Forget “Get Ready With Me” Videos — Kat Dennings Is Taking Us on a “Give Up With Me” Makeup Journey

After enjoying a few cautiously optimistic months, I’d be lying if I said things don’t feel pretty precarious — even glum — right about now, what with the especially contagious strain of COVID-19 currently making its unwelcomed rounds. The hugely popular phenomenon of “Get Ready With Me” (or #grwm as I’m assuming the kids say) videos feels downright pointless if we’re more or less back to having nowhere to get ready to go, am I right? Well, at the very least, Kat Dennings seems to agree, and that’s honestly all the validation I need to get me through another dubious day. The hilarious actor who, if she happens to read this, is just now finding out that she’s one of my imaginary best friends, posted not a “Get Ready With Me” video, but rather a “Give Up With Me” video, in which she walks us through a pretty makeup look and random thoughts on random things.

You can already tell from the caption of the Instagram video — “Attempt to be alive with this basic yet smoldering look that YOU can do at home” — that Dennings is understandably not feeling too hot about general goings-on, but she handles it exactly like I would if I were a famous actor with a social-media platform people actually pay attention to: with humor, eyeliner, and a beaded butterfly clip just sort of chillin’ loosely in her curly hair.

“It’s been way too long since I’ve done a makeup video,” Dennings starts. “I mean, can you tell that I’m on the edge of some sort of, um, precipice emotionally? Because I am.”

After a moment of panic getting some kind of out-of-frame cord in an out-of-frame palette, Dennings goes on to say, “I thought I would just do a fun little eye look to go with my impending meltdown. I’ve already done my base. I used some concealer under my eyes, which, honestly, I need more. Let’s just do more.” As she applies more concealer with a brush, she says, “She is truly a reanimated corpse. I’m using a bit of a lighter touch today. I don’t know if I really like the matte, full-coverage foundation look anymore. I used to really love it, but there’s a time and a place, and the time and the place is not mid-afternoon at home waiting for sushi. Or is it?”

When Dennings switches to using a brow pencil, it clearly sparks something — namely, concern about the mysteries of brow lamination. “What’s brow lamination? Like, I loosely know what it is, but are you — is it that you are perming your brows? If so, isn’t perming any hair very bad for it in the long run?” she wonders. “Has anyone done a study about the long-term effects of brow lamination? I’m not going to be the one to do that.” (Luckily, Kat, we have a ton of info on brow lamination right here.)

As she completes her brows (and brow thoughts), Dennings drops perhaps her most perfectly timed line of the video: “I’m trying to value myself more by not just doing unpaid things, you know? Because you’re worth it. Whoops.”

Dennings shares that usually forgoes eye shadow and just does liquid liner, but between the beautiful neutral Makeup by Mario palette she found and the young’uns doing fancy makeup on Instagram, she just felt like going for it. “My explore page is just filled with cool teens doing unbelievable makeup. And now that I’m an old hag, it does feel a little bit intimidating, but also fuck that. You know what I mean?” I totally know what she means. “So I’m extending this darker one out towards the end of my brows in an effort to do like a [indescribable dramatic sound],” she says as she blends a rich brown shade in her crease.

After sneezing, applying liquid liner, and yelling “Papillon!” at her butterfly clip as she struggles to remove it, Dennings moves onto blush and lip color: “This is a beautiful discontinued color, of course. Why?” she laments. “Now we’ll just do some lips and just like get on with our fucking lives inside forever. I mean, I think you guys know that my preference is a stain. I like to mix usually quite a bit cause nothing’s ever quite right.”

And really, “nothing’s ever quite right” pretty much sums up the vibe of Dennings’s video. “That’s it. That’s the look. I’m very happy with it,” she summarizes. “Um, I’m not going anywhere, obviously, because everything is bad, but makeup is still fun. We can still express ourselves. Through face… pigments?” Indeed! And hopefully more #guwm videos like this.