I don't consider myself a vain person. Of course, vanity is relative. For one person being vain may mean owning a tube of lipstick. For someone else excessive vanity could equal getting a deep plane facelift. Quick note – I'm still not over being told I needed a deep plane facelift by a cosmetic surgery "consultant" and it's been a good two years.
Yeah, that's right I'm still excessively peeved that someone did a cursory glance at my face and told me I needed not only a deep plane facelift but also some sort of gruesome neck lift called a platysmaplasty which has absolutely nothing in common with the adorable platypus.
Okay enough about my personal crisis of confidence, let's move on to vanity in more general terms as in what I'm going to call the "must have" vanities. For instance, during the pandemic, I learned that while I could forgo seeing any other humans except the one I married and the two I birthed I could not go without having my hair highlighted.
I realized that this was the very definition of crazy. If I wasn't leaving my house and seeing a single bipedal mammal besides my immediate family, why did I require small stripes of gold woven throughout my brown hair?
The answer to this isn't because I'm mentally unbalanced. Okay, well maybe that's part of it but it's mostly because it makes me happy. To have my hair appear to have been kissed by dappled sunlight is a mood booster extraordinaire.
So much so that during the economic downturn of 2008 I told my husband that I was 100 percent down with tightening our family budget. But there were two things I wouldn't give up. One, was three ply toilet paper with a "comfort cushion." Sure, by all means the rest of the family could use generic two ply but I, as the matriarch of the home, required Charmin.
But even more important than a quality toilet paper experience was getting my hair highlighted. That line item in the budget had to stay – forever. I'll scrimp and save but some things had to remain sacrosanct.
This is why during the pandemic I snuck out my house and had a clandestine meet up with a hair stylist. At the back of a Target parking lot with both of us masked and social distancing the stylist handed me a "bleach kit" and toner in a paper bag. I, using a "claw" that extended 32 inches, reached for it and then raced home to begin "operation sun kissed streaks."
When all was said and done my hair looked less sun streaked and more like a solar flare had exploded. Proving that hair stylists are both artists and chemists. But at least when I looked in the mirror, I saw glimmers of gold strands and amid all of the pandemic fear this brought me some happiness.
Last week, I was confessing to my daughter that I felt a tad glum and she asked me when was the last time I had my hair highlighted? "Of course, that's the problem," I smiled. "I was deficient in 30 volume bleach." Thankfully, I told her, I already had a hair appointment scheduled.
She laughed and then shared that the other day she also felt a little down so she went and got a spray tan. "It turns out I wasn't depressed. I just needed to be hosed down with beets, water and bronzer."
"Beets?"
"Yeah, beets. Well, beet extract. The sugar in it reacts with your skin and gives you a fake tan."
Aww, it's a wonderful thing when a mother and daughter can bond over the mood boosting power of beauty treatments. It is in fact a ritual as old as time. To quote my mom "never underestimate the power of a good hair day or a red lipstick."
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