If you’re familiar with YouTube vlogger Sailor J, you know that the real meat of her makeup tutorials are the satire and witty-as-hell social commentary than actual makeup tips (though, the girl knows her way around a face beat). However, if her latest video will be your introduction to her brilliance, be prepared for things to get especially dark and real, real fast.
In Sailor J’s “T & P Makeup Look” video, the 21-year-old uses beauty products by a brand called Thoughts & Prayers. If you haven’t heard of Thoughts & Prayers, that’s because it’s nonexistent, as are the completely useless invisible products she wields to supposedly change her look — just like the completely useless thoughts and prayers she says “rich, indifferent people in Congress [tweet about] often, usually after a national tragedy like the Parkland shooting.”
Laced with Sailor J’s signature quick-cut edits of funny faces and hilarious interjections, the video is instantly recognizable as a metaphor for how futile the hackneyed thoughts-and-prayers response to mass shootings is. She starts the tutorial by showing the supplies she’s working with, saying, “As you can see, I have all of my stuff here. I have my phone. I have my brushes. And then I have the actual makeup line.” She pans the camera to a blank space on her rug, insisting we’re looking at highlighters, contour kits, and other makeup items.
The first step is an invisible foundation named “If You’re White, It’s a Mental Illness and If You’re Brown, You’re a Terrorist,” which she proceeds to put on the back of her hand. Don’t see it? “It’s probably because you’re not strong enough in the spirit,” she says with sarcastic conviction. As she swirls the empty brush on her face, she claims it “makes a world of difference.”
After applying “the sharpest cat eye I’ve ever seen” (it can’t be seen), she moves on to an invisible mascara in the shade Bulletproof Black, which Sailor J says is “supposed to match the vest that we’re going to have to start putting on our children if we want them to make it past the sixth fucking grade.” She then uses an imperceptible highlighter called Money — “because that’s all our country fucking cares about” — followed by an undetectable blush in the shade The Blood of Our Children, “because it’s what we’re bathing in these days. I’m just gonna dab that here so we look flushed with embarrassment like the rest of our country.”
[“Source-allure”]