It’s been a long week.

It’s Amber Davies’s Eyebrows vs The World.

Elementary, My Dear WhatsOnStage Awards

As ever, the semi-final Industry Assignment was a Red Carpet Challenge with the MUAs each doing the makeup for someone attending the WhatsOnStage Awards – which is like The Tony’s for the people who can’t afford a New York hotel stay. It’s not exactly The Brit Awards of series 5. Series 6 didn’t have a Red Carpet Challenge because we had 20% less MUAs and Axel had made an enemy of Daisy Maskell who had her makeup entirely redone between leaving his makeup chair and arriving at the red carpet

I’M SURE NOTHING LIKE THIS WILL EVER HAPPEN AGAIN

we’ll get to Amber Davies being put through her own personl hell in a few minutes as Jamie struggled to comprehend her shouting “BROWN!” at him for a solid 5 minutes

with it being red carpet glam, this was very much Jade’s challenge to lose and given her client, Henrie Kwushue, walked in and immediately said “I love your makeup!” she was on to an easy winner – aided even more so by Henrie just being drop dead gorgeous as a blank canvas

the key makeup artist for the challenge was Buster Knight, who when he wasn’t studying Jamie’s faffing like the scientist watching the Neurolink chimpanzees bash their own heads in

did try to make it sound like Jade was potentially not going to finish because she’s one hell of a yapper (STOP TRYING TO SILENCE WOMEN, BUSTER.)

I want to see the full unedited footage of Jade interrogating Henrie like she’s an officer at Guantanamo Bay playing 20 questions – I’m convinced she probably knows Henrie’s national insurance number by now, which is the least Henry could give her for making her look this gorgeous

if you made me look even half this glam, I’d let you commit a little bit of fraud in my name as a treat. Or give you a shout out on the old Instagram story

whichever is easier.

Despite being a little out of his depth with a more beauty focused challenge, Jake was very eager to impress his client, Danny Beard. Sadly Danny wasn’t going for the regular clown white Danny-face which I think Jake could have knocked out with his eyes closed

and wanted something a little more natural, but still snatched

as soon as Jake said “Snatural” you could see Danny immediately relax and know that the two of them would get along pretty well. Meanwhile in The Amber Corner

the very real risk that Amber was about to suck her cheeks in so hard she’d turn herself inside out every time Jamie found a new and intriguing way to torture her eyebrows <3

But while Jamie tried to convince Amber that burgundy brows (???????) were going to work, the biggest push that Jake had for Danny was convincing him that lining the waterline in black would make his eyes pop, which they certainly did

there is truly nothing a blue-eyed person loves more than someone telling them that they’re eyes are really popping.

Cherise had Zeze Millz in her chair, who didn’t want anything particularly excited done with her makeup so Cherise’s biggest obstacle was the fact Zeze has oily skin and there was a 50% chance that every time Cherise touched a makeup product, Buster would appear to ask her how this would affect oily skin

in the end Zeze looked great, the judges did think the skin still looked a little too shiny because of some flashback on the centre of her forehead

I think it’s flattering? Am I insane? I think it just highlights and adds a dimension to the planes of her face, it looks highlighted and luminous to me. I think we might be getting into a little bit of the unrealistic expectations of makeup with this critique and they just kind of needed to give themselves a choice to join Jamie in the bottom 2 because it was very obvious Jade and Jake didn’t deserve to be down there.

Oh Jamie… He lost this the moment that his client, Amber Davies, said she wanted a look inspired by Hailey Bieber which completely scrambled his brain like a deactivation phrase for a Cold War sleeper agent

Hailey Bieber is just basic soft glam – if glam makeup is “inside the box” and alt makeup is “outside the box”, then Hailey Bieber is the box. There is a monthly article about Hailey Bieber’s new “must have manicure” and it’s just the same shimmery nude pink french tip with a different name. Her makeup is similar – very nude and buffed to perfection

so quite why Jamie IMMEDIATELY reached for the Beauty Bay Fiery 2.0 palette, I do not know

he would have honestly been better off doing the whole look using just a bronzer palette, or just, you know, NOT MAKING THE BROWS TWICE AS BIG AND BURGUNDY

I don’t quite know why he didn’t use a brow pencil, they had brow pencils, Jade used one for the lips because, in true beauty industry fashion, they didn’t have a lip pencil deep enough for Henrie

guys…?????? You knew Henrie was going to be there. You actively asked her to participate in this. Literally all of her red carpet looks involve her lips being lined. You should have had a deep enough lip liner on hand.

So after Jamie had painted Amber’s brows the colour of a bruise and she started clenching her jaw so hard her dentist began seeing dollar signs like my iron deficient ass standing up to quickly seeing stars, Jamie got very flustered and Amber was on the verge of running into traffic to escape this whole situation

and something clearly happened because Amber got a little private discussion with Buster (fully in earshot of everyone) about how things were going, and presumably to stop her from ripping her own arm off and beating Jamie with it because her nails were sinking deeper and deeper into her biceps

they did give Jamie a fair few opportunities to correct the makeup but he was very much stuck in that Hailey Bieber death spiral and was not going to get there on his own

and so Buster did step in to fix the brows and contour – there wasn’t even enough time to properly get into the contour because the brow situation was a perplexing heptathlon of its own. Ultimately, Amber looked beautiful because she is a very beautiful woman but she did only post this singular image to her Instagram story in which she wasn’t looking directly at the camera (I guess we might be skipping the Red Carpet Challenge again next year)

I want to write an anthropological study about this whole situation – I’ll write to the BBC requesting the full unedited raw footage.

A WhatsOnStage Awards Look Ranking:
1. Jade being Jade
2. Oh My Danny, What Blue Eyes You’ve Got? 👁️👄👁️
3. Zeze Does It, Cherise
4. I_Want_That_Twink_Obliterated.jpeg

The winner of the challenge was very deservedly Jade, with Jake just missing out on the win on account of his makeup station looking a bit like Jamie’s brain when someone within 5 feet of him says the name “Hailey Bieber”

Not a single lid fully closed <3

Collaboration, No Breathing

This’s Creative Brief was much easier to interpret than last week’s more nebulous call for Decadence with the MUAs each having to create a look inspired by their dream collaboration. If you are one of the seemingly many people who read these recaps without watching the show, I want you to just try and guess who you think Jade’s dream collaboration is. But for now, we’ll stick to something slightly more predictable with Jake, the only oher MUA aside from Jade to dodge the red chairs, who was looking at the fantasy illustrations of Brian Froud, more famously known as THE CONCEPT ARTIST FOR “THE DARK CRYSTAL” AND “LABYRINTH” but Jake wasn’t allowed to say that due to the BBC not wanting to shell out to license a screenshot

they didn’t even pay for a screenshot from Doja Cat’s music video for Jamie, they just used FanArt by AgusDrawing on Instagram

I’m quite familiar with Brian Froud’s work because my GCSE art assignment was an Ecological Fieldguide for a new planet largely inspired by his works. Or it would have been, then I had a mental breakdown and dropped out of school and now I write recaps about television. See kids, who needs GCSEs? Be free, embrace cringe.

It’s a collaboration that makes a lot of sense because you can already see a lot of Brian Froud’s influence in Jake’s regular style and Jake’s final piece was a very good blend of Froud’s classical and Jake’s more alternative styles

I adore this makeup – the sort of vaguely religious markings on it add a lot of intrigue to what could otherwise look like a pretty regular Forest Sprite. But as is, it’s very D&D-coded. There’s nothing a D&D player loves more than semi-religious scarification, because what are TTRPGs but a game for queer people to work through their religious trauma with? I would absolutely play this Spring Eladrin Nature Cleric.

There was some very faux concern for Jake because he was taking great care over the application of his bald cap and other prosthetics leaving himself an hour to paint the rest of is makeup. Which seems ample time given Jake’s usual paint technique being very splotchy and tactile (a compliment) – it was not a strong week for Suspense because they also had to make out that Jade was “beginning to panic and ruin her symmetry”

while showing us what might be the most symmetrical look you’ve ever seen on Glow Up

it’s fine guys, we all knew Cherise and Jamie were heading straight to the Face Off the moment Cherise revealed her look was very minimal compared to the others

it’s stunning and the narrative of it being about her acceptance of her natural hair, inspired by the works of Shani Crowe – particularly the Yin and Yang photograph of the entwining black and white braids, was very poignant and definitely came across clearly

I loved Cherise’s look, but it just didn’t feel like it was a semi-final look, which is a shame because any other week I think she probably would have got more of the praise she deserved for it.

Jamie was remaining hopeful that he hasn’t burnt his bridge with the entire celebrity world, with his dream collaboration being Doja Cat. Her side of the collaboration being her music video for Demons

and the iconic (and probably far to ambitious for the time constraint of being in the Red Chair on a Glow Up Challenge) gem encrusted Schiaparelli look which took 8 makeup artists 5 hours to do (Jamie had 2 hours and 15 minutes)

and Jamie’s contribution to this look was going to be… contour

and this is probably the biggest sticking point for Jamie at this point in the competition – he doesn’t really have a defined style. Jake has fairies and anecdotes about his quite frankly iconic grandmother, Jade has Glam and a face card that won’t quit and Cherise has line work and an eye for incredible levels of detail. Jamie still hasn’t quite defined himself, which might be because he’s still in the middle of his degree and also holding down two jobs. One of which is at McDonald’s, which as far as I’m concerned makes him braver than the troops. Everyone who works at McDonald’s should be awarded a Victoria Cross

which is insane for a 19 year old and I have a lot of admiration for him managing to juggling that, it COULD NOT be me, as I said, I had a Menty B just trying to do 12 GCSEs. But I think *maybe* another year or two would have benefitted Jamie in the competition but does show why he handles the stress of the Face Off so well.

Sensibly, Jamie was limiting himself to a tiny dribble of rhinestones instead of a major encrustment

but later got ambitious and decided to instead encrust both of the horns, possibly in an attempt to try and hide the slight lack of symmetry in their placement

it did not work

I think the biggest issue with Jamie’s look was the lack of variation in the size of his stones, so he couldn’t really get that gradual drip-like effect. But there’s still a lot of good in there, I love the slight reddening around the eyes and the gradient on the lips is stunning.

Lastly we have Jade, who was playing a fun game of trying to get everyone to say the name “Gunther von Hargens” and nobody knowing how thick a Germanic accent they should be applying when doing so

I love her so much – I enjoy how often her creative brief concepts feel like she just clicked “Random Article” on Wikipedia and went with the first result

there’s your challenge, Jade.

Gunther von Hagens is a German anatomist who basically pioneered a method for preserving human bodies and has exhibited such examples

so Jade was combining his medical studies with her love for glam

it’s VERY good – the symmetry is honestly quite astonishing. However the judges did feel it lacked a certain level of glam, which I do agree with. The eyes could certainly have been a little cuntier. But I do disagree with Dom saying there should have been “more gore” because Gunther’s pieces aren’t gorey, they’re clinical. They’re meant to look like 3D illustrations of a medical textbook, and Jade captured that in a really fascinating way with the almost fuschia and magenta luminousness to her muscle work

but maybe I should pipe down as the resident Jade stan in the audience. If she wins next week, I am going to be insufferable about it because I called it in the first episode

but Jake has a strong storyline heading into the final so it’ll be a strong contest between the two of them and Cherise being a workhorse of a contestant with a strong track record regardless of a lack of Industry Challenge wins.

A Collaborative Look Ranking:
1. Jake’s Spring Eladrin Nature Cleric, Æcorn Silkwood
2. Jade’s Inside Out Boy Reboot
3. Braidy or Not
4. D’oh!-ja Cat

Grunger Dogs

With neither Cherise nor Jamie doing quite enough to impress the judges, the two of them were remaining in the hot seats and going into the Face Off challenge. The task being to executed by a glossy halo eye and smoked out grunge lip

and the exciting thing about Glow Up is with the Face Off Challenge it does feel like literally anything could happen – as illustrated by the last two weeks feeling like they were written by those infinite monkeys trying to write Shakespeare. However, The Runaway Jamie Train was finally juddering to a halt with an unfortunate dripping of his lips and a premature eglossuation on the ol’ eyeballs causing some wrinkling

WHO’S INVENTING WORDS NOW, SHAKESPEARE?

and thus The Face Off Assassin becomes The Face Off Assassinated, as Amber Davies tucks £50 into Cherise’s back pocket

he may have felt like he overstayed his welcome on the show for a couple of weeks too many but I can tell Dom and Val both saw a lot of potential in Jamie and I hope he goes away from this experience with a better idea of how to nurture that.

And so, we have our finalists!