Here we go again, I think, as I impatiently wait for the hair straighter to warm up. I’ve washed my hair, deep conditioned it, shaved my legs, tweezed my eyebrows. I’ve blown dry my hair, but it’s still a wreck. It’s always a wreck. It’s thin, so thin that when I put it into a ponytail, a pencil is thicker. I plaster down the worst of the flyaways with a hair product that promises something it can’t deliver.
What I really want to be doing – instead of going through that same-same ritual – is learning to write code. Studying analytics. Taking with someone halfway ‘round the world about real oppression. Not the kind of oppression that I feel because of my addiction to beauty.
Sometimes I’ll look in the mirror, and I’ll catch the light just right. The sun will be setting, the image in the mirror gets dim, the wrinkles and age spots and flyaway hairs meld into the twilight. The angle of my chin clicks into place. And at those times I’ll look in the mirror and say to myself: Oh, I’m not as hideous as I thought.
There is nothing about that statement that is good, or healthy, or intelligent, or perhaps even logical. But it is 100% honest. And every day, that’s as good as it gets.
Anti-aging skin care products are reported to be a $3.5 billion dollar industry. Products are designed to “remove 33% of fine lines and wrinkles.” But do you know what I look like with 33% less fine lines and wrinkles? I look like plain old ordinary almost-hideous me, just with 33% less fine lines and wrinkles. Except I’m standing there holding a $70 container of face cream that could have been a night out, or a textbook, or partial payment on a new laptop. It’s pretty laughable. And yet, I still walk into CVS and longingly stalk the skincare aisle, picking up containers. “Maybe this will be the one.”
(..)
Gradually, of course, as what happens with all addictions, my life became unmanageable. My kids started begging me to go for cheaper haircuts, so I could afford clothes for them. They’d want to spend time with me when I wanted to go for longer and longer runs. A pre-teen daughter stormed out of Staples when a guy started flirting with me—while we were buying her school supplies. (The only thing worse than a not-hot mom is a hot one.) I’d sneak off from work to go to a “client meeting”, but I’d really be going to a yoga class. Walking back in the office two hours later and trying to hide the yoga mat didn’t exactly inspire confidence in my managerial capabilities. I’d get caught with thousands of dollars worth of bills for beauty services the way some people get caught with bills for phone sex.
