Makeup Artist Review Essay

The speech I chose to review is titled “In my Chair -- a Makeup Artists Perspective on Beauty” by Eva DeVirgilis. The title is what drew me in, as I was interested in how is a makeup artist was going to view the beauty industry and the harm that it does to women’s self image and confidence. I was also a little doubtful as to how good of a speaker a makeup artist could be.
DeVirgilis begins her speech by sitting in a chair, similar in looks to that of a director’s chair. This chair continues to be her visual aide throughout the rest of the speech and makes for a very good interactive speaking point. She goes through several different voice impersonations, all of which are women complaining about their looks. This attention getter worked incredibly
It was as if she was having a conversation with the audience. While with some topics this could be seen as a negative, as she could have been too causal, I think it fit well with her topic and her personality. She had vocal variety and even at some points yelled which added an element of humor. She kept her lighthearted tone, until she spoke of mortality in relation to beauty. She began this by sitting and taking on the voice of an old woman, and next a cancer patient. After she stood from the chair she dropped her smiley domineer. It was grounding and brought a serious tone to the speech that I had not been expecting. Finally, I think her topic choice was very relatable. While it didn’t relate directly to any of the men in the audience she did portray and elderly woman and several other women that a man could have related to his own mother, wife, sister, or daughter. I also think her topic choice was important. While makeup seems like a silly luxury, DeVirgilis used her platform to show the positive benefits it could have in making a woman feel happy and beautiful. I think her speech can be summed up well when she said, “I work in the deep end of a shallow