The Price of Vanity

Being a gal is sure tough. Putting labour pains, having to juggle family and career, and the constant pressure of the glass ceiling aside, it is tough when a gal has a mother who thinks she is in a critical state of in need of a facelift but is not generous enough to sponsor her plastic surgery.

My whole face is so bruised now. My Mom dragged me to a session of facial treatment today. Don't let those adverts fool u, if u think going for facial is a gratifying experience:yes, those massages, and cooling stuff they put on ur face are pretty soothing to the skin, but not when u r deemed to be a 'critical patient' who need 'extra' procedures.

" Miss, u have a lot of blackheads. And good gosh, u swim so much? Do u know chlorine is very bad for ur skin? It will dehydrate it and the dirt of the swimming pool will CLOG-UP ur pores..." *Could almost see her shaking her head in disapproval eventhough my eyes are covered by cottons* " U have to start taking care of your skin now before it is too late! I can't help u much if u don't help yourself!" I was chastised, and almost cowered in shame, as if a hopeless student given a proper reprimand by her teacher.

I gritted my teeth and almost cried mama when she started to remove my blackheads one by one with a tiny metal loop. Everytime she pressed it against a blackhead, it felt like she was scooping up a tiny piece of my flesh, I clung on to the side of the leaning chair, it sting so much that my tears just spouted out like mini geysers. Ouch ouch ouch. Some gals are really admirable, they are willing to put up with all these pains just so that they have a fair and smooth complexion. According to scientific research, females’ threshold for pain is indeed much higher than of men, it is partly biological , to prepare females in sustaining labour pains, and now I have come to understand that it is also to brace them for rigorous and painful facial procedures in return of a more beautiful face. Talking about the great lengths gals are willing to take in the name of vanity. If these gals save these money they pay for one facial treatment for the tsunami victims, it can exceed contribution made by US , I bet.

And beauticians nowadays appear more and more like doctors, or should I say butchers, for I felt exactly like a cow on a slaughter bed which is too vain to die. They wear white robes, and masks , and use a lot of tools to help them with the procedures. Too bad they don’t use anesthetics on us. Doctors give hope of survival to critical patients, Beauticians do more than that, they give the one hope that some gals are willing to DIE in pain for, haha, the HOPE to become more BEAUTIFUL. If that is not enough, after the session, this beautician named Rosie waltzed to a table with me sitting across her, and started to recommend me beauty products I have not even heard of, not to mention using them. She looked at me , aghast ,when I told her I normally just washed my face with commercial cleanser, sometimes with the luxury of toner, but not all those eye and lip cream, hydrating mask, oil-lessening solution blah dah deedah she had now paraded in one big carnival on the table before me. Like a doctor, she prescribed the products that I ‘gravely’ need, before I die of little blackheads on my nose, and even wrote on a piece of paper the careful instructions to apply these products. I wasn’t listening attentively, for I was calculating how much all these luxurious products will amount to, with the most expensive one costing $296. And besides, I am not that kinda gal who bothers to go through all those meticulous steps of rubbing and rotating fingers in circular motion to apply dabs of GOLD my face. It is like splurging a fortune to buy HASSLES. But my Mom seemed to think all her daughter needs right now is the miracle promised by all these magic potions to smooth out those annoying white and blackheads to give her daughter the porcelain complexion she insisted she once had (that was when I was still a BABY,MOMMM!)as she unhesitantly paid $400 in total for one FRESH CELLS MASK ( supposedly helps to regenerate cells on the face, blah) and an oil-reducing fluid. I don’t know exactly if I should feel happy about all these.

And I am definitely not happy that my face looks like it is a wall in need of Weathershield Wonder Paint: all exfoliated and dotted with red bumps from the removing of blackheads. Dear Doctor Rosie said that it will recover in two days’ time and I will feel that my face is smoother.

All I can say is, for all those suffering that I went through , it’d better be, it’d better.