Zombie Makeup
Every portrayal of the undead coming back to life takes morbid pleasure in their horrifying look. Gray sunken faces, rivulets of blood, maybe a fresh scar or a fake eyeball dangling from a socket. A reanimated corpse eventually will look like that, but not at first. Has everyone forgotten the care we put into preserving the recently deceased? We drain their blood, pump in formaldehyde, dress them in their best clothes, brush their hair, lightly scent their bodies, place their hands gently across their chests. And if this wasn’t nice enough treatment, we put them in makeup. A thick primer coat is slathered all over, even the ears and neck. Then lipstick, rouge and eye shadow. Most women have never worn so much makeup in their life, not to mention men. Applying such makeup is a art, but the makeup artists usually have never met their clients in life, and so err on the side of healthy glows. Most families’ last view of their relatives are marred by rosy-cheeked, gleaming countenances that didn’t match up to their loved ones in life. And when the recently deceased do climb out of their tombs, their desiccation will be neatly hidden by this makeup. Their clean-cut appearances and dark suits will fool us, allow us to not notice who they are until we can see the dead of their eyes. And that’s as close as they need to get to lunge.
