Ziwe Fumudoh Is Just Joking

The Friday morning after one of Ziwe’s shows, Twitter feeds everywhere look the same—grainy video of a woman wearing pearl-white eyeliner, Milk Makeup-covered brows furrowed, as she listens to white actifluencers like Alyssa Milano and Caroline Calloway answer pointed questions about race, class, activism, anything. Ziwe (just Ziwe, like Cher), a writer on Showtime’s Desus and Mero, started her weekly Instagram Live interview show, Baited, to hold people of influence over the flames of the societal issues they fan in their work (intentionally or otherwise). Beauty is a character in the performance, but Ziwe is the star.

I'm a middle child, so I was always a ham. My parents are funny, because they're Nigerian immigrants and their reactions to American culture are so hyperbolic and pure. I’ve always been hyperbolic, extremely dramatic. It wasn't until halfway through college that I realized I wanted to do comedy professionally. (That was after I had become really passionate about poetry and realized very quickly that being a professional poet is a hard life.) I did an internship at The Colbert Report — I got a joke on the show, and I was like, “Okay, this is something that is actually possible.”

Being a professional artist is extremely difficult, but extremely rewarding. On the one hand, you're not working in a mine. You get to use your creative energy, which most people don't — that’s really a blessing. The hard part is, if you don't have fancy parents, or you're not very plugged into the creative industry, it’s incredibly hard to get a foot in the door. I interned at a Comedy Central rotational program, I interned at The Onion, and I went to college at Northwestern University — which is influential in the entertainment community — so I was really lucky to have opportunities.

College was also the height of beauty blogs on YouTube. I'm like, “How do I look like Naomi Campbell, my beauty idol?” I started teaching myself [makeup] along those lines. Then I started writing a beauty column for Into the Gloss. I definitely could not afford to have the palettes, the foundation sticks and the eye shadows and the liquid liners, [so] writing about beauty was my way of trying all these different products without absolutely breaking my bank.

I love writing about beauty. I love adding my odd sense of humor to the capitalism that is talking about different lip glosses. Makeup is very important to my weekly show — I have a signature white eyeliner and I use Glossier Cloud Paint in Storm for my cheeks. I’ll use a Bite lipstick in Cognac as a lip liner, and then a gloss. [When I did this shoot] for Allure, I used the Fenty gloss in Hot Chocolit.

My look on the show doesn’t entirely have a concept behind it, but I love Euphoria, and I am deeply influenced by the makeup of Alexa Demie and Barbie Ferreira. I saw Alexa's character do the white eyeliner, and I was like, "This is a fresh look!" My eyes would kind of shrink, though, so I double-line with black on the bottom for that Disney princess quality. If I look like a doll, that's my goal.

I find that [makeup, and the consumer culture that accompanies it,] is really laughable. I kind of love approaching beauty that way. I just think that it's really silly. The idea that I was writing part of my beauty column during a pandemic — I’m like, “Yeah, this mascara makes me feel like I have a camel’s eyelashes.” There’s something about beauty and fashion that doesn’t acknowledge the current climate. I find there's a commonality between the 1950s American housewife and the 2020s American influencer.

[In my own beauty writing], I try to nod to the fact that beauty is the least of our concerns. Beauty is my escape — it makes me feel better about the world, but it’s so minuscule in greater context. The lip gloss and eyeliner that I wear for my Instagram Lives about hate crimes just add another layer of satire.

But maybe not. I cannot remove beauty from my life. I have to wear makeup because I don’t photograph as well without it. Beauty is part of everything that I do as a woman in entertainment. I use beauty as a character on my show. That’s all I can do. Beauty can be radical, but it can also be really, really shallow. It depends on how you use it.

I like the idea of incorporating beauty into really substantive conversations about blackface and being a white ally. Suddenly, it becomes like a satire of talk shows, where I’m this airheaded host that’s like, "I love makeup! I love fashion!" But I'm having these really in-depth conversations that normally don’t happen on talk shows. Most hosts are like, "What’s your next project? How can we promote it?" as opposed to "How many Black friends do you have? What do you like about Black people qualitatively?" And I’m asking those questions with my intense eyeliner and pigment on my face. I’m trying to contextualize these products that I have and bring them into conversations about race and class and gender. I don't know if I'm doing it successfully. I'm just saying that nothing exists in a vacuum. I don't exist in a vacuum, the makeup I wear doesn’t exist in a vacuum, the clothes I wear don't exist in a vacuum — how can we contextualize this to create a better picture of American culture?

You have interview series, like 20/20 or 60 Minutes, which [include] hard-hitting interviews about the issues. The journalists, they're either men and they're not really wearing much makeup, or they're women and their makeup isn't supposed to be distracting. Conversely, you have lifestyle brands like the Kelly Clarkson Show, like Tyra, where it's about beauty and lifestyle and dieting and what it means to be a woman, and how we can incorporate these facets of lifestyle branding for women into the everyday programming of those shows. And never the two shall meet. I think Oprah Winfrey is actually an example of someone who combined lifestyle branding and journalism in a way that was really, really interesting in media; in a way that was kind of provocative and subversive. So I am trying to combine hard-hitting journalism, as a comedian that's cosplaying, and lifestyle branding into something really, really powerful. I'm trying to take the thoughtful journalism of 60 Minutes and the air-headed gorgeous girl who just shuffles around products… I'm trying to combine those, because I think that they exist together.

To cosplay as Ziwe, I think you have to do the double eyeliner, white and black. I think a blush — I like a sort of deep-toned blush, a purple or reddish-brown. I love a gloss. I love a DSL; I got the DSL from Erika Jayne, actually. Erika Jayne and Dorit Kemsley, Naomi Campbell, Normani, Alexa Demie — these are beauty influences of mine. We love a paint.

I don't like to wear eyelashes because I just don't like putting glue around my eyes. I used to love putting on rhinestones, but then one time I took it off and it removed skin, so I was like, "Let me chill with that." But, yeah, I love a subtle look. My makeup isn't too heavy. My eyes are really strong. I don't wear an eye shadow, but I have eczema scarring, so it looks like I always have a shadow on. It always looks like my skin is contoured because of the way my face is scarred — fun fact. I've been dealing with it since, maybe, I was in first grade. It used to just be on my arms, and then it got on my face. It's not that bad. I have steroids that I try not to use because it thins your skin, but I've also found this really good product — it's called Whal Myung.

Have you heard of [it]? It’s actually pretty good with helping my eczema. I don't mind my skin being dry; it's when it gets textured that it’s an issue, because obviously I have to put on makeup, and it doesn't photograph well if you have bumps on your face. I'll hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. It's not that bad in the summer — this is my reprieve; it's when my heater is on. That's when it gets really terrible. But for the most part, I'm pretty chill. I love Glow Recipe's Watermelon Glow Toner, [because] it’s actually hydrating.

[And then] I wear wigs. I have my Rihanna wig for the summer, my short look, and my Rihanna wig for the winter, long and wavy. I have natural hair under this. Every week, I'll wash my hair and cornrow it myself, just because I don't go to the salon anymore. But my hair is like a big-ass 'fro. It's so thick I break brushes. It's really, really a juicy unit. I don't like to put heat on my hair. I'm very protective of it, because as a kid I had my hair relaxed. My mom pestered me into getting a relaxer, and I hated that. Either I have cornrows and I'm wearing a wig, or I'll have straight-up braids.

I love incorporating beauty into my work. I would love to have a lifestyle brand one day. I love lifestyle. I love clothes. I love beauty. The real hard part is how you incorporate it in a way that's sustainable, in a way that doesn't feel like it's contributing to the death of the planet Earth. I don't know the answer to those questions, but in a perfect world, I would do lifestyle. I would do lifestyle and comedy. That is the convergence of all my interests, but with the added benefit of talking about race and class and gender. That would be my dream. —As told to Brennan Kilbane

A version of this story originally appeared in the October 2020 issue of Allure. Learn how to subscribe here.

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