Just another trip to the salon

In my previous blog entry that I had written on Kim Robinson, I'd mentioned about why I hate visiting beauty salons. The experts there will take a look at your face, sulk and wonder why you were created in the first place. "What's with the pimples, ma'am?" "Your hair sucks", "You should come regularly", "Oh, your face, so dull"... these are just some of the many comments that I've encountered each time a salon expert has looked at my face. They've wanted to sell me their products, they've punctured my thoughts of being a fairly presentable person, they've cribbed about my sun tan and they've "tsk-ed tsk-ed" about how terrible I'll be when I grow older than I already am.
This article was published as part of our Mystery Guest column in Business Standard http://www.business-standard.com/india/

You need two things when you hit a beauty salon: money (lots of it) and patience (in abundance). After spending three hours at a beauty salon, I realise I lack patience, and whatever money I had has been spent on a face that is “dry, dull with fine lines and prone to pimples, white heads, black heads...”

But let’s go back to the beginning. Perturbed by some recent remarks made by a friend (“Pamper yourself. What are you earning for?”) and an elderly family member (“Why do you work? Sit at home and work, and pamper yourself”), I trudge to Limelite, a unisex beauty salon in the NCR. It’s a spectacularly clean salon, very spacious, with an excellent staff who greet me with wide smiles and a glass of water.

They proceed to show me a “rate card” with different treatments including a chocolate facial. But the one for me is skin lightening facial treatment, because, “your face is too tanned”.

“Your face is very dark, madam. You don’t take care at all?” asks beautician No. 2. “I don’t get the time,” I say coldly, to which she adds, “Looking at your face, no one will believe you earn so much money. You should find the time to take care of your skin.”

Sometime later, a hairdresser, holding a clump of my hair, tells me my hairstyle, “is hopeless” and can be saved only if I get hair colour, followed by a quick wash, a special conditioner and hair serum.

“The shampoo and conditioner,” I’m told, “are available at the salon”. With my hair in a “colouring” mess, I find a five-year-old kid quietly staring at me, as if he’s found an alien sitting on a throne.

Is there anything right about me? “Oh, no. Why are your fingernails not shaped?” whines another girl, who’s getting ready to give me a manicure. By now the word “patience” has vanished from my dictionary and I’m wondering why people refer to a salon trip as a “relaxing experience”?

Having wiped off one-third of my salary in three hours, and finding out that, genetically speaking, my skin loves to burst into pimples, I head home with a new hairstyle, a “lightened” face and neatly painted fingernails. At home, my mother opens the door, looks at me lovingly and says, “Hi, bad day at work?”