We go deep with an adult film insider.
Makeup artist Lora Michael, like most self-employed creative professionals, takes whatever gig she can get. Some days, that means doing hair and makeup for weddings, head shots, and video shoots.
Other days, that means airbrushing a porn star’s butt.
For the past six months, Michael has been working regularly for a Los Angeles–based adult film company, painting pouty watermelon lips, crafting soft, sexy curls, and going through dozens of fake eyelashes. Michael’s Technicolor hair and broad smile are a natural icebreaker. (Today her locks are a muted take on unicorn hair—light pink, blue, and lavender—but she’s been known to sport platinum blonde and hot pink.)
Watch her work, and you’ll notice she has a special gift for fostering openness and moving beyond small talk—not that many of her adult film clients are shy. “These women are so comfortable being nude that they’ll sit naked for two hours. They’ll ask me, ‘Hey can you cover up the zits on my ass?’ ‘Yeah I can do that,’” she jokes.
SELF sat down with her to learn more about her experience.
SELF: How did you get into doing makeup for porn?
Lora Michael: I never ask what a gig is for [when I book it]. A friend referred this woman to me for hair and makeup, and when she came over I asked what was the occasion. She said, “Oh, it’s for porn.”
I made sure to give her a look that would really stay put. Well, turns out, this shoot was for a specific type of fetish where your makeup gets all smeared and messed up. They had a really hard time smearing her makeup—at one point the male star was actually rubbing his dick on her face to try to get it to smear. That’s how I got the reputation of “dickproof makeup.” For most shoots, that’s a good thing, so [the producers] hired me for more work.
So how do you make makeup stay put no matter what?
Do you mean how to make your lipstick dickproof? That’s my specialty. [Laughs] Pretty much every long-wear lipstick has the same first ingredient, isododecane. It’s an oil that evaporates and makes everything seal to your skin. It’s the magic ingredient. You also need to start with hydrated, exfoliated lips.
I exfoliate the lips with coconut oil and baker’s sugar, which is finer than regular sugar but not as fine as powdered sugar. The coconut oil soaks in and moisturizes. Leave it on for five minutes and then wipe it off, and all the dead skin comes with it.
Do you have to worry about sweat at all?
Actually, most of the women are always cold because they’re naked and the room is adjusted to make the crew comfortable. Part of my job is to sit nearby with a big towel or a robe and bundle them up, otherwise, they’re too cold to function.
I have had to glisten someone up. If you’re trying to see the passion and that someone has lost control because they’re having such a good time, they need to be a little glowy or it just looks weird. I’ll use a little bit of highlighter or moisturizer on the cheekbones so it doesn’t look so matte. It doesn’t look sweaty, it looks like you’re about to get sweaty, which is kind of sexy. Highlighter. Never glitter. Never glitter.
What tips do you have for—not creating a “porn star pout” per se—but making lips looks naturally nice and full?
For thin lips, go with a pretty, light color. Dark lipstick on thin lips can make it look like you have a little angry line across your mouth. I don’t use a lot of red lipstick [on porn shoots] unless it’s somebody’s trademark. Red can look inflamed or make a person look older, but pink always looks sexy. The best way to get the right shade of lipstick is to look at the color of the tip of your tongue—that’s your natural coloring.
I’ll put a little bit of a much lighter color or a bit of shimmer in the center of the bottom lip. It makes everything pop up and look full and pouty and sexy. I’ll also put a little bit of a contour underneath the bottom lip. It creates the illusion that your lips are just popping off your face, which looks good if your whole purpose is to make people want to have sex with your face.
Always line the lips. One of the things we lose as we get older is the natural line of the lips gets fuzzy. Keep that sharp and you’ll automatically look younger.
What aspect of makeup do you think people usually get wrong when they’re trying to create a sexy look?
Blush. You have to put the blush in the right place and choose the right color to get that natural flushed look. A lot of people will put pink in the middle of the cheek, like a doll, or will draw a hard line of a brownish color under the cheekbone to look thinner. That’s not what happens when you’re naturally flushed, though.
If you pinch your cheek pretty hard and hold it for a few seconds, the color your face turns is the color of blush you should be using. Apply it onto the cheeks and back toward the ear. My favorite color is Nars Orgasm. It looks pink and happy and has a subtle gold sparkle that gives a glowing, flushed effect.
This is also important for women with darker skin. They tend to skip blush, and will tell me, “I thought I was too dark.” I’ll use a deep copper for blush on dark skin.
Do you have to do any body makeup, and what do you do?
I would say probably one-third of the women who I work on have some kind of thing going on with their skin, like eczema or body acne, and they’re always really self-conscious about it to the point where they’ll whisper to me about it even though we’re the only ones in the room.
I say it’s really not a thing at all—everyone has the same issues. It’s really pretty easy to cover. I use an airbrush for all of the body stuff, because the more you mess with it, the more aggravated it will get.
People overestimate how dramatic their blemishes are. It’s really never as bad as anyone thinks it is. All it requires is a little bit of color correction. If you don’t have an airbrush, Sally Hansen Airbrush Legs spray works pretty well. Just get a color that isn’t too dark for your skin.
Is there anything that really annoys you when you’re doing a performer’s hair and makeup?
Fake tans. Fake tans are awful. One, they almost never actually look real because that’s not the color of human skin. Two, they smell like dirty gym socks. As soon as the original fragrance washes off, everyone can smell it and your scene partner is grossed out by it. They also rub off unevenly.
Everyone’s already the color they’re supposed to be. If someone really needs one of these women to be a different color, I just airbrush them that color on set and it doesn’t require the smelly chemical that interacts with the skin.
Do you ever work on gay, lesbian, or other non-heterosexual pornography, and how is your job different on those shoots?
I’ve done makeup for some woman-on-woman pornography, both the type that’s made for men who are into that and the type that’s made for women. It’s very different when it’s woman-on-woman pornography that’s made for women. It’s usually about having a partner who looks like themselves, and who doesn’t look overly done. The scene is usually about a more sensual experience, so that means hair and makeup that works for closer, more tactile filming. There’s not so many fake eyelashes or hairspray. You want to be able to run your fingers through someone’s hair when they’re going down on you, and it’s not soft or sensual if your hands get stuck.
What is the set environment like for women, in your experience?
With the company that I work with, everyone’s always safe, polite, and cool. But I’ve heard some really, really messed up stories from women [about what happens on other sets].
On the shoots I work on, the performers have a lot of control over the situation. If you’re on-set and something weird happens, you can immediately stop, get up, and everyone will try to make you comfortable.
It’s a pretty fun atmosphere, really. We have set pets.
Set pets?!
Yes, baby kittens. We have this outtake reel of the kittens wandering onto set and sitting there and watching, or popping out of the corner and playing with the actress’s hair while she’s getting fucked.
Overall, do you enjoy what you do?
I do, but it has ups and downs. It is fun to work on something that is purely fantasy, because there’s flexibility and my goal is always to make everyone look beautiful.
The less fun aspect of it is when I can tell that someone doesn’t want to be doing that job and they’re just doing it for the money. At any job, there are people who don’t want to be there, but when there’s something that involves so much intimacy it’s kind of a bummer. But that doesn’t happen very often. If someone really isn’t into it, I’ll help them leave or help them get out of that situation.
Generally it’s really fun—people want to be there, and it’s portraying a fantasy. The women feel pretty, and I feel good because I made them feel pretty.