BEAUTY AND ITS ORDEALS!!

Woooooooo! Ouch!

Easy, easy Seema,

Ouch!

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

“Now the left hand mam” – demanded seema, the girl from the salon who comes over to my house for my regular beauty care like facials, waxings, threading, manicure and so more.

I turned to my right, letting her wax my left hand, it pained lesser or may be I was only pretending it did. Another 02 hours Seema stayed on to complete my beauty regime, my body being at her mercy. Each time it pained, I would close my eys, simmer down my screaming, with few tears rolling down my cheeks through the corner of my eyes and wait for the ordeal (s) to be over. She deftly completed her job in time and walked away with her pay, and I rushed to the mirror to see whether so much of pain resulted in any good. I sighed as I tried to look deeper and deeper, failing to notice much difference; I was just a tad bit fairer, fresher, glowing and I knew the same would last, just for a few more days.

Wanted to name this post Salon and its ordeals or Make-up and its ordeals. But no, Beauty sounded more precise, as one leads to the other. After all, these so called beautiful ladies owe it to their salon treatments and make-up kits for their splendor, isn’t it?

Ya, Ya, I know we have this horrible pollution and the rising stress levels to blame, but we cannot turn away from the fact that the real culprit is US who too have merrily jumped on to the bandwagon of this perception of morphed beauty – A mask beneath which lies the real ME, ‘the truly beautiful’ whom I am loosing by each passing day.

If you are the one who uses no make-up and never pays a visit to the salon, man there’s something drastically wrong with you, you are either ugly or a big-fat miser or a tomboy for sure. But feminine if you are by any minute chance, there must be atleast one brand of cosmetics or one proper salon you are letting be in business.

When I see the new ad of DOVE asking a question to 03 girls - can you move out without make-up, I feel its actually asking us all. If I look around I see no female for sure who have the guts to move out of the house without make-up. That includes me too. Man I cant do without my kohl, and a lip-gloss either. But the question whether I need to, is different & has to be pondered over for independently.

Well, till school, I didn’t need to, other than the occasional visits to my local salon for a decent hair-cut. That was all. My eyebrows were in shape, upper-lip hair hardly visible, oily fair skin which would glow (aside the few pimples which I couldn’t help – the sign of growing up years you see but which were taken care of with multani mitti and sandalwood homemade packs), hairy I hardly was.

But the need was felt soon, injected in my arteries, making a steady way to my brain, which gave in so easily and carried me over. The two solid High-school years in the hostel, – being surrounded by a bevy of girls (self obsessed and supercilious), with the ultra modern hair colors, perfectly threaded eyebrows the waxed chandan sa badan, neatly manicured hands, the glowing pedicured feet, the trendiest hair cuts and an indepth knowledge on beauty, phew! I was taken over, my confidence shattered and here I was smoothly transported into the beauty world and opened a recurring expense account with my pocket money.

In the process I asked myself a zillion times, whether I really need to, and the answer came as a sure shot YES as My inner foolish devil said - don’t you see every single female there doing it, look at S – she is so pretty, its all because of the facials she does every month, and don’t you see W and her beautiful eyes, hadn’t she been threading her eyebrows she would have looked hell, and yes your classmate J who is indeed very simple and naturally beautiful I know, but her body is so silky soft that’s the magic of regular waxes and that papaya and honey body lotion. And there you are, unpolished, uncut and an unadorned beauty. No one even looks at you. And there I was so badly dismissed by my unnerving grumpy self, who seemed to be so offended with my question that it kinda intimidatingly said –“doobara mat poochna”! Grrrrrrr!

So There……I quit my guilt cold turkey.

And the rest as they say is history L

So the girl who would scream the hell out at the mere biting of a mosquito, today very readily surrenders herself to physical tortures of beauty. She is well groomed, means she goes through a pain regime to get at it. She spends hours and hours of time in front of the mirror with a sea of patience and discipline and digs a big hole in her pocket. …………

So think again before you say its all effortless, you have no idea what it is. For some reason you might have a bad hair day, but if a girl is even less short of perfectly done up, she will have a bad hair, body, skin, eyes, AND lips day too.