(upbeat music) - Hi everyone. I am here in Phoenix,
Arizona, with Monica Torres, who at first glance, would seem like a very
different funeral director and mortician than I am. I am more of the natural
body, put it in the dirt, grow like a tree. Whereas you are-- - I'm a reconstructive specialist
and also a desairologist. - Desairology, most people
have no idea what that is. - Even funeral directors. - Yeah, even funeral directors. - I like to basically describe desairology as the perfect marriage of
embalming and cosmetology. - You all, I know, are
fascinated by what Monica does. I am fascinated by what
Monica does and I think, at the end of the day, what makes us really similar practitioners is that we are both most
interested in getting the family in the room with the body
however that can happen. - Absolutely. (gentle music) - Can I just get a full time job as a makeup artist to the dead? - Unfortunately, it's not
really very realistic. I don't wanna tell people
that that's not a possibility. Obviously you can anything that you want and put your heart into. - Except this thing. - Except this thing. - I'm the dream squasher, too. (laughing) - [Monica] Working with mortuary
cosmetics is very different than working with every day makeup. - How do you become the best mortuary makeup artist you can be? - I did have a background
doing makeup on the living before I transitioned to
doing makeup on the dead. When I made that transition,
I noticed in the prep rooms that I was working in is
that they didn't really have the tools that I wanted to
use, that I was used to using. For example, this is a
traditional mortuary makeup brush. These are brushes that pretty
much every mortician has in their prep room, whereas
these two brushes are not. These are used for professional
makeup on the living. I like to blend the two. (gentle music) - I have never used airbrush
mortuary makeup before. Big reveal. Look like the puffy paints that we used-- - Yes, they do.
- Decorate our shirts with. - Basically, you're just
gonna take not a lot, two, three, four, five drops does it. That will cover half a face. Then I always like to point
this out to my students, too, is that your skin is gonna be
different when you're dead. So you wanna make sure
that you spread that skin as much as you can and
then you're going to-- (camera flashing) Just give it some passes. Typically airbrush makeup is
used for intense camouflage,. So if somebody is highly discolored, that's when I reach for my airbrush. I don't typically use on every day cases. You're working on a really
difficult case where half of the face has a really traumatic injury and you're using wax and
other products, silicone, to make that person look natural, this is a go-to for many,
many professional embalmers. - Well, it's covered up the blue glove and now is skin tone. - And typically, I put a
white underneath so you can even get a better effect from it. - So the white kind of cancels out-- - That's right.
- The discoloration. - It's like a canvas. - It's like how you put green
or yellow to cover bags. - Yes.
- On your eyes, and then you put-- - Exactly.
- The actual concealer on top. - Exactly, that's the
exact, it's the concept. (gentle music) - This is Debbie, our dearly departed. We thought, at the last minute, that maybe I should get
on the table and take off my makeup and be full mortuary dummy, but we're gonna go with Debbie today. But if you wanna see that, maybe I'll fly back to Phoenix
and we'll do this again. - Yeah, let us know. - Let us know, only if this video gets-- I don't even know how
many likes my videos get. If this video gets (clock
ticking) 50,000 likes. - (laughing) 50,000, I thought
you were gonna say five. - No, 50,000. How badly do you wanna see me? - I'm gonna pretend that Deborah
has already been embalmed, or not embalmed, either one. Possibly she was ill for
awhile and you can see she has her hair grown
out which is something that a cosmetologist would notice. - And all her shady
friends would notice too. - Yes, absolutely.
- And comment on it. - The thing that I try
to teach my embalmers, when they're embalming, is to
actually come the hair forward because the hair, much like the
rest of our body is protein. Formaldehyde coagulates protein. So what we wanna do is
we kinda wanna embalm that hair follicle facing forward so when that person's laying in their casket, their hair will not be
flat back on the pillow. And we're giving her some
highlights too, right, so we can do low lights and-- - You don't ever just like spray the head like a Just For Men commercial? (lively music) - Correct, I'm trying to use the most professional
techniques that I know how. Typically your hair
stylist is gonna try and-- (mumbles) Yeah, she's gonna try and
give you some dimension and that's what I'm trying
to offer here for Debbie so that it looks most natural. Try it out and see. That's how you learn, right? You learn by, in this business,
you learn by sometimes the mistakes that we make
and things that we say, I wish I would've done
that a little differently. There you go. Yeah. - I got a little on her face there. In no situation should
you spit on the decedent and wipe it off with your thumb. - That's not okay. - No, and we did not teach you to do that. - If you wanna take that hair and you do a little part section right here. And you're gonna pull this down here and you're gonna work in, less is more. As with mortuary makeup. - Yeah.
- Less is always more. - Spray on this side.
- Mm hmm. You hold it right at
the end there and then you'll just do about four
or five inches away; yup. - Oh my God, I got her in the face again. (laughing) Oh Debbie, I'm so sorry, Debbie. Debbie, I'm not used to spray color. I'm sorry. Debbie, you deserve so much
more dignity than this. - Also something about this hair color, you're gonna love this
in your kit by the way, is that it's water based,
so you're not married to it. - Right.
- Say like you're doing a hairstyle and you're like, oh my gosh, this is totally the wrong color. - Yeah. - All you have to do is wash it out. (gentle music) - A question that I get a lot from the funeral industry people is oh, so you promote no embalming? What if someone is shot in the head? I'm like guys, not every, and I say guys 'cause it's usually guys. Not everyone is shot in the head. That's a very rare case
and that's why we should have people like you who
are capable of being experts to come in and do that
kind of restorative work. The average body doesn't have
half of their head missing. - But for those that do, because there are those
that do, unfortunately. Whatever the case may be, whether they fell from
a building or died from a work-related injury on a work site, these things do happen. It's part of our reality
in life and death. These are tools that are
used on special cases, hard cases where somebody
has suffered a very, very traumatic death. I use my drill to put the skull back together properly. And this product here, which is Plastina. - [Caitlin] What would you use this for? - Basically to recreate the face, if the facial bones are missing. I will actually recreate
the person's skull along with the use of the molding clay. - I think people don't
necessarily understand, like with the suicide wound to the head, or something, how completely violent and destructive it can be. - The average embalmer
is not equipped to handle a case like that. There's specialized training
that goes in to learning how to do these techniques and part of it is reconstructing the skull itself. - Yeah, 'cause the skull's
the frame on which-- - That's right.
- Everything on the face rests.
- Yes. - So if half of it is missing-- - You have to build it. - You would reconstruct
the skull with this molding and then you would reconstruct
the skin with mortuary wax. - [Monica] Yes, and we also
use other products such as Plaster of Paris to create
a base for the skull as well. - [Caitlin] What is this guy here? This looks like a foot loofah. - It does and it's actually
one of my most favorite and useful tools. This tool is used to
sculpt Plaster of Paris. So if someone is missing
a portion of their skull, I can go in and fill that
area with Plaster of Paris and to get a nice, soft
look like an actual skull, I use this tool to shape
the Plaster of Paris and get rid of these imperfections. (gentle music) - Another problem that we have with Debbie is that she has a little bit of jaundice. She has a little bit of livermortis and post-mortem staining, a
little bit of decomposition, some things on her hands
that are not gonna look as nice as they could for her viewing. So Monica is going to
show us what you could do to make her hands a little
less like a bog creature. - What I call this is hard-case camouflage and it's a mortuary magic
technique that I use. It's also what I like
to consider desairology because it uses traditional
mortuary high pigment makeup and also trendy mineral
makeup which many women are using nowadays. - That's what I use.
- It's natural. Yep, that's what I use too. And you can see that this
makeup is very high pigmented. It's an oil based makeup. What I'm doing, by
placing this on my hand, is I'm warming the makeup. I'm gonna take my horse hair brush. The funeral director's job
is to basically conceal this type of discoloration for the family. - [Caitlin] So now you're
going into the second step which is the normal mineral powder. - [Monica] And you can see
that there's a total coverage and this can be done on the hands or face or really any part of the body. - [Caitlin] How do you
control for a skin tone? - I basically, I color
match, the same way that, as women, we go to the makeup counter. That's the same thing that
I do with the deceased. I have a variety of different color tones and I'll just try to match that color. Every dead person is
an individual and they, by the way they do their hair,
the way they do their nails, by the clothing they wear, the
way they wear their makeup, or choose not to wear makeup, that's an expression
of their individuality. And then when you go to
put that mineral makeup, the trick to that is to
get a little on your brush and you're gonna, see how
it's gonna tap right there? - Mm hmm.
- And then you kind of feather it in a circular motion. So you wanna tap the makeup on first. Yup and then you circle it, just very lightly feather it on there. - I wanna be clear that
we don't usually chop the hand off before we
do makeup and restore it. Thank you Monica and thank you Debbie. I think we've shown people
today that even though we are from two different worlds, we can still come together to show you that you have options when
it comes to how you wanna have your viewing, how you
wanna have your funeral. Your corpse, your choice. This video was made
with generous donations from death enthusiasts just like you. (gentle music) Oh Debbie, I'm so sorry, Debbie. (laughing) Debbie, I'm not used to spray color. I'm sorry.
This video was fantastic! I really enjoyed it, and now I need Caitlin to be the body on the table getting her hair and makeup done.
This content is relevant to my interests.
This is one of the main areas of mortuary careers that has held my interest for a long time.
I love the fact that you were in Phoenix!! Ahhhh!!!