Why are people so afraid of clowns?
It actually is sort of because of the make-up. It is thick, so obscures the true facial expressions as they change, and shows an incongruous and extreme expression of manic joy. This would be naturally scary to us as we use facial expressions to judge peoples moods and likely behavour. This removes all warning of danger, and even any ground for interacting with them, we cannot read them. This makes them strange and inhuman. People with frozen faces can give the same frisson of fear. Most common fears have their roots in some universal fear or danger to all of us (i.e. spiders, snakes = they used to be a real threat, poisenous.
