An Affair With Vanity
I’m headed out the door when my uncle accosts me. “Let me drop you”, he offers. “You’re going to collect the garments from the tailor, no?”, he intones just like we do in our native-speak. “No no”, I say, bristling at the thought of him accompanying me. “I’ll go on my own- it’ll be quick, be back soon”, I mutter and hurry outside to hail a rickshaw. I glance back surreptitiously. My uncle is standing, silhouetted, in the door frame of his home in mild surprise and cluelessness.
I am suddenly deeply ashamed of my white lie. Withholding where I am headed feels unforgivable especially when borrowing bed space under someone’s roof. Yet, I would rather let him theorize than tell him the truth. Such is the blistering shyness that overcomes me.
The moment has passed, however. Now, the auto-rickshaw I am seated in hurtles past a bus blaring its horn in absolute annoyance but my chauffeur doesn’t care. Deference is a word unknown to those driving around at the bus’ knee level. A few wild turns, several bumps and one pig-headed motorist knocking the side view mirror askew later we screech to a halt in front of a white building with a neatly trimmed green lawn. I shakily step out and pay the fare. The building sits soberly, hopefully, well-sanitized and not too busy. This is my second visit in three weeks. Here lies before me: the beauty parlor.
Here we all come — a secret self-love dispensary that by plucking, pulling and snipping hair, stretching, lathering and squeezing our skin, bleaching, exfoliating, dyeing — in short by either masking our flaws or closely examining and expelling all our imperfections, and reducing us to our outer appearance, increases our inner confidence. The irksome chin hair, the unrelenting pimple scar, the lifeless crown — all vestiges of a formerly second rate version of you — are either removed, treated or recharged with new vitality with a plethora of tubes and jars crammed with creamy liquid that look much the same when spilled together. However, in the end, out steps Shalini 2.0 — the vigorous and abrasive touch of the parlor lady having chipped away at self-doubt, bad hair days, and beauty scars left from the battle between patience and popping.
Yet it is with great shame that I will ever have to announce publicly that my lunar visit to this abode is due. It is like an elephant in the room; I skirt the issue, sneaking in visits between other appointments, slipping quietly in while at a transit city, or blatantly lying about it even. What is this absurd taboo I have imposed, I wonder.
It is accepted fact that womenfolk are expected to conform to unrealistic beauty standards of airbrushed stars in tailor-made clothes posing jauntily on a single heel while their flyaway hairs float mesmerizingly in obedience on their sculpted foreheads. You either win the generic lottery or spend the rest of your life hiding these visits — much like the Royal Family, imposing an air of mystery on the “behind the scenes”. It’s a cruel joke that is played on women — if you lucked out, fix yourself and then do everything to not reveal that you have. The stigma surrounding touch-ups, fillers and Botox in the glam industry percolates down to us regarding hair removal, facial and hair treatment. Vanity indeed has a price — both monetary and social.
We are supposed to want to look good but not too good, spend enough time caring for oneself but only enough that it looks effortless. Excessive makeup is distasteful, no makeup is ungroomed. We are allowed to enhance what we already have but to try and alter it entirely? Blasphemous. And so, like the Ship of Theseus, women adapt themselves in parts.
Amidst all of this comes the “au naturel” trend. One of my favorite Instagram accounts, Rega Jha, sums it up perfectly in one of her posts: Today's look: no make up. Brought to you by: some makeup.
Frustrated by this endless neediness to have someone else in a salon excavate the best version of me as well as finding myself a slave to daily makeup use, I chose, over the summer, to abstain from all kinds of cosmetics till I felt better. I put away my eye pencils, my lipsticks, mascara and other colorful paraphernalia I use to draw a face on top of my face. The first step to self-love, someone had once said, is accepting your nose. So that’s where I would begin, I decided. Leaving the house for a party, to a restaurant, or to any social gathering without anything on my face felt bold. I was terrified at first — I felt I looked sick and worried if people thought that I had just stepped out of bed. I felt incomplete. My morning routine, however, was drastically shortened. I no longer even needed to look at the mirror at any point before, during or after getting ready. Although, I would be lying if I said the transition was smooth. To step out and not run back inside to hide behind gloss and glitter took significant mental effort. There were, of course, excellent advantages to going bare. I could lift my face to the rain, free from the worry of all the colors swirling together on my face and looking like a painter’s palette. When I got home at the end of a long day, I could sail into bed without worrying about applying makeup remover lotions and rubbing out the colors on my eyelids that I had worn all day. Slowly (really, really, slowly), I began to embrace everything I was without all the products on my bathroom shelf. I felt whole, I felt satisfied, but most of all, my bare face — whether it be at a party or graduation event, felt enough.
This challenge, however, did not baptize me into a no-make-up-ever person. I returned to my colorful eye palettes and lipsticks after 4 or 5 weeks. I only did not want the external products to direct how I felt. I wanted the agency to both wear and not wear makeup — and not feel like one form is lesser than the other. Yet, the lenses we are given to appraise beauty in this modern age are hard to discard. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but the beholders are all prisoners of social media algorithms, ad campaigns and a capitalistic cosmetic industry that profits off of us not feeling “enough.”
One of my most surprising realizations during this month was that wearing makeup and heading to the salon for beautification was also a celebration of its own kind. I remembered how in India, as a child, I went to shops to buy kajal which came in small circular lime green containers. Using my fingers, I would trace the outline of my eyelids and step back to look at myself in the mirror, eyes watering. Placing a small red sticker between my eyebrows, I would say, “A little more like you, Amma”. My mother would gently smile and nod. Makeup pampers your face, draws attention to the most lovely parts of you, and of course, provide little girls with simple joys like copying their mothers. Therefore, my challenge was not aimed at banishing cosmetics altogether — but to remind myself that even without these embellishments, my face and I were ready for the world.
It has been several months since I spent that month with a bare face — during which I attended interviews (and cleared them), went to social events (and was treated just the same), looked at myself in the mirror and found myself feeling pretty in my own skin. As I took in my reflection, I took a moment to appreciate that here was something old that looked like something new (my skin), something borrowed (my cosmetics) that I had discarded, the lack of which had once made me feel some sort of blue.
Was I truly successful though? To an extent. It takes practice and it is easy to slip into the natural anxiety of not having ‘dressed up’ when the festive season comes by. To want to apply kajal, mascara or a touch of lipstick that apparently miraculously transforms my appearance according to my own eyes. A bit ridiculous? Very much. Factual? Not at all. I have however returned to the products with renewed objectivity. But when it comes to admitting that I am headed to a parlor, I still fail. Still, I can take these small victories and work on the rest a step at a time.
Back at the salon, as I pay my bill and prepare to leave, I bump into the owner. “Oh, hello! Have you tried our new hair smoothening treatment?” she asks cheerily eyeing my messy wavy hair. I reply in the negative and she launches into her overused sales pitch. I cut her off, “I actually like my hair the way it is — wavy and curly.” “Oh but this will make it so much softer and easy to manage — your hair looks so dry”, she replies trying hard to change my opinion. “Well, it will do though”, I say with a smile and make my way home. Small victories, one step at a time, after all.
