Rituals of Beauty
Growing up, I would gawk in awe as my mother stood before her bathroom mirror performing the most delicate dance I’d ever seen. She would slowly twirl her chestnut brown hair around thick-bristled barrel brushes, one after the other. I’d watch as she glided her hair through each bristle, in repetition, pressing her blow dryer to the brush and gently sliding both the brush and dryer down in long, careful movements. She kept a long bang in front that swept across her face, and has had the same style my whole life. Her hair, always shoulder length, rarely an inch or two longer, would bounce from her round brush, to her paddle brush, and finally to her vent brush. She had the Conair Pro Blackbird hair dryer with three buttons: red for heat, blue for cool, and black for power. Getting Ready was a performance, and I’d throw red roses at my mother’s feet every night if I could.
She had a big, overflowing woven basket above the toilet seat that she’d reach into each morning to put on her face. Creamy rouge lipsticks in sleek black packaging, eyebrow powders, and bronzers and blushes, and the fluffiest brushes I’d ever felt. I’d climb up the toilet, balance on my toes, and reach for the basket, running my fingers over each compact kit and lipstick tube. I couldn’t wait until I had my own beauty routine. Until I adopted what I’d seen, and made it my own.
She smelled of Egyptian Musk and sweet vanilla
I watched her routine like my life depended on it. Coming to know her decade-long bangle phase, the jingle of each one clanking against the other. You could hear her from a mile away. Studying the circular motions in which she’d rub vanilla lace body lotion around her midsection, strokes one after the other, left and then right, up and down her arms and her smoothly shaved legs.
She and my sister had thick, naturally curly dark brown hair. Kate’s hair is beautiful and rich, pure and undamaged. My sister, aunt, and father all share hair so dark it could pass as jet-black. I envied my sister’s thick, long black hair. She and my mom would have Nair parties in our living room, get their eyebrows waxed together and bond over those awful rainy day frizzies. I wanted so badly to have frizzy hair each time it rained.
I had seen pictures of my mother’s long, thick brunette locks. But for as long as I could remember, her hair had only ever been straight. She lamented over her immense regrets of taking to Keratin and Japanese straightening time and time again. How she wanted straight hair so badly, that in her teens, she laid her curls out on an ironing board and pressed a hot clothes iron to it. In photographs, it tumbled past her chest and rested in bouncy spirals just above her waist. There were photos of her wading in the public pool with us or standing amongst flowers with voluminous curly brown hair. In one photo, it’s summer, and she’s holding her curly-haired dog Timmy close. Their hair flowed into each other’s. There was no telling where one ended and the other began. She seemed so carefree, so bronzed and beautiful and full of joy. I loved to imagine her long waves in motion. The way she’d sit out on a lawn chair and hold a metallic reflector beneath her face, radio blasting.
My long hair has become my power. Not all of my power, but a source of it. When I rescued my scraggly-haired pup, Winnie, she came running out of the shelter and tumbled right into my hair. It was love at first sight. Hung in my room and living room are images of women growing flowers from their hair. Vines down to their feet, rainbow hues starting at the root. This image of growth from within has always stuck with me. Of beautiful tresses flowing from our heads that we can water and nurture, and grow and grow.
For a brief stint during high school, my hairdresser moved in. He occasionally cooked dinner, baked desserts, rearranged furniture, let me drive his convertible, and rolled seemingly endless joints in exchange for our living room couch. He was a family friend who had cut my grandmother’s hair, my mother’s hair, and who stated as often as he could that age was just a number. Anytime I was feeling impulsive, he’d be there with a joint and cutting shears. This went on for a long time. By my senior year of high school, my hair was the shortest it had ever been. A year prior, I was going for the “Victoria Beckham” look. A straightened, angular bob that was the shortest by the nape of the neck, and the longest to frame the face. When I went off to college, I vowed never to cut my hair again.
It has been instilled in me never to leave the house and show myself to the world without putting on my face. And so, without fail, morning after morning, I gather my makeup brushes and find a seat before the mirror.
In Ghent, the kind woman from Russia in my dormitory took a moment to look at me before making her way to the bathroom. She stopped, turned around as she saw me putting on my face, paying close attention to the bright orange eyeshadow I dabbed on my lids using my pointer finger. In her broken English she said, “Your face is beautiful. You do not need all of this makeup.” It was unprompted, unasked for, and all I could do was hold my hand to my heart and say thank you. Thank you so much. My ritual ironically found me kneeling before the window to capture the strongest light, the cathedral off in the distance, church bells ringing, a form of prayer in my own way. Applying my eyeliner and mascara before the city of Ghent - a ritual all my own.
I stand naked, illuminated only by the natural light pouring through my windows. A gold tube of vanilla body lotion held in my hands. Slowly, intentionally, I find myself making those same motions — applying the lotion around my midsection, in strokes one after the other, left and then right, up and down my arms and smoothly shaved legs - and stopping to thank her.