Usually, when you think of makeup tutorials, you imagine girls in their bedrooms showing you their tricks for creating the perfect smoky eye, or how to contour. What you don't expect to see is a primer on how to cover up a black eye caused by your spouse pushing you face first into a coffee table.
When we came across this "Morning After" tutorial by famed beauty vlogger Lauren Luke, our initial WTF quickly morphed into a "please tell us this a joke," followed by a whole lot of shock and concern. But, when we got to the end of the video, it suddenly all made sense: This was one of the most striking, straight-to-the-point PSAs we've ever laid eyes on.
Done in collaboration with U.K.-based Refuge, which seeks to raise awareness and funds to help victims of abuse, the message the video is trying to send is that domestic violence shouldn't be hidden. Citing the statistic that 65% of women who have been victims of domestic violence keep it hidden, the tagline for the video — and the tie-in with Lauren Luke — is clear: Don't cover it up.
The video is uncomfortable to watch, raw, poignant, and most of all, real. Unlike the "Victim of Beauty" editorial that recently ran in Italian mag 12, this video doesn't glamorize violence against women — it strikes a raw nerve and urges you to take immediate action to stop it. We wish more mainstream magazines would embrace this type of message rather than weakly arguing that their "artistic" pictures of mutilated women are done in the name of public service. Kudos to Refuge and Lauren Luke for presenting this very serious issue in a way that both resonates and inspires. Your move, 12. (BuzzFeed)