If the beauty of the 2010s was about glamour, the 2020s are a decade of extremes. Gone are the days of angular brows and hours spent perfecting a matte complexion. In this decade’s game, Brazilian butt lifts, inflated pouts, and invisible waists win. The era isn’t defined solely by permanent, sexed-up procedures, though—it’s also marked by a fixation on ephemeral and experimental aesthetics that challenge what it means to be beautiful, uncovering our appetite for the grotesque.
As part of this transformation lies prosthetics and special effects (SFX) makeup, an art form once confined to film and subcultures but now adopted by makeup fanatics and A-listers alike. Doja Cat stole the 2023 Met Gala spotlight by transforming into a life-sized Choupette in homage to Karl Lagerfeld, Mowalola sported a keyboard for tits in her Beats campaign, and for pioneering artists like Isamaya Ffrench and Alexis Stone, extreme transformation is their bed and butter.
A Legacy of Transformation
The craft of sculpting, molding, and casting dates back over a century, and early pioneers embraced the unsightly to create works of horror. Some of the first uses of prosthetics appeared in Georges Méliès' 1902 science-fiction film Le Voyage dans la Lune and Cavendish Morton’s 1909 The Art of Theatre Makeup which documented the techniques of the period (including spirit gum, flour, greasepaint, and wax). These techniques sparked further experimentation of the 1920s and ’30s, where artists molded rubber, cotton, and foam latex to conjure cult icons like Frankenstein, the Phantom of the Opera, and the Tin Man.
With innovation came recognition. By 1981, the Academy Awards added a Best Makeup category, cementing SFX as an art form in its own right. First celebrated on the silver screen, prosthetics soon seeped into music videos of icons like Michael Jackson, David Bowie and Alice Cooper. Decades later, artists like Lady Gaga, Chappell Roan, and FKA Twigs are steering the prosthetic renaissance.
The Grotesque as a Mirror of Chaos
Fast forward to today, and prosthetics have transcended their origins, becoming a mainstay on runways, in campaigns, and even in everyday life. This resurgence reflects more than just a fascination with artistry—it mirrors the cultural chaos of our times.
Gen Z, in particular, are chaotic consumers, throwing themselves headfirst into embracing messy aesthetics as a counterpoint to polished perfection. They’re flipping the script on what beauty is, how and if it matters in a truly fateful world. As a rejection of Trad-Wife-Soft-Girl-Latte-Makeup (et al.) they’re getting teeth for talons and airbrush paint as a second skin and silicone lumps worn as adornments. They not only do they wear this with pride, but they consume this in contemporary media: Social Accounts Like Ugly Design Boast 801k follows on social media, and films like The Substance and Titane have popular appeal due to their leaning on oddity.
Maybe it’s the 4B movement, maybe it’s because we live in an individualistic society or maybe it’s because more people have read some John Berger and bell hooks. Either way, today’s consumers are less interested in enticing the male gaze and more interested in bodily autonomy, expressing this whichever way suits them. Exaggerations of the body turn it into a canvas, which in turn elevates the natural to the weird and wonderful, scary or satirical.
Despite the global demise of Liberalism, makeup artists from Black and LGBTQIA communities are starting to get their flowers for pushing the needle in the SFX industry. We’ve seen queer artists like Gottmik and Alexis Stone bending gender like never before and POCs like Paige Coleman and Mab showing different ways of playing with body parts for kicks (and clicks). Media darlings who have typically adopted whimsical style haven’t shied away from SFX and Prosthetics, including Tilda Mace who has made Monsters of FKA Twigs and Megan Thee Stallion, Ashnikko adorned in chic lumps by Georgia Olive and Doja Cat who appointed Forbes 30 under 30’s Alina Sterns to turn her into a feline fantasy.
Whilst prosthetics and SFX makeup are so pervasive in 2020s culture, we can question whether this goes too far. In China, young women are adopting silicon masks to embody a more beautiful visage. This is currently unregulated and calls to question today’s fragility around identity, as well as how safe it is to adopt new personas in offline worlds.Despite this being a product of self-consciousness, there’s a strange comfort to being able to adopt a new identtiy in an in a time of uncertainty. As social media democratizes access to artistry, audiences are exposed to body horror, avant-garde visuals, and more diverse forms of beauty than ever before.
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