Beauty myths

Just when I thought the well had run dry for Sexography topics, Jen mentioned this article. I won’t say a lot about it b/c H has fluids coming out both ends this weekend and I don’t have the opportunity. This isn’t so much about “sex” as it is about the body but it’s semi-related so here goes…

The article is about personal maintenance being performed on and by pre-adolescent and adolescent girls, specifically about getting bow and bikini waxes. The article goes on to extrapolate that this means we are turning children into women and that we’re striving for some kind of physical perfection and trying to achieve it through our daughters.

It isn’t until midway on page 4 (of 6) that we read this:

But while it’s easy to vilify women who push prepubescent waxing on their children, things get a little fuzzier when it comes to, say, a nail-painting party, or spa facials designed for young, acne-prone skin (especially when you consider that girls are hitting puberty earlier than previous generations did). No mom wants her unibrowed nine-year-old getting teased at school, or a 13-year-old suffering the angst of bad acne when a solution is at hand. “Instead of the moms just staring at the drugstore shelves, trying to figure out what’s best for their daughter’s skin problems, they come in and have a professional examine her skin, and help them out with the products,” says Keating at the Phoenix.

Frankly I would be taking my child to a dermatologist, not a spa. I sold that crap. It doesn’t do anything except make money for a cosmetic company. Sure you need moisturizer, etc. but you don’t have to have a weekly facial to help keep acne at bay.

I had bad skin from the time I was 12 or so. I still have breakouts and ruddiness and there’s just nothing to be done about it except keep my skin clean, wash my hands often when applying make-up, drink water, moisturize and treat zits w/ a benzoyl peroxide cream. I never saw a dermatologist. Flora insisted that my skin problems were due to oil and my “not scrubbing enough.” So I had to use abrasive pads and Phisoderm, followed my Stridex pads. These stripped the everloving fuck out of my skin. In college, I tried the apricot scrub that the other girls were using. By that point, I’d stopped with all the other nonsense. The apricot scrub did the same thing only it smelled good.

After college, I worked in the customer service department of a department store. Seeing “sucker” flashing on my sensitive-skinned forehead, the cosmetic counter girls swarmed to me. One was named LaHua (hey, it was the south). LaHua was the counter manager at the Lauder counter. Ah Estee Lauder, with its beautiful packaging, its promises to revive my 22 year old skin — it was intoxicating. I made an appointment with LaHua and sat in the tall chair beside the glass counter and answered questions about my skin and makeup routine.

Makeup was not a problem. I loved makeup from the time I was about 10. And Flora had no problem with me playing with makeup, so long as I didn’t “go out looking like a whore.” Plus I had Seventeen to give me tips and tricks. I answered her questions about my skin: “When you get out of the shower, does you skin feel smooth or tight?” Come to mention it, it feels tight and uncomfortable. At the end of the Q&A, she said, “Well you have dry, sensitive skin.” And she began lining up products that would help me work with my skin as it was instead of changing it.

I just sat there saying, But, but, but my have oily skin! I have breakouts! Isn’t that oily skin? LaHua said, “It can be. But when you deprive your skin of moisture, it creates oil to combat that. Look,” she brought over a mirror. “Your forehead is very dry. You have a slight amount of shine here (the nose) but the remainder of your T-zone is very dry. But you’re sensitive. You need a light exfoliant to get the dry skin cells sloughed off and then you need to moisturize twice a day.”

Over the year I worked at the store, I eventually went off the Lauder skin care b/c of the price but I bought a lot of cosmetics like $20 lipstick (b/c, as you may remember, I am a lipstick & lipgloss junkie). Yet to this day, I still have a weakness for the smell of Estee Lauder skin care products. I since found that a little baking soda in some Cetaphil is exfoliant enough (and dirt cheap). When I worked for Elizabeth Arden, their new Skin Illuminating Cream (now discontinued, goddamnit) took the redness out of my skin. I have yet to find the perfect moisturizer but Clinque’s moisture online and moisture oncall are pretty good. I like the Lauder one too. It smells like cucumbers.

One thing that struck me about the article was that I’d taken the advice of “fight against it” all my life. I tried to make my wavy hair do things it wouldn’t. I stripped all the moisture out of my moisture-starved skin. If I’d had the resources available, today, I don’t even think that would be different. I did what my main beauty advisor told me to do and that’s who’s bringing these girls in to salons and spas for beauty treatments they probably don’t need (but I waaaant it).

I asked a girl doing my brows once how young a client she’d ever treated and she said 10. Just as a point of interest later in a different conversation, I said, “My daughter is three.” She responded with shock & awe and made it sound like I’d said I intended to bring Zoe in to get her brows waxed.

My brows were a disaster by middle school but Flora absolutely refused to help or acknowledge that there was, in all honesty, just one of them. Finally my friend Cathy Sue (hey, it was the south) told me that what she did was that she just took the razor and went sweep right down the middle. So I did that, knowing “It’s hair. It’ll grow back.” It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t horrible. Flora was horrified. Why couln’t I leave my brows natural? Like Brooke Shields? Because my eyebrows didn’t look like hers to begin with.

Luckily not long after the shaving experiment, Seventeen ran a “how-to” on plucking that was accurate and gave “good enough” brows. And I plucked my eyebrows for over ten years. I don’t really remember the first time I had them waxed but I know it was after Hawk & I were living together (so I was probably about 23-24). After the redness went away, I was amazed. Who knew my eyebrows could look that good? Or the difference it would make on my face? How it would brighten (and embiggen) my eyes?

When Zoe has hair on her legs and wants to get rid of it, I’ll help her shave them, even if — like me — she’s only 10 years old. When she’s old enough to care about the eyebrows she inherited from me, we’ll go together to get them waxed. And that’s all that anyone needs to get waxed, IMO. If you want to de-beard the clam, that’s why the Goddess made Venus razors. Hell, Holden uses my bladeless Veet ravor to “shave” after he brushes his teeth. It’s called “playing grown-up.” BTW: Veet is fantastic, even for sensitive skin. Check it out. Almost as good as an Intuition razor.

As it is, when I paint my nails, she can have one coat of light pink polish, which usually comes off in about a day. She also has her “makeup” in a little pink case on her dresser. She has three flavored glittery lip glosses with a Disney Princess on them, a bubble gum flavored Bonne Bell and a Dr Pepper flavored one. When I put on my makeup, she gets “makeup” when I brush an unused powder brush on her face.

Not all beauty-related activities are about making little girls into women. Some of them are about make-believe or mother-daughter bonding ( I notice no one is writing articles bemoaning men and boys playing “shave” in the mornings). The real problem I have with the article’s subject is how it seems that instead of doing things together with their daughters, modern moms are dumping them off for someone else to groom them, advise them and bond with them. I don’t see a lot of beauty in that.

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