Bye, Maintenance!

The biggest fash­ion event of the year has arrived. Thou­sands flock to gaze admir­ingly at beau­ti­ful, yet imprac­tic­al items of cloth­ing. Of these people, some treat cloth­ing as wear­able art them­selves, where­as oth­ers see it as some­thing to pre­vent hypo­ther­mia. Some use fash­ion to express their per­son­al­ity; oth­ers use it to avoid a con­vic­tion for inde­cent exposure.

For me, I lie some­where in between. There are times when I take great pleas­ure in a pretty dress and a pair of heels. There are also times when I wear socks with san­dals, unflat­ter­ing Lycra, my favour­ite ‘low-self-esteem jump­er’ and have my hair in a frizzy pony­tail. Today, for example, would be one of those days. So was yes­ter­day, actually.

It’s a del­ic­ate bal­ance. Wear­ing nice clothes and a bit of makeup will, without a doubt, make you look more attract­ive. Draw­ing on a pair of eye­brows, because your DNA for­got to pro­gramme them, will enhance your fea­tures and make your facial expres­sions notice­able. When you are look­ing your best, life smiles upon you and the guys at the pet­rol sta­tion give you an affirm­ing look-over.

The prob­lem with paint­ing your­self a bet­ter face and cov­er­ing your­self with beau­ti­ful fab­ric on a daily basis is that it gives you a heightened sense of just how good look­ing you actu­ally are. As you coat your lashes in black paste, or tame your hair with sticky goo, you start to con­vince your­self that this is your nat­ur­al state. You gaze at your­self in the mir­ror and start mak­ing love to your­self with your smoul­der­ing, painted-on eyes.

But this level of self-lov­ing is unsus­tain­able. You start to accli­mat­ise to your raised bar of hot­ness. Your sexy, best-presen­ted self becomes the baseline; so much so that when you step out of the shower, hav­ing returned your face to its nat­ur­al, fea­ture­less state, you punch the mir­ror, because some red, blotchy, fea­ture­less, strag­gly-haired cret­in has invaded your bath­room, naked, with wobbly bits all over the show. Instead of feel­ing good wear­ing nice clothes and makeup, it can get to the stage where you start to feel like a mon­ster when you don’t.

You are now faced with a choice. You can either make sure that you put 100% effort into your appear­ance for ever – or you can suf­fer from com­ments like “you look tired, are you sick?” if you drop the ball one morn­ing and run to the dairy for emer­gency milk in your PJ’s.

But there is anoth­er option. You can reset your sexy ther­mo­stat. Be brave. Wear sneak­ers with jeans. Rock your bald fore­head, pale lips and sparse eye­lashes. Wear pants too small, tops too short and inflict your muffin top on the world! Let your bush pig out! Let her trample baby ferns like the hairy-in-all-the-wrong-places, cloven-hoofed mam­mal she is.

At first, you may feel down. You may con­sider revert­ing to your old ways. But stay strong, scruffy maid­en; before long, ‘crazy and unkempt’ will be the new you. Friends will adjust. Best of all, so will you.

After one month of gross­ing it up, I invite you to have a wash and put on your favour­ite out­fit. What was once the ‘norm’ for you will by con­trast be a drastic trans­form­a­tion. Brush­ing your hair will make you feel like a super­mod­el. All you have to do is slap on a coat of mas­cara for co-work­ers to gasp and bow down to the drastic improve­ments. Unless, of course, you get addicted to the praise and the vicious cycle starts all over again. Where’s my home liposuc­tion kit?