If you’re a TikTok user or a James Charles fan, you’ve most likely heard of the “mugshot challenge”. It’s a trend which started on TikTok, with users posting videos of themselves smudging their eyeliner and messing up their hair before posing in front of a bare white wall.
This might be playing with the idea of mugshots taken by the police prior to incarceration. But the real controversy began when users started using makeup in order to appear bloodied and bruised.
Makeup artist and influencer James Charles faced a huge amount of backlash after posting an uncomfortably realistic selfie in which he has bruised eyes and a bloodstained face – or it appears that way.
His rendition of the challenge is inappropriate and potentially triggering for his audiences.
Before he posted this, was he thinking about the people who have been affected by abuse? Was he thinking about the millions of kids who love and idolise him? Apparently not. Instead, he thought it was okay to post a photo which plays around with one of the most serious issues in the world right now: domestic abuse.
This harks back to the dubious trend for ‘heroin chic’ in the mid-1990s. Mario Testino and other photographers created fashion-shoots which made it look like their featured models were bruised and abused as if through the use of hard drugs.
By using violent-looking imagery both of these trends make light of personal violation. They also share the same insensitivity towards the young audiences which they influence.
However, I do not believe that James Charles is someone who should be cancelled. He has made a colossal mistake and needs to take responsibility by apologising and proving that he cares about the real victims of abuse, rather than denying these allegations as he recently did on Twitter.
