Alison Bezzina

Last week I went shopping for sunscreen. I left the shop with 50ml of something, 30ml of something else, 100grm of another thing, and ended up €200 poorer and none the wiser.

What happened will probably not come as a surprise to most of you - when I asked the sales rep for a high-factor sunscreen, she bombarded me with questions, the answers to which I was expected to know off the top of my head - ‘What do you want sunscreen for? Do you moisturise? Do you tone? Do you cleanse? Do you hydrate? Do you exfoliate, scrub, buff? Do you have oily, dry, normal, combination, ageing, wrinkly, or pore-prone skin? Do you suffer from dark circles, puffy eyes, itchy eyes, or watery eyes?’

At first, I was dumbfounded - I was staring this woman straight in the face, and with all her expertise she could not make out what type of skin I had; But then, I was taken in by the dream of flawless beautiful skin, and ended up buying three horrendously expensive concoctions, in order to treat a skin condition I did not know I had in the first place. As soon as I parted with my hard earned cash, the same sales rep that had quizzed me into oblivion, surprised me with a special sample of the latest thing in the world of cosmetics. She held up a little tube in her little hand, and in a secretive tone explained how this miracle cream is good for every skin type, and how its contents have the intelligence to identify exactly what the skin needs. I was aghast! After putting me through the embarrassment of not knowing my own skin, and buying three shamefully expensive products, she comes up with this wonder cream that knows me more than I will ever know myself. With such an intelligent cosmetic on the market, I would not be surprised, if in a few months time, there will not be a single wrinkle or open pore to write home about. Yeah right!

No man, and certainly no woman, is immune to the pressures of the beauty myth. We are obsessed with the way we look because we are constantly bombarded with unattainable images of perfection. Models are airbrushed to within an inch of their lives, a simple click of a mouse removes all their orange peel from their thighs, their eyebrows are raised into their hairline with one stroke of a graphic pen, their skins are bronzed or whitened according to the editor’s whims, and their necklines are stretched long enough to make giraffes wonder. On a rational level we all know that these are unreachable and impossible illusions of beauty, but on some unconscious level we all buy into them. What’s worse is that, the beauty industry itself, cannot, or rather will not, decide what is considered to be beautiful. So, one day it’s good to be blonde, the next day it’s olive skin that you need in order to have a perfect life, with the perfect husband, 2.1 children and a dog, then suddenly, you find out that all along your biggest physical inadequacy were your small boobs, and of course, the moment you invest in some C cups, dried up stick insects with concave breasts, become the in thing again!

My grandmother had seven children, she never heard of sunscreen, and wouldn’t know moisturiser if she skidded on some, and yet, at the ripe old age of 93, she has the most beautiful skin I’ve ever seen. She always flaunted curves and ate to her heart’s desire, and with what I spend on cosmetics in a month, she probably fed and clothed her whole family for a year. Even though I restrict myself to non-animal tested products, the opportunities to spend money on cosmetics are endless. In order not to drive myself crazy and into bankruptcy, I’m trying to prioritize my flaws by focusing on my greatest physical defect first, sort that one out, and then move down the list eliminating one defect at a time, until one day, I too will reach an acceptable level of beauty. And all this, because I’m worth it! But one day I’m told that my biggest flaws are my deep set wrinkles, so I go out to buy enough anti-wrinkle cream to hold a skyscraper together; the next day I’m told that all I need is to lose a couple of kilos, so I go out to buy three tons of detox herbal laxatives and a sack of sugar-free sugar; then before I know it, I’m being told that my problem is actually my not-so-straight, not- so-shiny and , not-so-shady hair!

The truth of the matter, is that the media has convinced us that it is possible to look perfectly perfect. In fact most of us would rather be called stupid than ugly, because no one blames you for never having read a book, or for not knowing that the capital city of The United States is not New York, but God forbid you have a hair growing out of the wrong pore, or a wrinkle suggesting you laughed too hard in our younger years, as all hell might break lose.

Even the most intelligent women, at some point in their lives, have got that cream, that lotion, that teeth whitener, hair curler, pupil dilator, or nail shiner, thinking that it would propel them onto the next plateau of desirability, and although I’m not saying that men are above this, we all know that men are by far more visual than women. As much as they would like to have us believe that they are not so concerned with looks, we also know that more often than not, the commander and chief downstairs takes over, robs the brain of valuable blood, and leads its troops into perpetuating the beauty myth across the next generation of women!

First published on FM Magazine 22nd March 2009