I can’t recall the last time I saw myself “au naturale.” By that I mean without make-up, hair products, clothing, and anything else that masks my true self. I recently realized, when going though my twenty-seven-step-before-bedtime ritual—washing face, applying under eye cream, wrinkle cream, anti-aging cream, pore minimizing cream, skin brightening moisturizer, and several other steps—that I don’t even go to bed au naturale, never mind leave the house. I have a staff of millions working overtime on my face to make sure I wake up looking younger or at the very least, no older. And they’re getting paid well.
It doesn’t stop at the face. There are millions of products that are marketed to and bought by us women to conceal, cover up, and change our natural selves—as if the skin we were born in wasn’t good enough. There’s a billion dollar industry pushing us to realize that we’re decreasing in good looks every day and prodding us to buy more products to forget this. And we fall for it, groomed head over Gucci heels. We—myself included—stock our bathrooms and closets with maximizers and minimizers, and adhere to this societal standard that “natural” is a polished look that requires seven steps and as many products. We must be lifted, smoothed, tucked, plumped, slimmed, and so on. I must be lifted, smoothed, tucked, plumped, slimmed, and so on.
I’m a user. I color my hair, use several kinds of facial cream, get bikini waxes, use plumping lip-gloss, and wear make-up. I’m not preaching from a macrobiotic dieting, organic facemask wearing, vegan shoe shopping, cosmetic-free pedestal. I’m just frustrated at the beauty trap I seem to be caught in.
When I feel resistant to my beauty routine, I ask myself: was Cro-Magnon woman worried about the unsightly hairs all over her body? Did Viking women fret those extra pounds hanging out of their steel-plated battle vest? Though Roman women painted their faces, did they despair that their voluptuous bodies and plump faces were a sign of wealth, not over-eating and laziness? How did we get here? And why, if we choose not to take part in these rituals, are we savages? Then I proceed to even out my skin tone with my foundation sponge.
We’re told by the media to “love the skin we’re in,” yet the tools to look younger, fitter, sexier, and more radiant are at our disposal and incredibly abundant. It’s like we were born with a “fixer upper” body and we need to make improvements to every single nook, cranny, inch, curve, and hair on it. Our self-improvements run the gamut from tinting our eyelashes, to waxing our legs, to ironing away our curls, to changing the color of our skin with tanning creams. A recent issue of the shopping column Found It. Loved It. included dye for graying pubic hair, underarm pads to protect your clothing from sweat, and my favorite, pads to absorb the smell of gas that occasionally escapes your southern end. I have all these symptoms, so should I fork over the cash to correct them? No. See, I don’t see them as things that need correcting. We fart and it smells. So what? And as for a little gray in the nether regions, well, like the hair on our heads, it’s a fact of life. (When did it become optional to age?)
Botox used to be a whispered word, but these days, it’s discussed openly in front of the ladies room mirror. In fact, we can actually inject ourselves with Botox while frequenting the ladies room, so that we can return to our desks with relieved bladders and relaxed wrinkles. Why stop there? There are tools to inject our armpits, toes, necks, décolletage—wherever it is, we want to zap the natural aging process. Whenever I find myself tempted by the idea of freezing time, I look to Hollywood’s few female celebrities to be reminded—and grounded in the reminder—of just how horribly wrong and unnatural the needle (and knife) can be.
