Filed to: like you have something better to do

Leaving the house is overrated. Sure, there are like, flowers, and friends, and fun things to do out there, but also you have to wear sunscreen, and spend money to do the fun things, and sometimes you have to talk to strangers when you don’t feel like it. And WORSE, you can’t always wear the exact outlandish amazing makeup you’re in the mood for because of stuff like “professionalism” and “appropriateness;” dreary awful things that plague the outside places. But at home? You are free! Free to wear all the facepaint you please, and it’s all for you, baby: you, your mirror, and any fortunate souls you happen to share a pic with online. Too much? For you? NEVER.


Last week I—like everybody else on my Twitter feed—went to see Mad Max: Fury Road, and this week—like everybody else on my Twitter feed—my aesthetic has skewed strongly Furiosa-ward. However, I am also obsessed with the paint-huffing War Boys’ silver mouths (gross, but, AWESOME LOOKING), so instead of straight-up trying to imitate Charlize, I see myself as more of a fervent fanatical War Girl eager to sacrifice my pathetic life in service of my newly-minted Lady Immortan. Here’s how you, too, can frighten your neighbors when you run outside to practice howling and leaping off of your car to smash stuff!

First, you’ve gotta blacken your waterlines. There’s no getting around it: waterlining/tightlining your eyes kind of sucks, but if you want your eyes to look like coals of fury glaring out of a chasm of eternal darkness, you’ve just gotta suck it up and stick a sharp stick in your eye. I like NYX ‘cause it’s cheap and it doesn’t melt off easy.


Sharpen your liner before you go poking it up in your eye socket and you greatly reduce your risk of scratching yourself with a splintery tip (which hurts). Remember to breathe, and don’t press too hard (if you have to bear down to deposit color, you need a better liner pencil). Try not to look directly at the liner with the pupil of the eye you’re coloring; that’ll make you blink! If you do blink and jab the liner directly into your upper eyelid, no big—you’re about to paint half your head black. You can do this.

Draw that stuff all over the inner rim of your eyelid — top and bottom. Did it? Success? Good! Now mascara. I don’t need to tell you how to do that.


Then, darken your eyesockets+forehead. I used a cheap black eyeshadow I’ve had for longer than I should admit. I used a blush brush to tap it all over my forehead, for the sake of speed, and a smaller eyeshadow brush to pack it in around my eyes. Really shove it into your eyebrows and hairline so you don’t end up with any weird little bare streaks.


Get really close to the mirror so your myopic ass can see what you’re doing.


If you get black shadow all over your face and neck, good! Just makes you look grungier and more badass. Use your finger to smudge the edge of the shadow where it meets your exposed nose and cheeks. Consider applying some white powder to your exposed skin; decide, ‘nah, we’re all much healthier looking under the reign of Furiosa than we were with Joe in charge.’ (What kind of dumb dictator name is “Immortan Joe,” anyway??) Admire yourself in the mirror.


And now you’re ready to get shiny and chromed!

You will need:

A shiny silver eyeshadow (this one is Sephora Collection’s “Diamonds Are Forever”) A Q-tip

Get the Q!-tip wet. (With tap water, not spit, unless you’re okay with that?(!!!) Your choices lie on your own conscience.) Rub the wet Q-tip over the eyeshadow. Rub the wet eyeshadow Q-tip everywhere you wanna be chromed.


Don’t be stingy! You want to be witnessed, here.

Seriously, you guys, damp eyeshadow is the most wonderful and tragically slept-on makeup trick. It applies so easily, so pigmented and opaque! It doesn’t crease or smudge! It stays on your face forever! A little water makes $2 drugstore eyeshadow look like $30 super-pigmented product applied over $20 primer. A little water and eyeshadow can make you look—fairly convincingly!—like you are an ethereal moonlight-lidded phantom woman from the faerie realm! Or, like you just huffed up a big ol’ lungful of silver spray paint upon the commencement of a manic charge into an eternal glorious vehicular machismo life-after-death! Damp eyeshadow, man: this knowledge will serve us all well in the post-apocalyptic future. Admire yourself in the mirror again.


One last thing: that black stuff on Furiosa’s face, in the movie? Is engine oil. Black eyeshadow approximates the color pretty well, but just doesn’t have the same shine and texture. Plus, every time you raise your eyebrows, it creases and gives you ghost wrinkles on your forehead. No good, man; we want SHINE. Because I am in the privacy of my own home, my level of concern about the practicality of the products I’m using rests somewhere in the vicinity of -500,000% give-a-fuck. You know what it’s time for?


Vaseline.


Push your hair out of the way and rub the petroleum product all over the black shadow on your forehead. It makes really satisfying finger smears for that freshly applied motor oil look!


Perfect. Find yourself some flattering lighting and take a selfie to document your hard work. Admire yourself every time you catch a glimpse in the mirror for the rest of the day.

YES THANK YOU I WILL SIGN FOR THAT PACKAGE, FEDEX MAN. WITNESS MEEEEEEEE!!!!


Alternatively, if you just need a little of the fury but a bit more of the pretty to make it through whatever’s piled up on your day-off chore list, you can tone down the black shadow application, up the blush quotient, apply killer lashes *to taste* and keep the chrome confined (relatively) within your lip lines.


What a day. What a LOVELY day! May any delivery dude who happens to approach your sanctuary while you are so attired be like Tom Hardy’s Max: capable, silent, and hot.

Jennifer Culp is an artist, writer, and accomplished procrastinator. Her work has been published on The Hairpin, The Toast, and The Mary Sue, and she is the founder and co-editor of Gamervescent.