I show up, and when I check in with the owner (acting as receptionist), she offers to show me around. The tour is brief; hair salon, nails, tanning beds.

Oh, and the “injectables” room. A direct quote: “We do injectables here. Botox, like that. Do you want me to set up you with an appointment while you’re here?”

(the punchline here is that I’m 24.)

http://www.jameswells.co.uk/saffiart/spaeditorialsml.jpg

I dont think i quite captured the horrifying side of it though.

I just got caught up on having the ‘toy’ dog on wheels. hee.

I reread the quote from the mom, and I kinda fantasized about what I would do if my two surrogate daughters (nieces, ages 3 and 6) wanted to do something like this. So, I’d let them. And then I think when I saw them again I wouldn’t make a big deal about whether or not they looked different. I would not tell them that their makeup/hair/nails look pretty, but that they are as beautiful as they always are. I would probably put my emphasis on whether they had fun or not and whether they liked having those things done to their bodies. When I was in, oh, sixth grade I decided I wanted very curly hair (it was the 80′s) and I sat still for perms for years. I HATED IT. But I kept coming back because I got the goods–the rewarding oohs and ahhs of admiring friends and family members, and I was convinced at that young age that my attractiveness depended on what other people could do to me, not what I was intrinsically. It took me over fifteen years to realize that I didn’t ever want a perm again, that my hair was way more beautiful in its natural state, and that by buying into “needing” to have curly hair to be pretty I was essentially bound to a four-hour torture session that I paid $125 for every three months. Fuck that noise, sez I.

My mother has hardly ever worn makeup in my living memory. (The formal Christmas Mass and my sister’s wedding are the only times I remember.) I’ve never thought much about it, but I wonder now how much my dad’s attitude has to do with that. Not that she isn’t a confident, independent person; just that it can be really powerful to have an ally like that. On the (rare) occasions when she comes home from some crazy upper-middle-class, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, self-loathing fest, he’s always there telling her the world can go to hell and he’d be happy to escort them there.

Of course, my dad works as a PhD engineer and once went a whole day with his polo shirt inside-out and none of his colleagues noticed. I think in his professional world appearances are several orders of magnitude less important.