I was staring at this girl in the mirror who appeared to have dropped from a freak show somewhere in the City Market. The girl was me and I was in the beauty parlour of a then well-known make-up artist in Yangon. In a couple of hours, I was supposed to be leading the procession of the bride and groom in front of about a hundred people.
It was my cousin’s wedding. I was to be the bridesmaid, so, my mum booked me in for a session with a makeover artist. As the bride and groom would be wearing Western style clothes, I was thrilled with the anticipation of putting on a beautiful white dress with flowery lace and to be wearing make-up for the first time. I thought it would make me look like a gorgeous grown up girl. With that in my mind, I put up with the never-ending suspicious looking stuff slapped on my face and more scarily around my eyes and worst of all, my lash lines. I didn’t complain when the beautician pulled my hair up and did something with it, spraying it with strong smelling stuff. I didn’t grimace when they put my eyelashes in a strange contraption making them curly and then putting some black stuff on them. They kept telling me that it would be worth it and that I would look stunning. I chose not to look in the mirror as the things they were putting on were making me uncomfortable and also it would be a nice surprise when I finally saw the finished look.
When everything was done, I looked in the mirror and saw a stunning girl: stunningly weird with strange colours around the eyes, eyebrows thick, bushy and really dark, skin bleached white like a barbie doll and hair in a bun with two strands sticking out like antennae over the ears. It was a completely different creature!
While everyone, especially the make-up artist, wooed and cheered and complimented how good I looked, I stared incredulously at that alien in the mirror, freaking me out more and more by the minute. I wanted to run to the bathroom and wash everything off. But the look on my mum’s face told me that I would be in serious trouble if I did.
I went through the wedding feeling like a clown rather than a beautiful bridesmaid. I was convinced that people’s eyes were on me as if they were watching a freak. Some people didn’t even recognize me, which I found slightly comforting. I didn’t want them to know that that little monster in the white dress was me.
Needless to say that was the last time I ever went to a make-up artist. (And I didn’t feel sorry to hear that he didn’t stay famous for very long after that.) I tried one more time playing with make up trying out eyeshadows. But this time, one of my friends asked me if I had been punched in the eyes. His suppressed grin told me that he was just being mean (or kind?) to point out that it wasn’t working. I had some nice friends!
When I moved to the UK, I was once again tempted to ‘improve’ my look. In one of the trips to John Lewis with my friend, one of the make-up sale girls who happened to be a friend of my friend offered to improve my eyebrows. She told me to sit on the chair and she would do the magic. I came out with two slugs glued to my forehead. Drawing the hood of my coat over my face, I rushed home and washed the slugs straight off.
I never tried make-up again.
So, as far as beauty products go, I stay in the comfort zone of skincare stuff and don’t tend to venture into the make-up aisle. But, the other day, I went into Boots to buy some moisturizer. When I was reading the packaging of one of the skincare products, I saw a phrase that said “get clear smooth skin.” I stared at it as if I’d seen it for the first time. It didn’t blush or anything.
I pointed my finger accusingly at it and said, “What do you mean?? How dare you say that my skin is not good enough?!” It didn’t say anything. I brought up its implications: “You’re saying that only smooth clear skin is the deal. My skin is not good enough!” At that point, I realized that I had been brainwashed by little phrases like that all these years. I looked at every little spot on my face with resentment. Every little spot I have signifies that deviation from perfection. Those spots were preventing me from feeling good about myself. Only recently I have noticed that actually it’s not the spots that are making me unhappy. It’s the fact that I bought into the hidden message that is doing it. I told the moisturizer to stop insulting me before I put it back on the shelf with a harumph.
Come to think of it, I saw messages back in Yangon telling me how to make my face oval or heart shaped with make-up and hair style, the implication being that my face shape is not good enough and I should change it. How annoying!
Anyway, after looking at skincare, I ended up in Boots’ cosmetics section out of curiosity. I caught sight of “Get longer lashes” written on one of the products. Until that moment, I didn’t realize that my lashes were too short. There’s a photo of a model with ridiculously long eyelashes supposed to be fluttering her eyes. Since I was in a contrarian mood, I said to the photo (I did check if there was anybody nearby), “Excuse me? Why do I need them longer? I think the eye lashes I have are doing their job of stopping things getting into my eyes pretty well. So, no, thank you.”
That started the roller coaster of insanity where all these phrases started to leap out and attack me from all directions.
A billboard said my hair was too thin pointing at a photo of a model with really really thick hair. Just when I told it to leave me alone, another one jumped out saying that my lips were too small. “Get fuller looking lips” it said. At the same time, another told me that I should make my face look slimmer by putting contouring powder around my cheeks. Another one said some parts of my face needed concealing shoving a variety of concealers in my direction.
This was getting too much! All those assaults telling me that my look was not good enough and that I needed improving. Immediately, that image of the freak in the mirror from all those years ago came back.
I shot out of the cosmetics counter and ran to Marks and Spencer where my familiar foods were waiting beckoning me to take them home. I told the numerous cakes and tarts in the dessert section my awful experience with the cosmetics at Boots and they were all very sympathetic. I picked up my Bramley Apple Victoria Sponge cake. The cake assured me that it would help me recover from all those insults.
Never again am I going to be staring at that bleached white faced alien in the mirror or being told by a man that my eyes look like they’ve been punched or having to pull a hood over my face to hide the slugs. I’ll just stick with what I have in the company of the sponge cake. This is one area I should just keep simple.