Beauty Olympics
It’s taken awhile but I’ve finally recovered from my first Iron Man Triathalon.
I thought I was in good shape, I thought I had trained hard. I thought I was up for the task.
I’ve had 4 massages and some physical therapy and I am still sore.
Now I know first hand what It takes to sit on the side lines and ring cow bells for hours at a time. I’ve hired a coach who suggests that I work my way up to a 3 hour session of sitting and watching T.V. twice weekly. No more re-runs of Hong Kong Phooey, I’ll need to go big with the tractor pulls.
I still don’t really know why any adult would pay good money to push their body for so many hours when they don’t actually have to. It would be like paying to go to traffic school on a sunny week end day, just for the fun of it.
I have a client I’ll call Betty. She trains all year for endurance races, she’ll huff and puff and endure long hours of pain, pushing, and bladder control. ‘Queer’ i thought, but having strong voyeuristic tendencies I felt a deep longing to attend the event and lend my ‘support’. So I called in the Posse and off we went in our cowboy hats at the crack of dawn to see what all the stink was about.
Though these competitors may have been in better shape, it seemed to me that an Iron Man triathalon wasn’t a heck of a lot different than standing behind a chair all day doing hair.
Everyone races against themselves and dresses according to peer pressure. Swim caps replaced the perm bag, the cycling ‘kit’ replaced BLACK, the cleat replaced the 6 inch heel and the open water swim …..
replaced the shampoo bowl, it’s pretty obvious isn’t it? that the bike replaced processing lamps and the wet suit replaces the colur apron.Do you see the connection? I’ve done hair for 14 hours at a stretch for days in a row existing only on animal crackers and a few nips of Jack Daniels. Any competitive beauty olympian worth their salt knows It’s important to limit intake because if nature calls and there is a line for the loo, the entire day’s schedule begins to back up, and that slows our time down in ‘the transition’ from loo user to beautician/magician. The clock is ticking, and every second counts. Each day we take our ready positions on the block, wait for the gun to fire and try to beat the national average for blow outs, comb-outs, perms, relaxers, trims, up-do’s, hair colour and deep conditionings.
There are so many things that can de-rail us from our goal. We may not go as fast as a cyclist, but we sure as heck dress a lot better! There was so much shiny, sparkly stretchy material I thought I would hurl.
At every turn there was more SPANDEX. Didn’t these people live through the 80’s or ever take a jazzercize class? Had they ever even opened a fashion magazine? They were breaking every fashion rule there was. We even saw one person (hard to tell if it was a man or woman because you see, many of these types of athletes have very low body fat , know what I mean?) anywho he/she rode an all pink bike and wore a little pink number to match, and I do mean little.
I guess you can look like that when you are so obviously single.
The posse and I were given thorough instructions on how and when to use the Cow Bell
.
(above you will see a member of the posse double fisting the cow bells running uphill alongside the cyclists to egg them on) with The iron men and women were crawling past us. I don’t mean to complain but they certainly weren’t very chatty. They pretty much stuck to the monosyllable. I didn’t let that get me down and every now and again rang the cow bell and yelled out random words of encouragement; “NICE GRADUATED BOB”, “A+ on the mullet, brother!”, “‘nail colour and water bottle match your shoes #1328, well done”, “thanks for bringing DEVO back into the forefront of athletic style”, “Good work #16942, you’re almost to the top of the hill where there are much more flattering outfits waiting for you, you can do it!!!!”
I grew up a liberal in California, doing T.M. and sleeping in a water bed, but frankly, I was offended by the overt desperation I witnessed. Rather than simply dressing in haute couture and feathered hair, these athletes just blatantly wrote all their numbers right on their arms and legs in big fat black marker for anyone to see! phone numbers, weight, age, bra-size and I.Q. Hadn’t they heard of the more discreet business card, the post it or even on-line chat rooms? Honest to Pete, some people will do anything to get a date.
I was admittedly impressed by the men and women emerging from the open water swim with goggle marks on their faces.
This could slow many a fashionista down, but these folks just confidently forged on stripping off their wetsuits and perm bags swim caps while on the run to their bikes. I did feel just a twinge of professional concern. Maybe they didn’t know about the day-into-night looks or something as simple as water proof gel and mascara. I would think that any woman would move faster knowing that the fashion police was out in force and looking for offenders.
Expect it when you least expect it, right? Talk about speed dating!
Back to the concept of the beauty Olympics. This is the sort of stuff a stylist works with every day, bad fashion, mis-matched make-up, goggle marks or hair that looks like it just came out of the river. We do our best not to trip over the cord to the flat iron. We find a way to eat a hoagie in 2 bites or less while listening to voice mail and sitting on the toilet. We make frog fur look full and lush, we apply make up on a bride’s acne riddled face to help her skin look smooth as a baby’s bottom. We gently soothe the savage beast when the hair gets cut ‘too short’ – oopsie. We correct the colour-gone-wrong-at-home with hope and encouraging remarks. We keep our calm while life as one knows it is falling apart. We deftly apply dark hair colour while wearing chanel in winter white and don’t get a drop of it on our ensemble. We can stand for 10 hours in 6 inch heels. Let’s face it, just keeping lipstick on and hair full for that amount of time is something to brag about.
Breakfast needs to make an exit? Lost the tip of a finger in that last set of layers? A pesky 3rd degree burn from the hot tool? None of this will take us down. We forge on wearing band aids and mole skin and pop ibuprofen and every day at closing time we raise a glass, check the stop watch and know that once again, we beat the odds, we turned back the clock and won the race in our daily beauty olympics.
Do you have a story about doing hair or having your hair done?
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