Content

• To step
• Method 1 of 4: Harmlessly irritate your eyes
• Method 2 of 4: Using psychological strategies
• Method 3 of 4: "Fake" red eyes
• Method 4 of 4: Know what to avoid
• Tips
• Warnings

If you've ever had to pretend to cry for a play, costume, or joke, you know it can be frustrating to get red eyes exactly when you want and make them look irritated. Getting your eyes red is an imperfect science - it can be very difficult to get the same result every time, even when using the same method. However, by using smart, safe strategies to irritate your eyes, make yourself cry, or use makeup if necessary, it's usually possible to get good results, even when it's not always predictable.

To step

Method 1 of 4: Harmlessly irritate your eyes

1. Peel an onion and rub a little under your eye. What cheap, widely available product can make someone's eyes water and turn red in minutes? It's not a Hallmark card - it's just an onion! Onions produce syn-propanethial-S-oxide, a chemical irritant that makes your eyes water and turn red. Peeling or chopping an onion normally makes your eyes water, but you may need to expose them longer to make your eyes water enough to get them red. Try holding the middle or part of the peel under your eyes a few times if you want to get your eyes red.
   • Do not use so-called "sweet" onions (such as Vidalia onions), as these often do not cause enough irritation and tears. For best results, use a highly scented white or yellow onion.
   • For a gentler approach, place a few pieces of the onion on a tissue or tissue and rub the tissue under your eyes. The barrier protects your eye itself from direct contact with the onions, but the irritant should still have an effect as long as the tissue material is not too thick.
   • If you're trying to pretend you're crying, for added effect, try rubbing a little on the bottom of your nostrils to get a snot nose.
   • Be careful not to get the onion directly on the eye, as this can be quite unpleasant.
2. Alternatively, you can use peppermint oil. One method that is almost identical to the method above is to use products containing peppermint oil. Simply use the same steps - dab a little under each eye - to get a very similar effect as the vapor from the oil irritates the eyes. As above, avoid getting the oil in your eyes as it can sting and lead to persistent discomfort.
   • Peppermint oil is available at most luxury supermarkets, specialty stores, and health food stores. However, if you don't already have something, it may be cheaper to use menthol or an onion, as peppermint oil is often more expensive.
3. Resist the urge to blink. If you straight away need red eyes, don't worry - you can get them without using any kind of special material. Simply keep your eyes open as long as you can, fighting the urge to blink until it gets too painful. Since frequent blinking is the body's way of keeping the eyes moist, the eyes will dry out if you don't do this. When this happens, the eyes will often become irritated, swollen and red, and you will get tearful eyes. Note, this can feel very unpleasant!
   • For added effect, try looking into the light while keeping your eyes open. However, do not use very bright light or the sun, as this can permanently damage your eyes and even make you blind.
4. Gently rub the area under your eyes. One method of causing red eyes that is often used for TV and movies is to make fists and rub the area around your eyes. This mild form of physical irritation can cause the same kinds of symptoms as the onions and other chemical irritants - namely, red tear eyes. If you try this method, make sure you get gentle pressure used. Crucial parts of the eye such as the iris and cornea can be very sensitive, so don't damage your vision just to get your eyes red.
   • In addition, make sure you keep your eyes closed and don't touch your eye directly. This can transfer bacteria from your hands (which contain millions of bacteria from normal daily activities) to your eyeball, potentially leading to a painful infection.
5. Spend time in the pool. Chlorine is a great sanitizer for swimming pools, but it is also an eye irritant, although some sources suggest other chemical culprits. What is clear is that diving in a chlorinated pool without goggles can cause your eyes to swell and become inflamed (although the damage is often not that serious or persistent). The effect is enhanced if you keep your eyes open underwater for a long time. Make sure you are not wearing swimming goggles, as swimming goggles protect your eyes and block the effect of the pool.
   • Salt water baths also work well for this purpose. However, some health experts claim that salt water is less irritating than chlorine, so it may be less of an effect.
6. Get less sleep. Although it is not an ideal solution for everyone (certainly not for people who need to be sharp and focused the next day for one reason or another), skipping a night often makes your eyes red and bloodshot in the morning. As long as you don't make a habit of it, it often doesn't have a dramatic impact on your health if you don't sleep overnight.
   • Repeatedly Sleep deprivation is something you never want to do, as it has serious health consequences, including: limited cognitive ability, decreased libido, depression, and an increased risk of serious conditions such as stroke and heart disease.
   • Drive never car when you are seriously tired or drowsy. Sleep deprivation diminishes your reflexes and limits your responsiveness, putting you in great danger on the road. A study from Australia shows that people who are awake for 24 hours are just as disabled as someone with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.10 (the legal limit in most countries is often around 0.08).

Method 2 of 4: Using psychological strategies

1. Put yourself in a sad or depressed mood. Learning to get your eyes red and watery on command to fake crying can be a serious challenge - even professional actors often have a hard time doing it. While there is no right way to do this, certain psychological tricks can be very helpful. A helpful strategy is to focus on memories and ideas that make you sad, such as a close relative who has passed away, a humiliating situation you were in, or a major worry or fear in your life. As unpleasant as it is to relive that, the darker and more depressed your thoughts are, the more they can help you cry.
   • A few more examples of things to think about are: breaking off relationships, recent discussions, problems at work, the times when friends or family betrayed you, people who have disappeared from your life and the times when you have been very scared about yourself or someone you are attached to.
   • It can be extremely helpful to try to convince yourself that all the people you know have their lives together except you. Try to evoke feelings of despair - think "This is it - I'll never be successful and happy." However, make sure you don't stay in this mood after pretending to be sad. The last thing you want to do is get yourself really depressed.
2. Focus on personal suffering. In the words of an acting teacher at New York University, an actor trying to pretend to be crying should `` connect the moment or the text with something specific and personal so that it's less about what is expected of them, '' and it's more about their inner secrets, desires and fear. ”In other words, the best way to make yourself sad enough to cry is to lose yourself in your thoughts about your deepest, darkest inner fears and demons. Try to convince yourself mentally that the task you have to do that makes you cry is only about judging yourself as a person, even if it isn't. Be willing to dig up and confront your worst personal demons.
   • A major actor, Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad, has revealed in interviews how his most intense inner fears have helped him deliver a convincing performance from someone with a haunted mindset. About the scene where his character sees a younger female character die, Cranston said, "My real daughter's face took her place, so it just hit me ... She's just a girl - it could have been my daughter."
3. Make yourself angry or frustrated. Red tear eyes don't just always come from grief. Sometimes these symptoms are caused by the intense feelings of anger or frustration, especially when they are caused by someone you care about. If you're struggling to cry over pure sad thoughts, try mixing it with a healthy dose of anger to get results. For example, you may think of a current problem in your life that is very frustrating to you, such as a family member with self-destructive behavior who does not listen to your advice.
   • A few more examples of things to think about are: the times when you have been skipped for an award or promotion, the times when your enemies have won against you, the times when you have been treated unfairly by someone who had control over you and the times when you have seen or experienced social injustice.
4. Use moving media to help you. The motivation to go full throttle doesn't have to come 100% from the inside - sometimes it can help a lot to use external sources. This is a strategy often used by actors to get into the right mindset for an emotional scene and look like someone experiencing these intense emotions. Movies, books, songs and other art forms that evoke deep sadness or frustration can be very effective for this - below are some ideas to get you started, but there are many more.
   • Movies: The Notebook, The Green Mile, The Fault in Our Stars, Titanic, Dumbo, Up and Come and See (Russian film).
   • Books: The Kite Runner, The Giver, Wuthering Heights, The Idiot, all older parts of Harry Potter and all the books on which the films above are based.
   • Numbers: Yesterday (Beatles), The Needle and the Damage Done (Neil Young), Brenda's Got a Baby (Tupac Shakur), Bad Religion (Frank Ocean) and just about every Elliott Smith song.
5. Keep your expectations in check. It's important to keep in mind that the strategies in this section may be even more difficult to work with than the other tricks in this article, even if you're someone who cries easily when you're sad. It can be very difficult to get yourself sad enough to cry, just like it can be hard to tickle yourself. Even the greatest actors often have a hard time crying on command, so be prepared to use a different method if these psychological strategies don't work for you.

Method 3 of 4: "Fake" red eyes

1. Consider using makeup. "If you can't make it, fake it!" With the right tricks, it is possible to aesthetically make your eyes look red and puffy as if you just cried, even when you feel completely fine. Since these tricks don't irritate your eyes, they are much more enjoyable than some of the methods above. For example, use this makeup strategy to give yourself red eyes:
   • Apply small dots of red eyeliner around the outline of your eye. You can also use a red eyeshadow or red lip liner, but make sure the lip liner you use is mild enough to use on your eyes before applying it. Apply the dots all over the lower eyelid margin. For a stronger red effect, you can also apply dots on the upper eyelid margin.
   • Spread the lip liner over your skin with a cotton swab or a make-up smudge stick. To make your eyes appear red, apply a slightly more muted shade of red "shadow" around your lids. None of the original lines or dots should be visible, so keep wiping it until you can no longer see the original dots.
2. Consider getting colored contact lenses. Another easy way to give your eyes a red effect is to wear specially made lenses with a red tint or with drawn veins. However, with this it is important to choose a contact lens that has the whites of the eyes red, not the iris (the part that is usually blue, green, or brown). If you give yourself red irises, you look like a vampire or a demon, not someone who just cried.
   • A number of stage supply companies make custom contact lenses for movies and stage, so shop here if you're looking for a quality product. However, they probably aren't cheap - quality professional lenses can easily cost more than $ 100.
3. Enhance the effect with a teardrop stick. If you want to fake red eyes for a play or a movie production, it might be a good idea to combine the tricks above with some real tears to make the effect look even more realistic. In this case, consider buying a tear stick, a tool used by some actors that basically amounts to a stick of semi-solid gel or wax containing menthol. The tearstick usually comes in a tube that resembles a lipstick, and is applied by rubbing it under your eyes, where the vapor from the menthol makes your eyes water.
   • Pay attention; since the active ingredient in a tear stick is menthol, this method works exactly like the menthol suggestion in the section above.

Method 4 of 4: Know what to avoid

1. Do not use strong irritants such as pepper, tear gas, etc. It is never a good idea to seriously risk your eye health for the sake of getting convincing red eyes. Never put anything in your eyes that could cause serious irritation, including intense chemical irritants such as tear gas (pepper spray) and natural substances such as hot pepper products. In sufficient quantities, these substances can cause permanent damage and even blindness.
2. Do not directly irritate your eyeball. If you are using a method where you rub the skin around the eyes to get them red, be careful not to touch the bare eyeball itself. Even if you manage not to damage it, you run the risk of getting bacteria from your hands onto your eyeball, which can lead to infections (as mentioned earlier in the section above). This risk increases if you have just touched something with a lot of bacteria on it (such as a door handle).
   • Additionally, since your eyeballs are so sensitive, touching them directly can sometimes cause physical injury. Even the smallest scratches on your eye can be quite unpleasant, while more serious injuries (such as an irritated cornea) may require medical attention.
3. Don't use marijuana specifically for red eyes. We've all heard it before - marijuana use leads to comically red eyes. While this is true, it's not a good idea to smoke (or eat) marijuana products to get your eyes red. If you want to create the red eye effect for acting purposes, the limited cognitive ability caused by marijuana can make it difficult to deliver a suitable, convincing performance. Additionally, marijuana intoxication is punishable by law, with penalties ranging from minor to severe depending on the jurisdiction in the country / territory you are in.

Tips

• When taking a shower, try getting a little bit of shampoo in your eyes - this causes red eyes, but can also make it equally difficult to get them open.
• When using the pool method, try to keep your eyes open underwater for as long as you can.

Warnings

• Don't rub menthol close to your eyes. This can swell your skin and make your eyes water.
• Avoid getting a chemical irritant directly into your eye. The tear fluid in your eyes tries to get rid of the irritants, and that response is a natural, healthy response since those irritants can actually damage your eye itself.