The pursuit of beauty is strain’ed
Every once in a while, I haul the dotter off to Veronica’s, the local manicure-in-a-mall, for an hour of frou-frou girly-girl stuff. The last time we were there, Veronica carefully painted an itty-bitty snowman on one fingernail, and an itty-bitty Christmas tree on one of the fingernails on the other hand. The dotter gets pink or purple, usually with glitter, while I get clear nail polish.
It’s a pleasant little interlude. Veronica does a much better job with fingernails than I do, the dotter gets her glittery pink or purple, I get my jagged edges filed smooth, and then the dotter begs a quarter off me so she can ride the horsie in the mall lobby.
All pretty laid-back.
I am obviously far behind the times, though.
I should be getting her a bikini wax. Or her eyebrows plucked. Or, if I were really thinking ahead, a botox job.
What’s that you say? She’s only six?
No, no, no! You don’t understand! These days, it’s the "in" thing to do! Mommy-daughter bonding time at the spa and salon! Mommy goes in one door to get a bikini wax and daughter goes into the other to get her eyebrows shaped.
Now normally I’d pooh-pooh such a story, putting it down to a reporter who sees something twice and then turns it into a "trend". But in this case, the author asked a whole slew of salon owners, and got a quote from a pediatrician; besides that, there was a remarkably similar story in the New York Times just a few days ago.
I recall a slightly bewildering Christmas visit to the in-laws, when our niece L., who the previous year had been quite happy hiking and scrambling over rocks with us, a lovely, natural beauty at 15, spent an hour and a half in the bathroom before emerging as a sleek, made-up model-type to go to the mall with her boyfriend.
I also recall a time when I had to chase three girls out of my great-aunt’s bathroom as they had monopolized it for far too long in preparation for a family gathering at the local buffet restaurant. They emerged with Big Hair (this was, after all, the mid- to late-’80s), a cloud of perfume puffing out of the bathroom door, with big blue racoon eyes.
Somewhere between my own total lack of primping and grooming, and these ladies hauling their children off for buffing and plucking and botoxing, there’s a happy medium.
What happened to that happy medium?
On the one hand, I seriously consider taking the dotter, at age 13 or 14, to the local Clinique counter a few times to have instruction on how to do make-up without looking "made up". I think of doing a nail-painting party for a bunch of ten-year-olds (thank heavens that’s a few years off!). I personally indulge in massages now and then. But all of these are "treats" in my mind, not something that gets done on a regular basis.
I dunno. Mainly, I’m an old fart with a semi-hippy outlook and a worry that the dotter will be sucked into a pop-culture outlook that places emphasis on the outer wrappings, rather than the inner character.
posted in Issues, Pop Culture | 4 Comments
