as “not goth enough” but Kat possibly could have pushed the colour of the lip a little further to contrast more because it’s looking a little neutral. However, her model looked killer on the runway

like a possessed baby with a grudge.

On the other end of the spectrum, Rahual had gone TOO goth on his first attempt at the look with the decision to do a jet black lip as opposed to the “greige” one Isamaya asked for

so he had to spend quite a bit of time trying to rectify that but just never got it quite right, as evidenced by Leomie’s complete inability to hide the fact she knew Rahual was heading to that red chair

and yeah, the look wasn’t great and the show did Rahual dirty given he was THE ONLY ONE they did a side-by-side shaming of

While Rahual went too cool with his look, Josh’s look was leaning a little too warm for Isamaya’s liking

I think the fact he actually matched the lip to his model’s hair is kind of a serve – the look feels very Julia Fox coded, WHICH IS A COMPLIMENT to the girls that get it. Ailish’s was just about the same tone of brown as Josh’s, however there were bigger concerns to pick over than issues with undertones

Ailish got into a bit of flap because she’d accidentally broken one of her brow covers, leading to Isamaya “having to” do one of them for her

I don’t think you “had to”, babe. She didn’t ask you to! But yeah, it was pretty obvious which brow cover had been done by the experienced makeup artist and which had been done by the university student barely managing to hold it together as someone shoved a camera in her face.

While Ailish would draw the occasional glower from Isamaya across the room, the stand-outs were Joe who got a very nice drive-by compliment which I’m choosing to believe was done purposefully within earshot of Ailish

we never actually got full shots of Joe’s model, or fellow winner of the challenge Mia’s so… we’ll just have to trust them on that bizarre editing choice. But at least they got something to make them memorable – Jade gets mentioned without her look being shown leaving you to have to wonder if the girl exists at all. Which probably means she wins because they do have a habit of completely burying the winners in the edit for the first 2 weeks. So congratulations Jade, or sorry it happened – whichever comes to fruition.

My personal favourite of the looks, which I can’t really say because they were all the same look, really it’s just “my favourite model” was Jake’s because this face card is LETHAL

how dare you look this gorgeous while looking a bit like you’re in the middle of dental surgery?

I was going to make a joke about that being a forbidden photoshoot from America’s Next Top Model and then I remembered that they actually did that one time

every year I come a little closer to making a YouTube Channel just to meticulously dissect ANTM, but for now I’ll leave that to Willie Muse and Shay A.

Lastly we have Cherise – technically there’s also Jamie but they didn’t give a photo of his look either and really he and Jake are the same twink at different depths of field so they can share a critique. Cherise had a little bit of creasing in her eyebrow covers but she was also the first to get a critique and in the end I think actually had some of the less creased options

also, quite a warm seeming lip? And before we begin to think a little bit too hard about what it makes their model’s lips look like, here’s a gimpy doughnut to distract us

nobody was having more fun than that model.

An Alt Metal Gollum Look Ranking:
1. Joe’s Based On Vibes Alone
2. Mia Because I Didn’t Witness A Direct Compliment
3. Jake’s Model’s Face Was The Real Winner
4. Jamie Clinging To Jake’s Coattails
5. Cherise’s Furrowed Non-Brow
6. Jade Who Definitely Exists
7. Kat Loses Her Goth Privileges
8. Josh’s Hot Lips
9. Rahual vs The World
10. Ailish’s 50% Workload

Quality Beats

For their very first Creative Brief, it was of course the standard “tell us a bit more about you!” with the specification that the look had to showcase the MUAs best quality with Val and Dom being joined by guest judge, Patricia Bright

sadly for the MUAs we have truly reached the event horizon of possible looks for this show as Val, Dom and Patricia had to forcibly stop themselves from yawning their way through the millionth rainbow look that was presented to them

The gays must be stopped. To be fair to Jamie, I’m going to assume the black lines were meant to be completely covered in those black rhinestones and he ran out of time because that would have at least made it slightly more impressive. But at what point do you stop competing on Glow Up and start competing on The Great British Stoning? Which feels like every day if you’re trans. EYYYYYYYY! I joke because if I don’t I will cry.
Jamie wasn’t the only one to be yawned at because for some reason Val deemed Josh’s poodle look to be boring and something you could do with your eyes closed while driving a car?????????

I don’t think you could even do this look while trying to get your self-driving Tesla to not kill you?

are there ways the look could have been pushed a little further? Sure, probably! Poodles have more of a snout and maybe some sort of fur texture but I still think it’s a really good look with a perfectly applied colour base, prosthetic and FINALLY a good wig on Glow Up. MY GOD, IT’S ONLY BEEN 7 SERIES! Could they have critiqued that the connection between the Poodle and the Confidence as his defining characteristic were a little too tenuous? SURE! If you’re going to do that, I think the Poodle needs to have more of a character.

Also delving into the animal kingdom was Joe and oh boy… This was just a bit sad as he spent the entire time being so proud of the Halloween-friendly “I’m a sexy lion” look he had going on and clearly feeling his oats

while Dom, Val and Patricia basically sat in their judging lair screaming for him to DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING! MY GOD!

if you’re going to do an animal look on this show, you’re probably going to have to pull out the prosthetics – there’s only so much painting your moustache and dressing like Big Cat Butcher is going to do for you

I genuinely thought Val calling it “low rent panto” was going to kill Joe as he went into Nuclear Wooby Mode

my heart broke for him, I do think he looked beautiful though and he has a great face for makeup – but yeah, the lion look felt like a look you could do with your eyes closed as your Tesla decides to explode.

Doubly unfortunate for Joe was the fact Rahual pulled no punches with his look that he’d had to do with the 15 minute time penalty

it’s a really beautiful look with some great ombreing effects going on. I don’t know if I love the cluster of gemstones on his cheek, they just feel a little plonked on and need to be a little more varied and erratic to give that constellation-like feel I think he was going for? His best quality was “the light within” which… sure, it’s only slightly more nebulous than Jake and his “verbal affirmations with friends!”

saying nice and encouraging things to your friends is just HAVING FRIENDS. However, Jake constructed this whole fantasy about flushing the brainworms out of your friends by telling them to have a Snickers. If only…

this look is completely unparsable to me, none of it seems to belong together and kind of looks like the look you were trying to do with your eyes closed before your Cybertruck crashed into the New York Stock Exchange and went up in a blaze of sparks and burning glue fumes. I don’t get it, but I wish it luck in its adventures in self-driving domestic terrorism.

Also in the red chair was Ailish, who was basically doing a rainbow pride look inspired by her ~Free Spirit~ but they focused more on how she works with colours despite being colourblind as a mercy killing

I really like the almost sketchy colour pencil look to the application but it’s done in such a way that I can’t work out if that’s what she wanted it too look like or if she realised 2 and a bit hours is a push for a look this big. Also we have seen the abstract colourful look at least 5 times on this show and while we can’t expect the MUAs to reinvent the wheel, and I think this was more of an indicator of Ailish’s greenness to make-up as ~artistry~, if you’re going to do a 2-a-penny look, you need to add something to it. Like Kat was doing her Ink Blot look

sorry, Kat was doing her ink blot look

I see… “It’s not a phase!” as you take your annual Christmas family photo

the Rorschach look has been done to death, and done very well by Kat in this instance – her symmetry was incredible despite the initial fail which had me in stitches

Kat has a wonderfully expressive face for TV, I’m slightly obsessed with her. She had gone the extra mile to make her look more original, because her best quality is of course Not Being Like The Other Girls, She’s Goffik by adding the UV makeup

I don’t love the pattern she made with it, it’s a bit… Jack O’Lantern and I think she could have given it a little more finesse but I’ll take it!

We did get a double up on best qualities with Jade continuing to live in the shadow of everyone as she and Cherise had read the same listicle about symbols of Empathy and landed on a Peruvian Lily inspired look

everything about this episode was doing Jade dirty, however, she did have a very pretty if too literal look at the end of the day which is kind of funny because as it stands, Jade is more of a concept living in a liminal space of reality TV existence

it’s really beautifully done and as Patricia pointed out, the lips are an absolute triumph

but she did then get a little blown out of the water by Cherise’s less literal and slightly more deftly done version of the look and she was living her America’s Next Top Model fantasy in this shoot

to quote the late, great Andre Leon Talley: “I would hang this in my salon!”

Lastly we have Mia who was doing an Ice Queen look which feels a little bit like the opposite of what the challenge was but sure! It’s somehow less of a red flag than someone saying “I’m an empath” – sorry Jade and Cherise, you both seem lovely. Or at least you do Cherise. Jade, I’m not 100% convinced you exist yet, but conceptually, you seem chill. SPEAKING OF CHILL

it’s pretty and I do love a beauty look but she maybe could have used her time better given she spent a lot of time applying prosthetics that didn’t actually add anything to the look.

A Best Quality Look Ranking:
1. Cherise’s $100,000 Contract With CoverGirl Cosmetics
2. Space, Space Baby
3. Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way
4. Josh’s Roadsafe Poodle
5. Middle of the Road Jade
6. The Elsa We Have At Home
7. Jamie’s Neutrogena Pride Campaign
8. Jake! Has! Friends!
9. Big Cat Butcher The Cowardly Lion
10. Painting With At Least Most Of The Colours Of The Wind

In A Negative Headspace

For playing it a little too simply, it was Joe and Ailish finding themselves in the Face Off, with their fate being decided by a graphic negative space liner

which is the sort of look I wish I could do but I’m cursed with hooded eyes and absolutely no eye for symmetry – it feels like a criminal offense for me to even look at a liner brush.

Given the nerves of the situation, I do think both of them did quite well, Joe did make a bit of a mess of it, his model’s eyelashes got quite gunked up and his line thickness was all over the shop

however, I thought the shaping from both him and Ailish was quite good – all I’ll say is they never showed Val’s demonstration face on because you can quite clearly see the top of her shapes aren’t symmetrical with one being flat and the other quite curved. Why they gave her a model with such small eye space for that, I DON’T KNOW.

In the end, Ailish was saved and we sadly say goodbye to Best Boy Joe

I’m really sad – he seemed like an absolute sweetie. There’s still the hope that they reveal he and Kat are the same person in and out of drag though. Fingers crossed!

And so, 9 MUAs remain: