Bizzare & Odd
Why is everyone obsessed with alien beauty
Forget about a dab of blush here, a little highlighter there — beauty today is about shaving your head, shaving your brows, adding a third or fourth eye and bleeding black from your hyper-colored eyeballs.
Pimple positivity, extreme contouring, face-morphing filters — it goes without saying that social media has rapidly shifted the meaning of beauty, and the beauty industry, in both brilliantly liberating and potentially damaging ways. The medium lends itself to striking, shocking and complex make-up, and a kind of alien glamour has been germinating on Instagram for a few years now.
See on Instagram www.instagram.com
At first there were a handful of experimenters creating extreme looks in-between the endless posts of dewy no-make-up make-up looks spurred by brands like Glossier, and the ultra-layered make-up of contouring propelled by the Kardashian krew — polar opposite ideas of unattainable perfection. Since then alien beauty has been blooming, with the likes of Salvia, MLMA, and Aryuna, racking up big followings, and more and more accounts springing up with others pursuing a similar aesthetic. The duo known as Fecal Matter are one of the earliest, and most widely known progenitors of post-humanist beauty, interviewed by Vogue and the NYT, as well as i-D.
Emma Grace Bailey, beauty editor at trend forecasting company WGSN, has been tracking the trend since it started gathering pace on Instagram. “We first highlighted the emergence of dark, gothic, alien-like beauty back in 2016,” Emma says. “A bubble of make-up artists that found creativity in the macabre and the dark started gaining attention on social media, drawing in fans who reveled in their rejection of classic beauty norms.” She’s seen this trend grow from pretty understated to the maximum, shape-shifting impact it’s reached today.
“It’s obviously growing on Instagram right now,” agrees Dr. Ruth Adams, Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Creative Industries at King’s College London. “And it’s clearly a backlash against normative beauty standards, although the amount of labor involved is obviously no less.”
Beauty looks that elevate what society traditionally considered ugly or weird is hardly a new idea. Punk did it — “there you get the emergence of a very positive idea of the ugly and the ugly as being a legitimate alternative aesthetic”, says Dr. Ruth — goths have been at it for ages, new romantics and the New York hardcore scene all loved messing with transgressive looks. As recently as Emo and K-pop, extreme beauty has been a part of music subculture — hair and make-up serving alongside clothing as key markers of belonging to that tribe. These visual signals were extensions of subcultures, a way of embodying the music and its surrounding scene while out in the world.
This beauty movement is different, unconnected to a specific scene, though no less driven by exploring selfhood and ideals. As identity is by and large now constructed online, subversive beauty is its own subculture, albeit one that doesn’t often exist in any other substantial way. Salvia, Fecal Matter, and Aryuna aren’t directly sharing beauty tips or hanging out, they’re not creating anything together or pledging allegiance to the same musical idols. They exist as a group because we group them together. Though Steven Raj Bhaskaran and Hannah Rose Dalton, a.k.a. Fecal Matter, do in some sense feel part of a community. “What we do and why we do it is really to I guess change society in some way and implement some level of freedom and non-judgemental reaction,” says Stephen, as the duo Facetime i-D from their home of Montreal. “So for us, when we see people who look like us or anybody who’s challenging what it means to look human or what it means to be normal… we always feel a sense of community with that, a sense that we’re all fighting for the same thing, essentially for change.”
Challenging binary ideas of gender is a clear part of the impetus behind alien glamour; Steven says it’s an important aspect of why he looks the way he does, and drag artists like Hungry and Salvia are big into reimagining what a face and body can look like. “Unapologetic embracing of unique identities, personas and genders is a key reason for the rise in alien beauty this year,” says Emma. “These artists are demonstrating the true power of beauty to morph, shift, and ultimately build yourself into whoever you want to be, regardless of how you were born, and showing that doing so won’t see you outcast from society.”
But Hannah and Steven, who don’t do alien beauty just for Instagram, but live it out in the world every day, have encountered plenty of negativity and abuse. “To get to where we are right now, where we have an audience and people who like what we do, was a very difficult journey, especially during eras when fashion was very stripped back and very ‘let’s go normcore’,” Stephen says. “So it’s interesting that it’s now a beauty trend, because when we were first doing it it was considered ugly, and non-fashionable and disgusting. Still today we get all of that, but at the same it’s fascinating to see young people getting into this new perspective that maybe we were a part of creating and maybe we were a part of bringing it to forefront, but now it’s out of our hands and it’s something that is bigger.”
Dr Ruth points out a connection between this beauty look and avant-garde art by the likes of Hans Bellmer, George Grosz, and Otto Dix. “You have this sort of celebration of an ugly underworld and making it beautiful and bringing it to the fore. So things that would have been shameful or hidden away — and again it’s a demonstration of artistic talent and capacity.” A number of those creating these extreme, otherworldly beauty looks are doing so as part of a wider creative process — Fecal Matter have a clothing label and make music. MLMA doesn’t consider what she does to be a beauty trend. “I’m an artist. Not just digital or make-up. If you see my page on IG, it’s filled with mixed media. I also do music so I try to avoid putting any labels on myself other than an artist,” she says by email.
In referencing artists like Hans Bellmer, Dr. Ruth is linking the political climate that he and his peers were working in with the current situation “You think about German modernism, it was happening in the face of a rising fascism, and how much is this a sort of resistance to other kinds of oppression or totalitarianism or the imposition of normative behaviors, how much it’s a reflection of a greater freedom of expression and how much it’s a response to a clamping down on freedoms…”
Emily agrees with this sentiment. “In a world that seems more disordered and in disarray than it has in decades, controlled by the smallest pocket of biased leaders, our sense of security is dissipating. And in order to fight back against the stream of racism, sexism, and terrorism that is being fed to us via the media, younger generations are forming pockets of defiance and protest on their terms.”
Like beauty, the meaning of subculture has been indelibly changed by social media. It splinters, blurs, builds on, and rapidly transforms group mentality. But it is its own outlet for exploring identity and making political statements, as subcultures traditionally were. Alien beauty may move on in the blink of three eyes, it may trace only loose connections between people all over the globe with little else linking them, but right now, it means something.
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Tesla autopilot sensor recorded “ghost” in an empty cemetery
A Tesla electric car with an activated autopilot function recorded an invisible person who allegedly moved around the cemetery. Social network users jokingly noted in the comments that, most likely, this is some new function from Elon Musk, which allows you to see ghosts.
In the United States, a Tesla electric car with an activated autopilot function recorded an invisible person who allegedly moved through a cemetery.
The corresponding video was posted by Twitter user Ovidiu Maciuc.
The recording shows how a silhouette of a man appears on the monitor of an electric car, moving around the cemetery. After that, the driver raises the camera and starts filming the graveyard through the windshield, but there are no people there.
After some time, the “ghost” went in the opposite direction from Tesla and disappeared from the on-board computer screen.
Tesla collision avoidance system detecting an invisible human/entity at the cemetery. Excuse me but wtf @elonmusk ? pic.twitter.com/VcANAzH1uh
— Ovidiu Maciuc (@OMaciuc) January 12, 2021
Social network users jokingly noted in the comments that, most likely, this is some new function from Elon Musk, which allows you to see ghosts.
For many though, if you take into account the comments, the video seemed rather creepy. Some even tried to guess what the navigation system actually showed.
Some users thought the system could recognize ghosts. Others refuted this version and said that the reason for all this is an insufficiently accurate sensor, which was used for the equipment of the Tesla car.
Earlier it became known that Tesla electric cars in the near future may receive a new function with which they can talk with pedestrians. For this, American cars will be equipped with special external speakers.
In addition, Tesla cars in the future will receive the option to change the horn and sound of movement at low speeds to warn pedestrians. According to Elon Musk, among the sounds of movement there will be the sound of the clatter of a horse’s hooves, and as a whistle – the bleating of a goat.
Bizzare & Odd
Mysterious energy source melts Tel Aviv sidewalks, leading to the evacuation of several buildings in Israel
About two weeks ago, Tel Aviv residents noticed that the concrete surface outside their homes was heating up and steam was coming out of the ground. Tests showed that steam that reached 60 ° C (140 ° F) was water based.
The witness explains: “I was afraid that there was a power line in the area and asked a worker to dig out the ground with a shovel. Steam suddenly came out. I imagined it was probably a geyser. It seemed to me that this was a geological incident – also because there were no problems with electricity in the building. “
עוד אנשי מקצוע בשטח. אני מבין שכל גורמי התשתיות ובהם גם אנשי חברת החשמל במקום pic.twitter.com/2vCfqrVqnl
— Bar Peleg (@bar_peleg) January 1, 2021
Although the experts did not find any hazardous substances or any risk to the stability of buildings at the site, residents as well as kindergartens in the area were evacuated.
Officials described the heat source as “trapped energy” of unknown origin.
Work continues, steam is still rising and the ground is still hot. It is currently unclear what is causing the warming. Note the hole dug in the area. The area is still blocked.
Mysterious origins
City officials said they will “continue to monitor the temperature of the earth, which is expected to cool down for a long time, and will continue to investigate the causes of the unusual event.”
Israel Electric Corporation has not found a connection between heat and power in the area.
חדשות מחמי גבירול: העבודות והמדידות נמשכות. האדים כנראה פסקו וגם האדמה מעט התקררה (שימו לבל לסרטון, במקום המדידה הזה 39.3 מעלות). כמה סברות ששמעתי על הסיבה מגורמים שעבדו בשטח: תשתית חשמל ישנה בעומק הקרקע (חברת חשמל שללו) או חומר אורגני שבמגע עם מי תהום התחמם
— Bar Peleg (@bar_peleg) January 3, 2021
צילום @ilanrcohen1 pic.twitter.com/CDKtDxVdQF
The Israel Geological Survey confirmed the rise in temperature after testing ground and water temperature levels, but said it has not yet found an explanation.
Despite their best efforts, municipal officials, the fire department, Israel Electric Corporation and the Ministry of the Environment have yet to find a source of heat.
Meanwhile, the Tel Aviv municipality has informed dozens of evacuees that they can return to their homes. However, residents are not going to return until they receive a detailed account of the source of the mysterious event.
“They evacuated us because they were concerned about our safety, and now they are urging us to return without any convincing explanation. How can you be sure that there is no more danger? “
Bizzare & Odd
The night sky in southern Taiwan shows a weird red moon alarming netizens: 2021 disaster year omen?
Some people in Chiayi, Taiwan took pictures of a large dark red moon hanging in the night sky on the first night of 2021 and uploaded them to Facebook. There are also people in Tainan who have photographed the rare “red moon”. The weird scene has aroused heated discussions among netizens. Some people worry that an earthquake may occur, while others suspect that this is a precursor to the year of disaster in 2021?
Yesterday, on January 1 at about 8:00 in the evening, Chiayi residents shared a photo of “2021’s first red moon” on Facebook. As you can see in the photo, the weather was quite good at that time. There was a clear big round moon in the night sky, but it was a dark red moon, which was very different from the usual moon.
Later, people in Kaohsiung and Tainan also posted photos of the red moon they had taken.
The weird and rare “big red moon” immediately attracted the attention of netizens. Some people think that such a sight is caused by air pollution, and some people think that the red moon is “extremely beautiful”, but many people worry about whether it is a harbinger before the disaster ?
“Hope is not a harbinger of disaster~”, “A harbinger of disaster in 2021???”, “It looked uneasy”, “After seeing the red moon, I hope everyone will be safe”.
Some netizens worry that this is a pre- earthquake omen.
“Remember the red moon before the 921 earthquake (omen)”, “earthquake precursors”, “I feel that there will be an earthquake again recently”, and “It seems that 2021 will be another year of bloody disaster.”
The British clairvoyant Craig Hamilton-Parker published his prediction for 2021 on YouTube in December last year, stating that, as far as the world is concerned, 2021 will be a year full of social unrest, armed conflict and political changes. There will be difficult times right now until 2025.
He also predicted that the biggest worry is climate and earthquakes. A tsunami will occur near Japan. Large earthquakes will occur in the Himalayas, Iran and the Americas. There will also be problems such as floods, dams bursting, and huge icebergs obstructing shipping. Until 2025, the severity of environmental problems will gradually increase.
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