Beauty Boot Camp

Summer’s coming. Our great skies are opening up and filtering through that glorious light, which on the one hand is cheery, resplendent and jolly good for picnics – and on the other highlights every stray whisker old age and androgens (boy hormones) have bestowed on my once peach-perfect complexion.

Yesterday I caught my reflexion – werewolf meets bag-lady – in the window of a local beauty salon offering ½ price waxing. With brows like mine, you take ½ priced waxing.

However, one harsh strip took me from mono to micro, and at home my daughter asked why I looked so startled. I explained that it wasn’t my plan to reduce my upper face to an HB line drawing, I just wanted a tidy-up… She channelled her six-year-old wisdom into a look, half sneer half pity, and said: “why would you want to do that?”

I don’t know why. Well, no, I do.

Without occasional upkeep there is a chance my eyelashes and brow bristles would interlock, inviting vision problems and quarantine officials. But Matilda’s questioning of even the most simple of enhancements was poignant, considering I have recently been feeling the summer heat of getting ‘bikini ready’, and the subsequent pressures of losing not just hair, but fat and skin.

I don’t read ‘women’s interest’ magazines any more, it’s really not in my interest. Yet beach and holiday images – tv ads, billboards, street furniture – show us only toned people should be seen on the sand or cracking crab claws in a strappy summer dress. Only smooth-skinned people with very white teeth are able to swing their children in dizzying circles without falling over. Good, happy mothers are thin. Even the gene-fortunate elastic-bodied mums at the school gates can have you thinking… I should be slimmer, sleeker, with better gum health and possibly a food-free existence, I really should.

Careering towards 40 with kitten-heel days at least 10kg behind me, I’m a mum, not a display model; so with a brain not entirely reduced to porridge, why does one look at supermums Cindy and Elle, tummies taut as a prep’s plimsoll, have me Googling Atkins and booking myself an appointment to get waxed within a layer of carpaccio?

It’s media pressure, but it’s also the fate of the modern woman, I think. There’s no longer a solid divide between youth and adulthood – we no longer childishly court, then marry and grow up.

Six years of marriage and two offspring later, I’m still a total child – playing around on Facebook and refusing to join the parent-teacher association because meetings are probably ‘boring’.

My own mother at my age was either in the kitchen, in the laundry or on her Avon Calling round making ends meet. She didn’t have time to worry about fairyfloss matters like waistlines and hair shine. My body’s going south and I’m still trying to climb the north face of self-maintenance, still in mind-frame that I could and should fit into my old 28” jeans again.

For the sake of an increasingly fragile sanity and the message it’s sending to the children, it’s time I left the image-consciousness of youth behind and stepped up a level; it’s time I reconciled myself with the Shirley Valentine inside and the silvery lines of life that meander across the undulating plains of my stomach; accept that without serious knife skills I’m never going to be able to sport a Tigerlilly barely-there bikini without having to fish the bottom strings out of love-handle valley.

After all, who actually cares? Not my husband. And who am I trying to impress? Not my husband. Go figure.

My kids, although often referred to as The Bastard Squad, are undoubtedly the people I love best. And they think I’m beautiful just the way I am. It should be enough.

I tell my children they’re beautiful all the time, too. And when Matilda says: “I want hotpants like a Bratz doll, but are my legs too short? Do I look like a Bratz, Mummy?” I explode.

I say: “No, but thank goodness because Bratz dolls look like whores.”

Then she asks me what whores are. And it’s a toughie, because if I say that whores are like Bratz dolls she’ll want to be one when she grows up – if she can wait that long. So I am forced to give her the old spiel about beauty inside and out. Bratz dolls care too much what they look like, they should concentrate on conservation projects and visiting old people because that’s what really makes you a beautiful person.

So how could I possibly worry about ‘getting ready for summer’? Ladies and gentleman, for one season only… introducing…. the biggest hypocrite on earth.

No. I can’t live on anaemic protein shakes while telling kids complex carbohydrates are essential. I can’t preach beauty comes from within as I chastise and moan about my lack of it without. It stops here.

Summer’s coming. Our great skies are opening up and filtering through that glorious light, which, on the one hand is cheery, resplendent and jolly good for picnics – and on the other hand is an excellent opportunity to highlight to the kids just how happy I am with who I am. I may even throw my spare tyres to the wind and wear a bikini. After all, they never need know that hairdressing doesn’t stop at the eyebrows.