Everyone is wearing clown make-up because everything is absurd

With her signature matte white-painted face, colourful eyeshadow and exaggerated blush, Chappell Roan’s make-up has become a vital component of her artistry. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Divine and Pat McGrath, it brings together elements of drag, burlesque, club kid make-up and a classic clown aesthetic. Just look at her Tiny Desk appearance, where she performed with a thick white base, rosy pink cheeks and red lips that was part circus clown, part Pierrot.

It’s not just Roan who looks ready to join the circus; clown make-up is slowly but surely infiltrating the worlds of fashion, beauty and music. Think of Julia Fox last year, showing up at events around Washington DC in a series of clowncore looks straight out of La Strada. Fashion designer Charles Jeffrey incorporates clown aesthetics into both his personal looks and that of his models, as do rapper Doechii and musician Jessie Edelstein. Make-up artists like Bo Quinn and Alice Dodds both draw from the circus for inspiration, while Elizaveta Porodina often utilises white face paint to turn her photographic subjects into truly blank canvases.

Clown make-up has often been a way to deconstruct conventional beauty standards and convey transgression through aesthetics. A symbol of rebellion, clowns have long challenged mainstream norms and the status quo, whether that’s court jesters, Leigh Bowery, the Emcee from Cabaret or Insane Clown Posse. Through applying bold white face paint and cartoonish red blush, traditional clowns were able to transform from ordinary people into figures who could freely speak truth to power without fear of retribution.

The first recorded clown with a white base was the ‘original English clown’ (surprisingly not Boris Johnson, but a much older, strange white man), Joseph Grimaldi. He used a white base to highlight his clown character as a comic figure by redrawing his facial features in primary colours. In the 17th and 18th centuries, traditional pantomime culture featured the turbulent lives of stock characters that represented juxtaposing emotions. The Harlequin, a light-hearted trickster in a tight diamond covered costume, was often a foil for the mournful, lovesick Pierrot.

With his painted white face and sad story, Pierrot has, overtime, become a symbol of the disenfranchised, lonely and alienated; a lonesome deep thinker desperately trying to figure out the mystery and misery that is living within the confines of the human condition. Today, clown make-up still can act as a vehicle for people to explore feelings of alienation and the desire to escape rigid standards. For Roan, growing up queer in a conservative environment and feeling trapped, her over-the-top persona was a way to express her experiences and rebel against mainstream ideals of beauty that are rooted in the male gaze. “It’s all rooted in fun drag stuff and queer culture, but it’s also kind of like a ‘f--- you’ to the people who hate me,” she said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Similarly, Fox turning up at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in clownish make-up, while fun and tongue-in-cheek, was also a conscious deviation from and refusal to conform to the respectability and sobriety expected at these events. Wearing a full white-out face and neck, purple oversized lips with a pointed Cupid’s bow and black winged liner extended to her temples, Fox drew attention to the performativity of the occasion and, whether or not she intended to, the farcical circus that is politics and the Capitol.

The beauty of clown make-up is that it is a tool which can be used to convey both a joyfully rebellious outlook on society, as well as a pessimistic one. Porodina uses inspirations from stock characters paired with colourful, experimental and futuristic elements in her photography to heighten how her images express emotions. “The clown, the jester, the performer, it’s an archetype before it is anything else,” she says. “It comes down to playfully exploring the entire spectrum of human behaviour and emotion – there is a mask on, there could be real tears or maybe there isn’t.”

For make-up artist Quinn, white face paint is the most vital element in their ‘drag clown’ transformations, because “the harsh white base completely removes the human aspect to a person.” Their looks feature full sclera contacts and bald caps, face painted in opaque white grease paint with graphic shapes and overdrawn, outlined lips. Quinn says that while people are becoming more adventurous in playing with make-up again, their looks can still be perceived as overbearing. To avoid this, they aim for their skill to be the focus of their work, by ensuring all elements are done “technically well, with my signature edge, rather than stick or draw as much stuff on my face as possible”.

Whether it’s goth make-up or a clown aesthetic, people are finding solace from the often-harsh realities of life through increasingly maximalist make-up, and challenging the sometimes unbearable pressures of conforming to mainstream beauty standards. Its popularity also speaks to the boredom that people are feeling around the minimalist beige make-up that has dominated the last decade, from Instagram face to quiet luxury. Clown make-up and those inspired by it signal a new age of camp being cool again. 

Ultimately, whether it’s being used as an aesthetic to convey feelings of alienation or a tool of pure creativity, white face paint and the laying of colours, shapes and features inherent in clown make-up, reminds us that make-up is always intentional. Whether you are putting on a BB cream and brown mascara or shaving your eyebrows and covering your face in white paint, the act of picking up a brush and painting yourself is the same – it’s all part of the daily performance of presenting identity.