unvarnished

Botox. Collagen. Chemical peels. Depilation. Exfoliation. Varnish. Polyfilla. Nipping. Tucking. Lifting. Stretching.

None for me, thanks.

I am happy to wash, trim, clip, occasionally squeeze and scrub but if I ever turn into one of these people who spends an hour cleaning their face and hair only to follow up with another hour of applying various greases, potions and procedures to it before feeling able to leave the bathroom in the morning then I request that someone please shoot me. I'll let myself wrinkle, sag, crease and wobble as the years require; as long as I'm inside looking out.

I learnt reasonably early on in my adult life to not bother trying to shave too closely as it just rips my skin to shreds. I was once given a voucher for a 'proper' wet shave with a murderous-looking straight-razor and warm, damp towels at the short-lived Boots For Men. I expected that with their superior skills and fancy preparatory oils that I would not experience the usual faceache and spottyneck after the shave. It turned out to be even worse than normal; a few bonus ingrowing follicles were created, my neck was raw for a week and the bastards slapped stingy menthol post-shave skin-freezing lotion on it before sending me out into the January winds. It was probably aroundabout that time that I started being permanently beardy, significantly reducing the amount of skin I have to bother to do anything with. Hair-clippers deal with both the beard and the non-beard bits without getting anywhere near the skin's surface and the general rise in face-messiness-threshold caused by having a beard means that up to a month can be allowed to pass between trims.

Washing my face takes about a minute including the rinse cycle unless I've been doing something really messy like changing the brake blocks on my bike then rubbing my eyes. A mild soap is sufficient to remove almost all grime and grease. You don't want to remove all of it as that makes skin dry and flaky and more easily damaged. Replacing lost moisture with artificial subsitutes is just silly; there's a good reason why the skin secretes its own lubricant/protective coating/moisturiser in the forms of sweat and sebum; they do their job more efficiently than anything a dermatologist can brew up in a laboratoire. I don't believe in this exfoliation nonsense either; the skin deliberately keeps a few laminae of dead cells on the outer surface to take the brunt of the sun, wind, rain, dust and grime the world throws at it. Getting rid of the top layer of skin just means the delicate undersurface is exposed. My pet theory predicts that this forced increase in the turnover of skin cells will merely use up the finite lives of the basal stem cells that much faster and make people go wrinklier all the sooner. Chemical and mechanical peels are likely to be even worse. If you want to reduce wrinkling just stay off the fags and wear a wide-brimmed hat on sunny days.

As we get older, we get wrinklier. Simple fact. Get used to it. Slowdown in turnover of the skin itself, slowdown in repair of the elastic subsurface layers, sagging of the underlying structures all contribute and the bizarre practice of slicing open the skin, removing a big flap then stitching the edges together just makes people look stupid. And a bit surprised and vapid. Puffing up the lips just makes people talk in a silly way and look stupid. Removing the ability to raise the eyebrows or corrugate the forehead makes people look emotionally dead and a bit thick. Inserting little strips of plastic to create the chin or cheekbones genetic inheritance didn't provide is beyond absurd.
It used to be the case that noticeably surgically adjusted (NOT enhanced) people were only visible on the television and cinéma screens but recently the amount out there on the streets walking amongst us has rapidly increased. Unfortunately I didn't see any today so had to prepare a mock-up of my face to illustrate this post. I don't bother trying not to stare when I pass these people and it's only the strong possibility that they might have some psychological unhappiness underlying their decision which stops me screwing my face up. Getting your face replaced if it's been bitten off by a bear or a dog is one thing. Deliberately messing with it for vanity's sake is a waste of money and dignity, especially as age and gravity do indeed always win. More than anything else it's getting to the point where television programmes and films can no longer be enjoyed as much due to the distraction of playing spot-the-scalpelwork. It's especially worrying when the young and naturally pretty fall victim even before they're old enough to get their first wrinkles; Lauren Ambrose's weird eyes in 6FU season 4 seemed a particularly unfortunate loss.

The other potential picture I had in mind for this (likewise imitated Photoshopically above) was a shot of one of these strange wax-caked orange-faced demons in a white coat on the slap counters in department stores. There is a very very very fine line between not wearing any make-up and wearing too much. Even more than cosmetic surgery the use of make-up straddles the line between confidence-boosting and vanity-pandering. I am very much of the belief that the only thing which can make a face more attractive is for it to move or smile or laugh. Emphasizing the eyelashes or the lips or the cheekbones or the cheeks or the eyes is all very well but it reduces the face to a collection of features rather than the single entity forming the interface of a person with the rest of the world.
I saw a documentary once which featured a (very successful) woman so self-unconfident and addicted to make-up that she couldn't leave the house without spending three hours applying and re-applying various layers of foundations and rouges and lipsticks and eye-cakes and so on and so forth. As part of the show she had to go two weeks with nowt on her face but her expression; it eventually led her to relax a great deal, feel much more deep-down-confident about her appearance and reduce her daily routine to a few minutes and only a couple of touches but one particular incident during the clean phase stuck in my mind. The woman went to a nightclub (in Newcastle) with some of her pals and was at one point bought a drink by a bloke at the bar. I believe the phrase he used (which sent her out of the club in tears) was "you'd not look half bad with a bit of make-up on, pet". I would like to hope that cretins like this are in the minority but knowing people it's probably a depressingly popular male opinion.
The best argument against make-up and appearance-modification I've ever seen also happened in Newcastle. A couple of years ago I took part in the Spencer Tunick shoot in Gateshead. Participants of all ages, shapes and sizes were present. The ones who loked silliest? Not the funny-shaped, saggy, lumpy or wrinkly people; nothing looks dafter than someone whose face is an entirely different shade and texture from the rest of their body, especially when surrounded by an acre of skin at five-o'clock in the morning in the summer.
I have just enough optimism to believe that not many people will ever be daft enough to apply the same theme of make-up to the rest of their body besides their face seeing as most face-painted people don't even bother with their neck. I also hope that the sight of lots of people looking very silly when they get older will put the youth of tomorrow off the idea of trying to meddle in their appearance.