Transvox - Makeup Strategies with Joseph Harwood

[00:00:00] Hey and welcome back to Transvox and I'm delighted that Joseph Halwood's popped in to see us again. Hi Jojo, how are you? Hello, I'm okay. I was having a bit of a rant before

[00:00:20] we started because I am in recovery from a foot injury and I've had some annoying news about having to have a surgery so part of that I'm doing very well but I'm a bit

[00:00:31] limpish at the moment. Limpish? That's good. I was hoping that's your feet you're talking about so that's okay. Yes, yes it is. It is very annoying. I look like a penguin. My feet are like facing

[00:00:45] east and west. It's very strange but we will pass today. No heels then? I haven't been able to wear heels in over 15 months now so I'm very annoyed and it's been like a nightmare

[00:01:01] and I've been trying to do this sort of like I don't know if you'd like see all the characters in either old school video games like they just have like big chunky flat shoes with like

[00:01:10] fabulous clothes. They never have heels so I've been trying to kind of go to that direction but it's been so annoying. All I've wanted to do is get back to my personal trainer and I did a few

[00:01:18] partnerships with some brands about like gym equipment like I was sent a treadmill and I was sent a product called a power play which is like a vibration play and I've just been told

[00:01:28] today that I can't do any high impact stuff so I can't run, I can't use the power plate so I'm very annoyed but we'll do you know what makeup makes me happy so we'll talk about that.

[00:01:39] Well yes and it's really interesting when we first started chatting about that because I've never really thought about makeup as a way of feeling better and building resilience so can you tell us how that might work? Yeah well I'll give you an example of a recent

[00:01:52] campaign I just did. I won't go into details about what it's going to come out as because I'm not allowed to but last was it last Monday or the previous Monday? I'm not quite sure. I've

[00:02:01] been non-stop but I got to do the makeup for 13 trans people for a shoot with Mariana Vivanco who's a very very very magnificent photographer, huge for shooting people like Rihanna and a lot of Vogue covers and editorials and what we were doing basically my friends Jude and Jake

[00:02:21] both trans men. Jake's always in the news and Jude is always winning awards for their activism and they wanted to basically shine a light on people's stories I think I'll leave it as that

[00:02:35] but I got to speak directly and do makeup for trans men non-binary people, trans women from young to old and it was like an incredible experience for me because many of the trans women

[00:02:47] in my work which was a shock to me they were very excited to meet me and I just was there as makeup artist, I wasn't there as Joe Harlan and I got to hear about their stories of how they first

[00:02:57] discovered makeup and how makeup gave them their gender euphoria and gave them control over a situation that felt very turbulent and it was fabulous to see that but makeup has an incredible effect. It's so many things because you sit down it's almost like a

[00:03:15] meditative process so when you've got candles and I'm like a witch so I've got all my essential oils and potions and things that calm me down but then there's things like just sitting there

[00:03:26] and concentrating to good music with a glass of wine however your process is it does show you out definitely if you're doing it through a timer when people are like get the next person, get the next person that's settled but when you're doing it for fun it's great

[00:03:40] Yes and does that apply equally to trans mask people as well as trans femme? Absolutely so there's loads and loads and loads of trans men that wear makeup, there's many drag kings that are out there that also trans men that wear makeup to sort of enhance the illusion

[00:03:55] and I always used to do when I created the Boy To Girl tutorials many many years ago now on YouTube when YouTube just started I would paint on a masculine look on my face which

[00:04:05] involved a very different style of makeup too if I was doing my day-to-day feminine makeup so I would almost create angles and shadows where I didn't have them really present in my face

[00:04:19] and they would be present in men's faces because men have less of a fat pad across the face but there's various different fat pads but the shadows that are cast on a thinner face versus a plumper face, the thinner face automatically looks masculine so most people's

[00:04:35] eye if you look at an emaciated person it's very hard to distinguish the gender of a very emaciated person if you're just looking at their face you rely on like their secondary cues like their styling or what you understand as feminine because it's those fat pads and

[00:04:53] it's the distance between the features that really create that memory in your head of what a boy looks like what a girl looks like what a man or woman looks like and it's all about

[00:05:04] cheating them so it's all about creating those shadows and angles where they're on and lots of trans men like this particular shoot because everyone's being photographed they don't want to have their blemishes on show or they run dry circles or whatnot so it's more along

[00:05:16] the lines of that I wasn't painting on a masculine look but there is so much like you can do like when you look at drag kings that perform they literally you can use what's called

[00:05:27] a wire sponge which almost looks like a scourge to clean your dishes and what it does is when you dip it into a shadow product it creates the illusion of stubble so it literally imprints onto

[00:05:38] your face the texture of a beard so if you were trying to fill in a space where I don't have any black hair across most of my face I've got two particularly annoying beard patches the

[00:05:49] rest of my face is blonde facial hair so when I want to do a masculine look for a shoot whatever I can fill in all the blonde with the wire sponge and then I just leave those two annoying

[00:05:59] little black triangles on my chin but there's there's loads of tricks and bits like that enhancing the brows I know it's not now modern to have thicker brows regardless of your gender but traditionally and for most periods of time women have had thinner brows or tweezed brows

[00:06:14] it just um there's little tricks and tips that's fascinating and I guess I guess there's two things we're talking about here because I suppose one of the things I think about now is

[00:06:25] every morning I have to get up and I have the minimum amount of time to get my makeup on get to work and it doesn't feel like a particularly wonderful process but I guess you were talking

[00:06:37] about having the time to actually sit back down and experiment and put time aside to actually I don't mean play but well literally play an experiment I guess that's what you're talking

[00:06:46] about is it yeah if the sort of the process I mean I used to be quite methodical because when I would go for example to university I'd start off my day in Brighton and I'd have to get

[00:06:59] several trains and buffers in the morning to get to London but I still want to go in full regalia so I would be in London with to clip it this is before even I wore wigs this is

[00:07:08] like the hair extension era that took a whole hour on itself so I would be like absurd I get up ridiculously early and paint the face but um I don't like it's funny because I used

[00:07:18] to I was thinking about this recently and I was thinking about like what the routine was because one of the one of my friends said to me so you never go out in the kind of makeup

[00:07:27] I saw you out when you were a kid you used to come to all these events with the most insanely precise colorful almost like a geisha in the amount of makeup I was white face the bright

[00:07:40] colors very clean lines perfect blending like nothing that you don't see makeup like that even with the drag world because all of that's done for lighting it was I was literally

[00:07:50] doing like crazy kabuki makeup for the day and it was in my own style so it felt like a human face but it was but they were asking like why don't you do this anymore and I honestly think

[00:08:00] it was because me and my friends there was three of us I mentioned before that started out on social media that were trans we all used to not be in competition with each other but

[00:08:08] we had this sort of like competitive energy around what the extremities we could take it to like could we go with six pairs of eyelashes could we add 10 pairs of eyelashes like whatever

[00:08:20] madness it was and I think when you're in that sort of environment between like three people it's like you do kind of like ping pong ping pong like ideas and they get more granted by

[00:08:30] the application but I think it's just like that because I was thinking like why don't I do these crazy colors anymore I can't even be bothered I just do my really easy clean the skin

[00:08:40] clean every kind of floor that I would see that day from dark eye circles to a blemish and just make everything neat and I'm super blonde so I love a mascara but it's I think

[00:08:50] that that was so important and we used to always get get ready together so we'd all sit in the same place we listened to Lady Gaga when she first came out and then we just get

[00:08:58] ready together and it'd be like have I done this equal is that brow the same as this one and we didn't have eyebrows at that time so each hair was drawn hair by hair and it was just it was almost like a boot camp for like 10 years

[00:09:12] so last time we chatted we talked about skincare now I actually was quite um I've been uh sort of focusing on myself really and it is amazing the difference it sort of makes um just generally

[00:09:23] I mean even just moisturizing and I know you recommended all sorts of products last time and the back on the episode that we did but it'd be interesting to start thinking about makeup and I guess if we've done skincare is is the place that's not foundations or

[00:09:37] where would you go next well I have a very exciting announcement which I'm allowed to say in your my first podcast I'm going to talk about this one so as of June the third uh with

[00:09:49] June the third today no that's right I'm allowed to say as I'm doing this so I'm coming out with a latest in beauty box which is a makeup kit for someone who wants to go to a

[00:10:03] festival a pride it's basically lots of outlets from tiktok to the sunday style magazine have created edits so they've chosen a box of goodies that instead of paying 100 quid for you're going to get it for 45 pounds so latest in beauty approached me after the last

[00:10:22] week to do an lgbt themed box of pride and we have put together a box it's worth 230 quid it's got over 25 products in because some of them come with like there's a whole brush set in it

[00:10:35] and we're going to be selling it for 48 so in and around in a couple of weeks time I think this podcast whenever this podcast comes out it will be in the middle of june ready for

[00:10:44] prize um the box will be live so it will have all the things you need to including tutorials for everyone that's listening here so if you guys wanted to support me please check it

[00:10:53] out latest in beauty by joseph harward and that's coming that's kind of which I'm so excited about so that's the plan and where will we find it where should we look you'll be able to buy it

[00:11:03] directly from my website across all my social media so joseph harward josephharwood.com latest in beauty.com and it will be linked in everywhere to buy it's going to be so exciting and when we actually did our last chat about skincare and I was talking about

[00:11:17] all the things that I put together for I could put together all the things that I've sort of kind of built into my toolkit of what to do and I've got these various issues that caught

[00:11:26] up with skin I was thinking like I actually should be doing something that makes this simple for people that are actually purchasing makeup because it feels to me like when you are buying things individually these days you're paying excessively for one product

[00:11:41] and they're often you don't just need one product you need to mix and match colors to match your skin you need to have something that makes it set depending on if it's hot that

[00:11:50] week because we never know if it's going to be humid or crazily cold here in the UK so it was just it came at the most perfect timing so that will be new but to answer your question

[00:12:01] to go back into what to start off with with makeup yeah it's foundation is definitely the canvas creator really it's the thing that evens everything out and what you really want to do which I find so difficult especially with trans people that are trans women that

[00:12:20] are going through transition is to work to whatever they're going through at that period of time whether you've got facial hair still you're keeping your face or whatever and you want an extreme coverage that is quite difficult to do and I'm not going to say like any false

[00:12:36] promises about how easy it is to do full coverage makeup because it is a task in itself you have to match it to your neck you have to match to your ears you have to cover the certain

[00:12:46] things that you want to conceal so there is an art form in that and that's what my youtube video is all designed to show because I've got a lot of that on my old youtube which

[00:12:55] is a wonder joseph harwood again but it's realistically beauty is so technical technologically advanced now that all the formulas are really good like back in the day when when you used

[00:13:07] to buy like a retail super junk thing and then you'd go to like a department store and buy a very expensive foundation you'd see a drastic difference in quality between something like

[00:13:17] an s a lauder and something like a romeo today because the formulas are so good and they're so they've brought in lots of formulas from south korea there's been lots of formulas from japan there's lots of powders from italy the beauty world has become so much more smaller

[00:13:33] because social media has made it international we've now got access to formulas that would have cost 10 times as much before and that's the beauty of it so there is you don't have to be

[00:13:44] pressured to spend hundreds and hundreds of times on makeup it's about creating what you want to to really be within your makeup and there are so many great formulas for foundations now

[00:13:56] i mean it's really about your taste and what you want to do like if you want to go super glam there's lots of super glam formulas out there that are full of coverage but if you have

[00:14:06] older skin and you just wanted to clean up the skin there's things that are thinner that you can buy like thinner foundations it just is to do with your style so it it's very hard to kind

[00:14:17] of give a general piece of advice about foundations because i think they are part of wearing foundation is wearing the wrong foundations to know the right foundation you have to know what you want it to look like and the horrors that happen with department store

[00:14:31] lighting is that it doesn't really show you what you look like you have to go into a department store ask them to have a little sample or bring along a little sample pot

[00:14:40] and just get a little bit of a mix of a couple of shades and see what works for you at home take a photograph of it and then see what you look like in a in a flash photo versus

[00:14:51] still photo and just test things out and that's again the playfulness of makeup so you really have to investigate well i mean that's really interesting because i guess matching matching the color is really interesting and and my my color skin seems to my skin

[00:15:08] seem to change color throughout the air which i found quite peculiar i mean what's that all about because you know it's it's seem and i mean it's obvious isn't it as soon as you

[00:15:17] go out the sun your skin's going to change color slightly so do you need because i know you can have powders and greens and god knows what um but how do you so i like the idea of

[00:15:28] the how you test the color not doing under license i think that's key yeah but but is it sensible to say well you should look at changing makeup foundation almost by the season

[00:15:39] yeah absolutely absolutely and the thing is like um the the way that i think is the best foolproof method with makeup color and to match your colors in this is because it's very the application techniques when you're doing a dark skin versus lighter skin is quite different

[00:15:55] um because of the way that pigment forms or darker skin versus a very pale skin even if you have freckles and i'm someone that has very dark freckles like i used to have very

[00:16:07] dark freckles on my face they've lightened as i got older but and there we go it's all of that differs it's like a different style with each of these things but the way that you can

[00:16:17] guide yourself is by using the natural colors of your body so people are very confused when they see these numbers and these letters that come with shade ranges because they refer really

[00:16:29] to whether the the color's got more yellow or red to them so when you look at a makeup range like mac which is kind of the standard that makeup artists use as a reference point

[00:16:39] well they used to i think it's changing now but they would they would call the colors nw and nc which would be in reference to neutral cool and neutral warm cool meaning pink and warm

[00:16:52] meaning yellow now that's a whole it's almost like an algebra it's like a complete code which doesn't make sense the reality is if you look at your veins on your body so you

[00:17:04] look at any area that you can see a vein if it looks green you're more yellow if it looks blue you're more pink or more purpley blue and that's it i'm interesting i'm just busy

[00:17:19] looking at my things it's so it's the way to to see it out foolproof now there are lots of you if you want more olive skin you'll have more like a literally like an olivey base

[00:17:31] is that some of the foundations for arab women's skin can be extremely sort of they almost have like a grayness to the undertone of them but they match beautifully and they look gorgeous with

[00:17:41] the right other products whereas you can use darker skin like on darker skin tones the face tends to have different color around the forehead and the cheeks so you wouldn't just use one product all over a black person's face in the same way you would with a light

[00:17:55] skin because it would make someone look like they've got no dimension to their face because you want to really you want to create what you look like if you were at your best you don't

[00:18:04] want to paint on something artificial because you look like you're a cadaver in the coffin but um it's so you to me you start off with undertones you mix and match and try and find the

[00:18:15] best undertones to you try and use your veins as a sort of guidance your hair color also there's things like that you mentioned changes throughout the year if your hair lightens actually in the sun you have less definition between your skin and your hair so it can make

[00:18:32] you appear more warmer in the face as opposed to at the wintery times where there's less sun and you have a more your freshly dyed hair that's not faded and there's more of a contrast

[00:18:43] in the skin and the hair there are things like when you are in cold weather your skin tends to bring more blood to the surface to keep you warm so you can have more of a pinky

[00:18:56] flush towards winter which isn't there in the summer or in vice versa you can get things like rosacea or sunburn in the summer so it's like you it's a case by case thing i don't think

[00:19:06] there should ever be anyone that presents rules that are one fits all because it's totally different depending on who you are and what you're going through and it's just about learning about that trial and error process i think like um i used to be fascinated they used

[00:19:22] to be this incredible incredible brand now i'm going to be really stupid now because i'm busy with her my brain's not working as ellis fast that's the one so she i thought she said

[00:19:32] she's a slip she makes eyes that pass away but she created a makeup line and everything in her makeup line from the lipsticks to the eyeshadows took from the the colorations of the body

[00:19:43] so from blood to the iris color to the teeth color to the tones of a bruise they were that was the only colors that were in her makeup line and that's the biggest and most easiest

[00:19:57] way to find out what colors suit you the most and the thing that i always get that i always joke with people but it's actually a brilliant way to actually get your perfect nude lipsticks

[00:20:05] or blush is the areola that is your perfect nude color if you wanted to have a fresh look to your face in terms of blush if you wanted to have that color and it gives away your undertones

[00:20:18] so it's using your actual body as the sort of blueprint for choosing your colors so it's like you can match your lipsticks and then once you've got that base color you put that color over

[00:20:30] the top of any other color you use and what it does is it kind of tones down something that might look kind of stark on you if you've got like a very dark red that you wanted

[00:20:40] to wear a red lipstick then put that sort of as a softener over the top that perfect nude so as long as you've got the undertones right for whatever you're using whether it's a foundation or a color product then you've got the solution to all the mismatched products

[00:20:55] that you could ever buy you could buy a pink lipstick you buy a purple lipstick but using that one that matches you just brings that different color closer to what really is part of your your own coloration and because you're choosing things from your own color

[00:21:12] it's not going to look crazy it's always going to look right it's just it yeah i'm now i'm now examining all parts of my body so uh i better shut the curtains so one of the things

[00:21:27] that um people have recommended to me and i have must been suspicious of this is to to go so i remember years ago being in sax in new york and going through the makeup department and everywhere you went there were people having makeup lessons tutorials people trying

[00:21:41] on make i mean bearing in mind and i know this is the case that people are trying to sell your stuff but what i've always found with those sort of um rounded makeup things

[00:21:51] is that you sort of come out quite plastered in makeup don't you i mean you know i've did one with a with a with a cream based makeup and it was like i came out with a

[00:22:04] i can't really lift my head up because i was on so much and of course you walk into a hot day and it's all sliding off your face i know it's not but um but it's that you know

[00:22:13] is it worth going to one of these makeup sessions in the shops you know to try on makeup and such like a to get colors get a different idea or is it better just to find cheap

[00:22:24] makeup and my experiment at home i mean when were you in new york was this like 2007-8-9 that kind of era yeah right so let's early since then five five or six years ago okay

[00:22:38] okay because i know for i know in new york a lot of people back in the day used to go to sax and they used to because what they used to do to get they had a service where if they

[00:22:48] if you bought four products they put your makeup on for you so a lot of people that were on like like even the real housewives and the real housewives started in new york

[00:22:56] they'd go into there because they didn't have glam so they would get their glam done on the counter in exchange for four products anyway i was just curious other times so my mom always

[00:23:04] joked to me about her her um benefit experience because benefit used to be notorious for doing this and their car that their whole products were sort of like manic kitch themed products

[00:23:19] that were sort of a mixture between early makeup ideas like they used to do like benetint is like a red liquid it's like it almost resembles like a cherry juice like a product straight from

[00:23:31] the cherry and it's basically a stain that um like the the burlesque style was used to again talking about nipples they'd use on their nipples so it was like a nipple toning um

[00:23:44] tint that then people used as a cheek tin and a lip tint so it was all from that era and they're all like they were always trying to bring like oldie sort of like fashion things

[00:23:55] like the kind of that was like they always had the housewife kind of like stage photo shoots on the bottoms but anyway all the products were basically they didn't really work

[00:24:03] in a modern um context they would they didn't layer with each other my mom got what they call lemonade which is a yellow cream my mom is like so not yellow she's like tan like she's

[00:24:15] like a parisian woman she doesn't have anything nothing light yellow about her face at all and she came out looking like a panda a yellow panda and it's like these people they just they get

[00:24:28] trained they're better than they used to be because a lot of people have access to tutorials online now but back in the day they were atrocious they were the worst and even with

[00:24:39] mac and mac used to be brilliant because you used to be able to go and buy six or seven products or something you'd get a free makeup demo they the lighting in these shops are so

[00:24:48] crap that you'd always look off because when you go into the real world you'd see that it's not how they made you up in that lie and it's so it's very very very here to miss and i think

[00:24:58] that the problem is as well like loads of people are are makeup enthusiasts and they want to get into the makeup industry so they work on a counter and their whole thing in this

[00:25:09] era is to be a tiktok star and wear thick makeup for they've got a ring light at home they're filming on tiktok these crazily detailed eye looks and thick makeup and they wear that

[00:25:20] and you see people walking to work in the mornings that work in these department stores in london and they're looking like the tin man because they've got eight times as much shine on their face than you'd ever see in reality but they're doing it for the necessity

[00:25:32] of that ring flash because under the bright lights it just it's like a delicate feather yes and that's interesting that's really interesting you say that because i've noticed that when people go on and so far i work on zoom and teams and it looks like you just

[00:25:46] you just it looks like you've got nothing on it just looks like you're completely bland doesn't it and then you know you sort of i like the idea of a yellow panda but um

[00:25:56] but and then but if you're not careful in normal light you look as if you know you look as if you've sort of just been dancing on a pole all evening so you know it's

[00:26:04] it's how do you get that balance especially in a work setting because a lot of people go to work and they just want to particularly just blend in if you're working in an office or you just

[00:26:13] want to you don't want to in a way during the day you don't want makeup to stand out because cis women don't go to work looking as if it's just about something but um you know what i'm

[00:26:22] trying to say it's how do you create how do you create that very very uh understated passing easy sensible sort of um style right so this is the products that i recommend to everyone is

[00:26:37] and it's just because of affordability and the range of color tones and it's a you can get it from a brand called extreme makeup to create uk and the uk which is almost like a digital

[00:26:48] version of charles fox which to any makeup enthusiast is like a um a makeup artist haven i don't even know if there is still a child's talk that used to be but what they do is they do a

[00:26:59] product line under cryolan again this is going to be for anyone that knows about makeup cryolan is like the drag queen paint stick style well they do another range called derma color now

[00:27:11] derma color is what makeup artists for television use as a sort of baseline it's they basically create palettes for professional makeup artists or you can buy the refills for the palette and the refills sort of retail about a fiber i think we're shipping so they're affordable they're

[00:27:30] nothing ridiculous and what they are is basically like a cream concealer but instead of these creams that you buy in a department store or a super drug that are designed for flashing your skin with moisture and they're designed to make you look glossy and to do whatever

[00:27:47] glorious things they say they do in a department store these are just the bare bones of a concealer they're almost quite dry they don't feel like a slippy concealer that's full of silicone they

[00:27:59] actually feel almost like they've got more of a clay in them because some of the products are oil absorbing like the famous mac studio fix fluid they've actually got clay in there

[00:28:07] they've got cryolan clay uh caillan clay excuse me now the derma color creams you can get in a variety of colors and what i try and do is before any makeup i color correct under my circles

[00:28:20] and any salinity in the skin with a peach now this is if you're yellow or pink it's that you know when you look at the color of a salmon so it's where if you slowly make that

[00:28:32] color deeper it would go to bright bright bright orange almost a red and if you made it paler it would go to like a very gentle sort of like um a pruney shrimpy color and they so you have

[00:28:45] to kind of like work out how deep you are on that shade range and then get that color corrector and all you literally do is you tap it over those dark circles you tap it over

[00:28:55] any fiber-cooked shadow and as long as it's not lighter than your actual skin tone what it will do is it will knock out any blue so this is every single skin tone across the board

[00:29:06] just go as deep as you can it will be like a tomato red and a black skin and on a super white pale skin it will be like a pale pale pink on on my sort of middle tannish pale skin

[00:29:19] i use like a light salmony tone and what that does is this we all know how and toners work with hair we all know you can buy purple shampoo and it kicks out yellow because purple

[00:29:29] and yellow are opposite on the color wheel this salmon which is like an orange will kick out the blue so it's like a color correction for the eye and that that derma color is cheap

[00:29:40] it comes in every shade you can imagine because it's designed for special effects and tv and you can get a variety without spending 50 quid on stuff the thing about that as well is you can choose then whatever foundation you feel to go on top because you then layer

[00:29:56] if you if you wanted a day-to-day light makeup and you wanted something that was just going to be clean and fresh you would just then layer whatever whatever selection of your choice on top knowing that that security of the under it's called under painting

[00:30:11] that under painting will do its job so it's a very very useful one i think specifically for trans people and they've also got a loose powder which can be incredibly scary to use when you're a new makeup person because loose powders go everywhere

[00:30:26] almost like these the atom bomb cloud or harashima they're they kind of like oh yeah there it's like almost like icing on a cake when you're using them icing sugar if they it

[00:30:36] goes everywhere but that loose powder by derma color which i think now retails i think there's a small one for 15 i think the big ones about 30 but if you've got you what i would advise

[00:30:47] is if you are dealing with facial hair use a powder puff and you want to push into the areas that any stubble can come through because if you're using a brush and you're using

[00:30:58] circular motions on any hair it will basically exfoliate the hair and lift it so we've got to always remember that the hair is negatively charged so a lot of makeup is positively

[00:31:09] charged to grab onto the skin it kind of works like that and that's how a lot of the the makeup formulations work bizarrely it's kind of like a magnet when we're buffing

[00:31:20] against it it's basically like it just enhances the hair by coating each hair with powder so you do not want to go anywhere near an area of a beard with uh with a brush that will lift up

[00:31:33] that beard you have to push it back into place with a powder puff so it's about the application really but that powder is genius it's really good it keeps you on all day waterproof and those two colors i would recommend to everyone and again if you are

[00:31:48] a darker skin you wouldn't use the white because when you're taking a flash photo it would look gray you'd get the color tone that matches you so it goes down in deeper shades as you go on but they're my they're the easiest recommendation for me because they're

[00:32:01] affordable they're easy to use you don't really need to use any brushes with the concealer you can just dab it on with your ring finger which will just warm up the products

[00:32:09] and place it where you want it but it's it's like you create you just have to look at the things you don't like get rid of those and then once those are taken care of you decide how you

[00:32:19] want to present yourself as do you want to have a pop of color on the cheeks i mean so my go-to they're always cleaning up the the eyebrows with a brow gel and brow gels are way

[00:32:31] easier to use than penciling anything on the brows because most of the modern brow um products now have almost like they they sort of have like a dry powdery texture to them or they've got fibers in them so they actually when you're combing through your eyebrows and

[00:32:50] you always go lighter never go darker than your hair you go like a couple of shades lighter for your eyebrows because it feminizes and lightens that area um it kind of smudges as you go

[00:33:00] so it gives the illusion as if you powdered as well so brow cleaning up the brows with a brow gel is brilliant and then always go with a mascara now if someone's a newbie to

[00:33:10] makeup and they're really scared about how they're going to look in makeup don't go with the black mascaras don't go with the black eyeliners go with the browns go with the things that are

[00:33:20] easy to move with your fingers you can get things like crayons now which are really amazing for every type of makeup they look so great on like a teen skin like and they're basically

[00:33:30] like an eye but they're almost like a lipstick but for your eyes that's the kind of way i would describe them they're like a crayon and a skinnier sort of tubing almost like a thick pencil

[00:33:42] and all you do is you pat them around the area of your eye you don't need to have anything like brushes you don't need to buy a big makeup kit sometimes with older skin as well

[00:33:52] powders can sit in in in the lines instead of blend within so those creamy products work better on top of line and then also they are so forgivable but if you think it looks crap

[00:34:04] you can really take it off quite quickly without any hassle so again with mascaras try using a brown mascara instead of a black because they're super super gentle in the daytime and take it as

[00:34:18] you go i think like the thing that i love as well is like when you get that right colour for you everything changes like for me i've got very blue tone to my lips and things and i've

[00:34:28] got very bright blue eyes and if i put like certain colours on my face they just make i look like a completely different person it can be the exact same position but it's the tones of

[00:34:40] things that just don't work so i once i found my palette then i just matched all the products i wanted to use to that palette and i yeah that's it so that's interesting start with

[00:34:50] the eyes isn't it so if you start with blue it's and it would it would be fuller naturally that you'd have very light skin and uh and all this i've got green eyes so how does that work

[00:35:02] because i guess green is a combination eye colour isn't it yeah so it's a secondary colour so it's a mixture of blue and yellow so the only colour that's not in green is red so the biggest

[00:35:12] contrast you can create is with a red undertone product now you can go either an orangey red like a brown like a sort of umbery sort of um conquer colour or you grow purple you

[00:35:24] could have a purple and that i love when people get like those chunky coal pencils or those chunky eye crayons that i was describing in like a sort of purple for green eyes and you literally

[00:35:36] can just colour in your eyelids so you would just colour the shape of your eyes not up to the brow literally just the when you're closing your eye and i used to do this trick so you

[00:35:47] i used to sit sort of in a semi-lit room and then hold the lamp above my head that gives every guideline on the face you need it tells you where you put your contouring and your cheeks

[00:35:58] it tells you when you go how far you go up with your eyeshadow because it kind of creates like um a shadow where your brow bone comes forward so it would show you the sort of limitations of

[00:36:09] where you can bring your eyes now there are so many rules that people bring in to make it you could do whatever the hell you want but this is just a sort of like tricks and tricks along

[00:36:15] the way and also a brilliant trick which everyone now can use because they're all zoom like um operators when you put a webcam that shows you as you are right next to this you put

[00:36:28] the screen of that webcam right next to a mirror and you look at the reflection and then you look at what you actually look like you get all the details of symmetry right in front of

[00:36:39] you and sometimes it's quite jarring especially if we're going to gender dysphoria because for years i couldn't take pictures i used to always flip my pictures so it'd be like a mirror but it gives you those that when like if your eyebrows are slightly shorter on one side

[00:36:52] than the other you can see that so clearly when you're comparing the mirror to the i know oh my god i'm drawing myself on like i've got bells palsy and all this time

[00:37:02] i've been looking like this but it's it's it's a it's a so to say that again so basically as i'm writing these things down so i was just cutting you up so basically

[00:37:13] you look at yourself on zoom and then you look at yourself so they can sit up and again so you know when you look in the mirror and you you see a reflection of your face and then

[00:37:21] you go onto a webcam and it says to you do you want to mirror this image so it looks like you're looking at a mirror on the screen but then you say no i want to see myself as i

[00:37:31] am so when you hold your right hand up you see it on the left side of the screen yes so that is the opposite of the mirror but having that image next to the mirror it shows you

[00:37:44] every detail of your face next to each other as and that in real time is a game changer because if people are worried about like we all have a slight slope to how we apply lines

[00:37:56] because we're either right-handed or left-handed so when when you see them together it's like oh my god what one of the what are the challenges yeah right actually the idea of that's making

[00:38:08] me do it yeah one of the things that i always find problematical is um things like false eyelashes false nails because of course as a trans woman nothing's the right size isn't

[00:38:21] it if you go to a supermarket try and get false nails you you know the the biggest thing will be the size of your smallest finger so so how do you do things like nails and

[00:38:32] eyebrow eyelashes and other specialist places to go or is it best to ignore it there are and i wish i could tell you about my other thing coming out but i'm not allowed

[00:38:41] to yet because they haven't actually paid me so i'm not going to talk about it but um there there is somewhere that i can recommend for nails um i don't know if i can yeah oh i'm

[00:38:50] not going to say anything yet okay so let's do eyelashes so eyelashes basically come in too big size for everyone boy girl anything in between they come too big they really do and

[00:39:02] people apply them as a strip and it does not work for everyone's lash so what the trick is and this is if you want to of course you can make it work with a full lash you can do

[00:39:14] whatever you want with makeup but if you wanted to just enhance your lashes and you just didn't want it to be extreme cut the lash up into three and put it on bit by bit by bit

[00:39:25] and you might not even need to be in a third do you know what i mean like you you just it's always they're always tapered in the most strange strange way and what tends to happen

[00:39:36] is that the lashes will be curved as if it was curved along a flat line so it's like if you had a piece of string on the table and you just pulled the string into a rainbow like a curve

[00:39:51] that is not what people's eyes look like that one side of the table might be higher than the left or the right people might have like more feline eyes or whatever it's not they just aren't

[00:40:01] shaped to people's eyes so cut them up apply them on one a lot of people nowadays are actually doing that thing where they're applying it underneath your lash line which it causes more risk of pulling your natural hairs out which is annoying but they do look indistinguishable

[00:40:15] from when you're blinking so instead of putting them on top of the lash you cut them up into those chunks and you've slipped them on underneath the same now we used to use back in the day

[00:40:25] um the glue that we used to use is actually called it's you can buy it from like afro hair shops it used to be for gluing and hair pieces and it's like a black stick latex

[00:40:35] rubbery stuff and it just was the best for eyelashes because it didn't in most eyelash glue is white and you can get clear glue but most of it's white and you have to kind of paint

[00:40:46] over it which is very annoying but luckily these days people have caught on to all the old tricks so that you can actually buy black lash glue and what you do is you apply it to the lash

[00:40:56] leave it for about 90 seconds and then you apply it to the lash and if you are really struggling to get it on the lash gently use an eyelash curler to squeeze it onto the lash

[00:41:09] and that's sort of because the eyelash curler is going to push it down where perhaps tweezers or your fingers find it a struggle but again try and break them up into three or cut them

[00:41:18] up into three try and start from the outside and if you don't need that in a third just leave it alone and then just brush on the mascara to sort of join them together at the

[00:41:27] very end when they've sat and the glue will take about two minutes to set. I must admit I've never worn false lashes I've always found them a bit of a faff and but yeah I think it's probably better to get someone to apply them for you first

[00:41:44] isn't it so you get that but I like the idea of cutting them into three that sounds a bit less daunting doesn't it? Oh yeah because you're not it's like when you're I don't

[00:41:53] know what a good example this is it's at least like when you're wallpapering I guess if you put the wallpapering in one gigantic sheet instead of like the strips of it would be

[00:42:02] incredibly hard because you have to support the size and the middle and when it's a tiny bit you just slot it on with it which maybe it's the width of your tweezers but they're fab like all

[00:42:12] make-up you get so many different lashes now that are made to look invisible they're brown hairs instead of black hairs and they've not got a black band they've got a see-through band I think nails are probably the trickiest and I think that nails are they're very

[00:42:28] it's very frustrating because I've got very big hands myself and I used to wear nails all the time and I used to think like whenever I buy nails I don't know what it is about like

[00:42:36] trans women's anatomy of the hands or whatever but I've spoken to so many of my trans men about this but we I've always found that nail products don't work or last as long they just

[00:42:49] for some reason they just do not last as long I've actually this is one area that I'm going to be looking into and I'll find out all the science by the next time we chat but I don't know why

[00:42:57] they don't last even when it comes to gels or acrylics but I've had them they ping off nail polishes they last me a day if that because I'm used to washing my hands like I just can't

[00:43:08] there is always a faff that I used to find like the cheapest nail products always the best they I always used to think like oh my god the cheapest nail polishes are like collection

[00:43:17] super jugs with so much better than Chanel oh my god I went to an event where the V&A with TikTok and Gucci was the sponsor because they were doing some sort of exhibit and they gave me this Gucci

[00:43:26] nail polish and it was the worst thing I've ever used on my nails I just thought that people buying it's like 40 quid or whatever it's probably not 40 for about 25 or something but

[00:43:36] the cheaper ones are easy like even but you know Barry M that you can get in like I don't know if it's in Sainsbury's anymore but I think you can get it in Sainsbury's super jugs they're so good they're nail polishes and they're so just one of the

[00:43:48] ladies on the sheet that I just did however long ago was a week or two weeks ago she was an older lady and she said that she had shellac done on a cruise ship and when she had the

[00:44:00] the shellac removed the nails got very very very brittle and your nails do get so brittle and one trick is to get those vitamin e capsules that you can all buy like they don't even

[00:44:12] need to be like the expensive ones that are kept in date you can use any kind of like the oil capsule I just cut them over and use them as like a cuticle oil they do a wonder just to

[00:44:22] like just add them to your like your routine maybe twice a week or if you can every day but they help just restore the nails because they do these these acrylics they strip nails

[00:44:33] so much like my friends a couple of my friends trans girls have had acrylics for years and the minute they have them off their nails are so thin and then one of my best friends

[00:44:44] a cisgender woman when I was growing up she was a nail technician she never had these issues never ever ever with acrylics she looked consistently and never had any any of the same stripping so I don't know if it's just because testosterone does something to the nails or

[00:44:59] whatnot but I know during menopause a lot of people during menopause once their own progesterone goes down or whatnot or their testosterone goes up they deal with the same problem and my friend he's got polycystic ovary syndrome high testosterone has the same issues

[00:45:12] with the nails so maybe there's some link that I could only guess there's always something it is interesting isn't it um yeah sorry I got distracted there because I was just thinking

[00:45:29] that's a fascinating that's a fascinating thing um it must be hormonal got to be isn't it so yeah we've done eyes we're in a foundation we've done um we haven't done contouring and lips

[00:45:40] they're the last okay well lips kind of is any color you choose I don't there's any rules with lips just match it to your colors in your body as I mentioned earlier like with your once

[00:45:51] you get that perfect nude that just matches your skin tone it will carry you through whatever color you just put the you can do it so like for example if you wanted to do

[00:46:00] a red buy a red lip liner line the lips in the color you want and then just put that nude over the top just pass it on with your finger over the top of the red over the top of the pink

[00:46:10] it will just neutralize whatever color you choose to match what with you and then once you get a little bit more confident with that shade like when you start seeing the mix of those two shades together you can buy one that shade is and you start adjusting to

[00:46:23] what your eyes see and it just becomes more simple like a lot of tones um in like for example I used to love to wear on my lips like a light pink and on my skin it just makes me look like I've

[00:46:36] got jaundice like a pale pink on me makes me look yellow because it's got like a purple in it so it doesn't bring out the niceness of my skin tone it brings out the yellowness

[00:46:46] and it just doesn't suit me at all but on my sister skin who is completely alabaster it looks absolutely charming she looks like a little princess of it it's amazing

[00:46:56] um so it just again you just have to use the things that match your tones over the top of these things that you're trying just to get a grip of what you're doing and you can also use

[00:47:05] that lipstick and or you tap it on the back of your hand and then just use it as a blush on the high points of your cheeks so you start you you kind of start just under the outside of

[00:47:15] the eye so if you look straight in the mirror you go to the edge of your eyes on each side go straight down when you're smiling and you'll see like a pop that's called the apple of the

[00:47:24] cheek and there if you just start using that same lip tone into the cheek and just blend around in circles till it's completely honestly faded out and then apply that loose powder or

[00:47:34] whatnot on top it will be perfect and it blush on people's skin when they're not used to makeup is the transformer it's something that makes you look like you've been on holiday that you're happy um it's just genius and you start getting a little bit more comfortable

[00:47:49] i mean with with contouring i used to get asked this question all the time when i was talking about and from the boy to girl interviews i used to do because what i'd do in these tutorials is

[00:48:01] i'd exaggerate the contouring for the camera so people would be following along the makeup tutorial and following all the the lines and the sketchiness that i was drawing on with makeup and the white under the eye and the shadowy greenish browns under the cheekbones

[00:48:15] they say oh that's going to make me look super feminine it's that is not the case i was doing that to give an exaggerated version so people could follow along at home without the camera

[00:48:25] lights washing it all out what you really need to think about is what again is the difference between a masculine looking face and a feminine looking face and as i said at the beginning

[00:48:37] the more shadows and lines in the face the more we perceive it in the west of masculine we just have this holistic approach to gender you see that when a boy turns into a man versus

[00:48:48] how a girl turns into a woman a man's face if they're thin will become more angular and the fat pads will distribute they will not look in the same way a woman of the same weight will

[00:49:01] look a woman of the same weight will grow up and they will look more plump in the middle of the face and the gaps in between the features will be smaller men's cartilage grow more than women so there's noses ears certain facial proportions change and there's things like

[00:49:19] the masseter muscles change which is the the muscle that you grind your teeth with things like this and it it doesn't everyone used to say oh like men have really wide jaws

[00:49:30] no actually has a very wide jaw it's not a gender thing the difference is you can have any set of features but it's the proportion between the features and it's the rosiness and the fat pads

[00:49:42] between the features it's not the features themselves you can have a huge aquiline nose that could be glorious like a roman empress but you could if that does not make you look like a boy there are erin o'connor the supermodel has got a nose like that and she's

[00:49:56] incredibly feminine looking it's the way that the face actually looks in between the features so do not draw on lines and blend them out and expect them to look feminine adding lines and shadows makes you look masculine it truly is not that it's not the solution

[00:50:14] um what i used to do is i used to use the the the bits underneath like what i would describe the high points of the face so the bits that would catch the sun the most i'd sort of or when

[00:50:26] i put that lamp above my head and i saw everywhere that the light touched i would use those those sort of planes of the face as almost like my areas to stretch so i would put the lamp above

[00:50:40] my face i then draw like my highlight concealer color where all the light touched then i'd go into a regular lit room and then i'd say oh okay so that the bit below my eye that almost

[00:50:54] connects with my nose i'm going to bring that bit all the way up my nose and i'm going to actually use that same white color from the sides of my nose to the tops of my cheekbones

[00:51:05] as the light hit me but i'm just going to cheat it slightly and that was like when i found i had to do that and i could change my nose shape no brown lines at all just cheating

[00:51:17] where i put the concealer under the eye or that derma color cream i mentioned earlier that can transform a feature without any of those harsh drag queen style contouring and it's it's so easy to do things like that and again instead of drawing them these

[00:51:33] like kim kardashian contouring techniques that we all know from the beauty magazines or the internet techniques now don't do anything like that it always looks muddy no one is going to be lit in the same way our kardashian is lit with 10 diva lamps they're not going to be

[00:51:49] you're not going to achieve what they are achieving their makeup is the stage essentially the way to do it is just add a little bit where you need it and it's supposed to it's

[00:51:59] once you understand the planes of your face it's cheating the edges of them if you can anyone could just draw a line on your jawline and when you're looking when you're sat down still with anything and you're in like bright lines it might look like

[00:52:17] a jawline but when you're day to day in an office or you're walking to a cafe and you're talking to your friend and someone's watching your face with these lines on it's not going

[00:52:26] to look like a jawline it's going to look like a line so it's like you've got to be realistic about like your face is a mobile thing so the trick is really cheating the amount

[00:52:36] it's really about the how the light is hitting the face you want to make it look like there's more light in the face less shadows and then that's that's really um the thing and you

[00:52:49] can do that in two ways you can do it with shading so using the concealer lighter color in those areas i described or you can use one flat color all over your face but get a foundation

[00:53:01] that's got the sheen through it perhaps like those cream products that you used the other day on the counter and using those with your fingers in those high points so you've got like a matte face and then you've put on that flush in the cheeks it immediately makes

[00:53:18] it's like um magic really it's that the textures i'm gonna have to try that because i learned contouring from uh some youtube videos around the older older skin and it was very much about

[00:53:33] you know you put a you put a um a blusher on and then you sort of have a big brush and you sort of run it you know you sort of i can't think of the word it's a flap it on underneath

[00:53:46] yeah but using a massive brush and that seems to what colors what colors did they recommend in the things you watch because but i always get very frustrated with this because when you

[00:53:54] buy a kit that's labeled as a contour kit often you'll get shades of brown that look like coffee they're like coffee or tea colors they're not that's not a contour shade a contour shade should look like the areas that are in shadow so if you look directly

[00:54:11] in a mirror and you looked and you saw your neck had a shadow on it from your chin that is the color a contour should be a contour should not be brown

[00:54:20] so what color is that more of a gray it's a gray and it depends how deep your skin tone is but it is what you use a brown for is to reflect how your face looks if it's bronzed

[00:54:31] as if it's sunkissed it's not they it doesn't work like that the only tone that it would ever be brown the shadow would be brown is if you had a tan skin tone to begin with

[00:54:41] because the shadow would look brown but if you're pale it will never look brown it will always put in brown on pale skin will look brown it will never look like a shadow and

[00:54:51] again with that derma color range you can buy them and they're almost green they're almost green and when you apply them to the face they don't look green they look like a shadow

[00:55:01] and they are such a difference then like i was trying to get into all these like new tiktok brands like made by mitchell who i'm fascinated by and i got one of their um their cases

[00:55:11] because i'm talking to their manufacturers at the moment because of it the other manufacturers that own the brand and i was thinking like they get all their stuff manufactured in korea and korean skin tones are they paint themselves much paler than their natural

[00:55:27] skin tones but they're all very yellow so when i was looking at how these products were marketed as contouring and i was thinking like these aren't actually contouring colors because it they would never look like a shadow in daylight i was thinking about like where they

[00:55:41] they were being made and like a lot of these products are being made in countries where there would be an orange tone to the contour like if you look at someone that's from brazil

[00:55:50] the shadow color would be a lot more brown now because those beautiful skin tones from brazil do you know what i mean like so it's just like it's a lot of products are they're kind of

[00:56:00] like um they've got like their their fingerprint within the way that they're colored and you have to kind of like dissect what you need and that's why i think those color creams are

[00:56:11] so good because they're so affordable but if you looked at if you went to the extreme makeup you went to color to derma color and you looked at their shade ranges you would see colors and

[00:56:20] you look at them on the screen and you say oh my god that almost looks like a mint or it looks like um i don't know i can't even describe it as a sable it looks like a khaki color if you

[00:56:29] applied that khaki color in the place of a contour and you looked at the difference between a contour and a brown contour you'd be like oh my god because you can make someone's cheeks

[00:56:38] like they've got a much stronger cheekbone as opposed to a brown stripe it is so yeah it's so important together and there's a couple of shades that have actually got i'm looking at

[00:56:49] the the portrait on my wall it's my mac collection that's still out and i included in my mac collection um and eyeshadow palette with two eyeshadow things one's called espresso and omega and they are the old school go-to everything shades because they're not browns

[00:57:08] they're grays they're great they're almost like oh you know those beautiful like um rabbits that are kind of like a sable color it's almost like a difference between a gray and a brown

[00:57:18] then those tones one of them's lighter and one of them's a brown like a deeper brown gray and they they don't have any warmth in them so when you're using them as a contour they

[00:57:28] don't look like a streak they literally look like a shadow that's amazing well i mean as always i mean i just have just noticed the time and even i can chat for ages and i need to be respectful

[00:57:40] of your time can you will you will you come back and continue this yeah so my god no i the thing is like makeup it's something that i've studied and i work really hard at and i love

[00:57:50] talking about it and it's really cheered me up talking about today and i think especially because like there's still such um there's such a mystery around like how we use makeup

[00:58:00] in the trans community to really find our own path for what we want to be and it's some of this stuff i think is being gatecapped nowadays whereas before people used to be a little bit

[00:58:11] more forthcoming with sharing it but any chance i get to to share my bits and bobs i think it's amazing but again everyone thank you so much for always listening to me but

[00:58:21] please check out my latest and beauty collection that's coming out in the middle of june for pride season it's not going to be all the products we mentioned today but it will have some exciting

[00:58:29] brushes in which i think any brush set would be amiss without and there is so many things inside it there is an eyeshadow kit there is a i actually included a product that's like a

[00:58:41] conditioner because i use hair conditioners to shave which i think we spoke about in our previous skincare one i've got a textured cream for the skin which gives you an illumination for any skin tone there is a brilliant eyeliner a brilliant mascara there is nails lips liners

[00:59:02] in all the same shades a lip gloss in the same shade there's glitters there's diamonds there's eyelashes and you can get up under 50 quid so check out josephholland.com to find

[00:59:13] it probably by the time this is out people will be able to find it but it's going to be amazing i can't wait to show you well i can't as soon as i turn this recording up in 10 seconds and

[00:59:23] you are going to i'm going to i'm going to i'm going to send you a preview i know thanks so much so just speak soon thank you love speak soon bye Bye.

[00:59:38] Thanks for listening to this episode of Trans Vox it's been a joy to have you with us if you want to make contact with us you can contact us at Gillian at transvox.co.uk

[00:59:52] and if you'd like to support the work we do please go to Patreon and go to the page Trans Vox and all of our money goes to our nominated charity and Jen you've chosen the

[01:00:02] charity for the next number of episodes which one have you chosen our charity is called Beyond Reflections which is a charity that provides support and counseling to trans people non-binary people and their friends and their families across the uk an amazing charity doing some

[01:00:18] amazing work really important so please if you can give great and if you want to go and have a look at Beyond Reflections it's beyond-reflections.org.uk and but as i say

[01:00:29] if you'd like to make a contribution to what we're doing because we love to help the people who help us again if you've got ideas for the show things you'd like to ask us questions

[01:00:38] comments applause or brick baths feel free to send it all in to Gillian at transvox.co.uk until the next time goodbye bye