Nerd of the Week

Posted by terraolsen on January 18, 2013 in Interviews | Leave a comment

Meet Meagan, a Makeup Nerd

Interview by Terra Olsen

You’re a complete makeup nerd. How does makeup inspire the nerd in you?

For me, makeup is just another outlet for artistic and self-expression. The same way a cosplayer gets to be someone else or show a different side of themselves when in costume, I get to show some different facets of myself through my makeup. I think for me it’s also partly that I don’t really have many tangible artistic skills. I am an actor, but I can’t really draw or paint or create I that way and I get some of the same satisfaction from playing with different shadows and lipsticks and things, if that makes any sense.

How did you discovery your love and talent for makeup styling?

My infatuation with makeup probably started when I was 15. I took these acting classes that ended up sending me to a week long acting/modeling competition in LA. I went as an actor, but every morning we’d get up and have professional crews do our hair and makeup. That’s when I learned it could be fun to get done up and it didn’t necessarily mean you had to be caked in makeup or that your non-made up face wasn’t great, it was just an exciting new option. It wasn’t until I took a stage makeup class in college that I realized that I could do some really cool stuff without a professional’s help. That was pretty exciting. A friend of mine is also a really amazing self-taught makeup artist and she was the one that widened my color palette to include all of them.

How has makeup styling impacted your life?

I never really thought of makeup as something that would be more than a fun personal thing, but then some of my friends invited me to collaborate on a YouTube channel they were working on creating. The idea was to start a makeup tutorial channel, but to make it geared specifically to geeks. It’s called “OneUpMakeup” and we do a lot of cosplay looks and “inspired by” things. Anything from Xmen to Zombies to My Little Pony. It’s just a bunch of us with varying degrees of experience having fun and learning as we go. It’s more like a sleepover than work.

Where do you want to take your podcast and passion for makeup in the future?

At this point, this is still just a fun side hobby for me. I just want to keep enjoying hanging out with a group of awesome girls and making these videos. Hopefully someone will watch them and like what we’re doing, and it would be great to do more, I’m just not really sure what. We’ll be doing a panel at ECCC this year, which should be a great opportunity to do something different with our channel and to promote it to a bunch of new people. We all just want to be a part of a channel that is fun for us and (hopefully) our viewers, and that actually puts out quality content related to our nerdy fandoms.

What advice would you give to others interested in exploring more creative avenues with makeup?

Advice, eh? I would say: don’t be afraid to play. It’s not life or death, it’s just makeup and you should be doing it for yourself anyway. If you’re trying to explore more with new looks and things, watch some YouTube videos for inspiration, then go nuts. It might look silly at first, but once you get the hang of it can be really fun. Figure out what colors/styles look good or make you feel good and go from there.

Favorite moment or memory makeup styling?

That’s a good question…hmmm…I feel like every time we film a OneUpMakeup shoot, I have an amazing time, but it’s hard to pinpoint one particular thing. Oh! Here’s one from college. I remember when we had the assignment of doing animal makeup so I ended up choosing to make myself look like a leopard. It was always much easier to wash off full face makeup at home, so I was still in full makeup when I was leaving the drama building. I ran into tons of people I knew and, not a single one of them knew who I was when I said hello. It’s a small thing, but that was the first time I was really proud of my makeup. That I did something well enough that people I knew fairly well still didn’t know who I was until they heard my voice. That was pretty cool.

Our channel can be found at and our group consists of 6 ladies: Liz Leo, Kristina Horner, Mallory Shoemaker, Tara Theoharis, Molly McIsaac, and me (Meagan Karimi-Naser).

Meagan Karimi-Naser is a child of the Pacific Northwest through and through. She attended the University of Washington where she double majored in drama and anthropology. She writes and performs sketch comedy with a group called The Pilot Episode, and co-hosts weekly web updates for the Seattle-based YouTube competition King of the Web. She met the wonderful OneUpMakeup girls on the set of their 2012 webseries Job Hunters. She doesn’t have a blog or her own YouTube channel or anything cool like that, but she is on Twitter. You can find her through the incredibly creative handle . 

Do you know a self-proclaimed nerd we should interview? If so, please contact Terra at  and tell us about them.