In the early 2000s, the femme fatales of Nollywood were seldom seen without pencil-thin eyebrows, a thick, dark swipe of lip liner or a carefully placed, painted-on beauty mark. In Nigerian films like “Games Women Play” (2005), “Yankee Girls” (2008), “Mama, I Will Die for You” (2004) and “Love & Marriage” (2004), the rebellious city girls, wayward wives and conniving mothers-in-law are quickly identifiable by their flashy makeup, which often remixed early-aughts American trends. Although these movies have been popular among West African and diasporic viewers since their releases, their circulation over the years was relatively narrow, restricted to VHS, DVD and niche corners of YouTube. But now, nearly two decades later, a broader audience is discovering these films online and recreating their distinctive beauty looks for themselves — turning the “bad girls” of Nollywood’s recent past into their own modern heroes.
The Nollywood industry first rose to prominence in the early ’90s, when the widespread availability of VHS allowed low-budget films such as the now-classic thrillers “Living in Bondage” (1992) and “Glamour Girls” (1994) to be distributed rapidly. Such movies — which typically featured class tensions, melodramatic confrontations and religious undertones — were primarily produced in Lagos, though “Nollywood” is now commonly used as a catchall for films made in other countries, including Ghana. The movies were almost always moralistic; by the end, the villain was guaranteed their comeuppance. The boldest beauty looks were often reserved for the female villains, their uninhibited makeup telegraphing their unchecked vices. On TikTok, where the phrase “Y2K Nollywood makeup” now has millions of related tutorials and other videos, creators pair heavily powdered skin with outrageously curved brows and blue-frosted lids — all while rolling their eyes and smacking gum, channeling the indulgently bad attitudes that these characters are known for. This new wave of interest is due in part to Instagram pages like @nolly.babes and @yung.nollywood, which archive film stills of the industry’s favorite faces, zeroing in on scenes where nonconforming women are the most empowered.
“I was always attracted to one type of character: the autonomous woman, the rebel,” says the @yung.nollywood creator Theodora Imaan Beauvais, 29, who was born in Lagos and is now based in Montreal. “I realized that there is this character [that] exists within my culture and my country’s [film] industry, but I didn’t see that character” represented in other forms of media. Now, the once-taboo persona is a mainstream reference: Nigerian pop stars such as Tems and Ayra Starr have incorporated old-school Nollywood flair into looks on the red carpet, in cover shoots and in their music videos. Recently, @nolly.babes and @yung.nollywood collaborated with the Black-owned beauty brands Ami Colé and Topicals to market a new product and launch with archival film stills. This past fall, at the Balenciaga fashion show in Paris, Starr appeared with black-lined lips that called back to the trademark aesthetic. The rest of her makeup, though, was relatively muted; for many of today’s fans, the exaggerated looks of the early aughts serve simply as a jumping-off point. After all, the most inspiring aspect of Nollywood beauty is the attitude it conveys.
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