...is ON! This is mainly because a) it's summer, and b) personally for me, there are two family weddings (one at which I will be making a starring appearance as 'Old Bridesmaid' - spot the irony?) and numerous other occasions going on throughout the month of August that mean I am obliged to try and look my very best.
I must admit, I have sometimes wondered if the fact that I've got four younger sisters has made me a little teensy-tiny bit more vain than I might otherwise be. Though I must empathically (maybe slightly too empathically?) state that we are not at all competitive...I think there's a practical instinct in all of us that understands how pathetic that would be. I realise the obvious caveat in this will probably arrive when I turn fifty and my youngest sister is hovering on the cusp of thirty - we'll see!
The thing about summer, and wedding seasons especially, is that people start having things 'done' so that they'll look a bit better with slightly less on, or when they feel people might be looking at them more than they usually do. Like when you're a bridesmaid, for example. My other sisters, all of whom will be bridesmaids with me (apart from one who will be the bride) have been discussing having manicures, facials and fake tan in advance of the wedding. Such talk, I'll admit, has been scaring me slightly - because I hadn't planned to 'do' anything much (besides the obligatory "putting on of dress, make-up and running a brush through my hair") and I'm worried the wedding pictures will show me, ashen-faced and pathetic home-manicured nails, standing next to my beautifully bronzed, professionally coiffed sisters who actually bothered to make an effort!
But you see, beauty treatments have never really worked out well for me. I guess it all started when, aged nineteen, my best friend and I planned a 'pampering weekend' whereby we went to a local beauty salon for a massage, manicure, fake tan and a makeover. It started well. The massage was relaxing and the manicure was...well, OK I suppose. The fake tan went on well, but I don't feel having tanned skin is very "me" so I didn't like it. OK, so far so...mediocre. Then we got to the makeover. I was upstairs having make-up put on me while my friend was downstairs having her hair done, and we were due to swap over. I hadn't seen my face, trusting the therapist to do what she wanted. I took the stairs at the same time as my friend, and her face when she saw mine said it all. It was full of panicked trepidation at what was about to happen. And her hair looked like a nest belonging to a bird who never bothers taking the rubbish out, so mine must have looked similarly terrified.
I sat down in the hairdressers' chair and took in the full horror of my face. Green eyeshadow (I have green eyes - clever!) with blue eyeliner and mascara, streaky coral blusher and pink frosted lipstick married with a face absolutely slathered in dark orange foundation (WHY do people who work in the beauty industry always think that when you go for a makeover, it means you must want an orange face? It doesn't usually scream "glam"...well, maybe unless you work for Del Monte).
The hairdresser asked what I wanted. Not wanting to risk 'Birds' Nest - Part 2', I said I just wanted her to brush my hair gently because it was "very delicate". She gave me a funny look, but did what I asked. Then my friend emerged from the make-up room covered in pink eyeshadow and blood-red blusher, and we paid the therapists, and because we were young and naive and wanted everybody to like us, we left a tip and said we'd be back soon. Then we got into a cab (the driver took one look at us, stifled a smirk and said "Just off to work, girls?"), went back to her house, and used up a whole bag of cotton balls removing the make-up. I think we might have cried as well. It was an altogether horrific experience.
Future trips to beauty spas have revealed similar results, and I've concluded that I'm better off just being me most of the time, without added 'extras' (this excludes my monthly trips to the hairdressers to get my hair dyed - that doesn't count!)
Now I realise I may cave at the last minute, which would be only human, and so the wedding pictures may just reveal my caked-in-orange face and a streaky tan. Time can only tell.
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