He starts with his eyebrows, brushing them into perfect, neat arcs. Then Nono L’Arcadien applies foundation and concealer before dabbing his eyelids with bright pink eyeshadow, all the while bopping his head to the sounds of Nigerian street-hop.
By the end of his video make-up tutorial, the young Togolese TikToker has completed his look with dramatic eyeliner, false eyelashes, lip gloss and an elegant headwrap. He looks directly into the camera and blows a kiss to his 37,000 followers on the platform.
It would be unlikely to find a man wearing such clothes or make-up on the streets of Togo – a Francophone West African country where gender roles are strict, homosexuality is criminalised and the “promotion of immorality”, including LGBT identities, is banned.
