Thank you, Elizabeth Arden, for transforming women's beauty rituals. Where once we merely pinched our cheeks and bit our lips to add a little color and bathed weekly with scented soap, we presently spend 55 minutes a day and $2.3 trillion (yes, TRILLION) per year on beauty rituals and products. Did you know that political science professor Sheila Jeffreys has published an entire book on the topic of whether western women's beauty rituals - ranging from labiaplasty to liposection to lipstick - should be included in the United Nations' definition of harmful traditional/cultural beauty practices?
Do a quick web search on "beauty industry" and "feminism" and you'll find a hord of twentysomething women bloggers proclaiming that they are feminists who have been (fill in the blank) ... wearing lipstick, or depilitating, or bleaching their hair, or botoxing, or, or, or... How convenient for Elizabeth Arden: where 75 years ago, women would have been shocked and repulsed by the idea of shaving their armpits, nowadays we can go down to the Wax Loft in Ann Arbor and spend anywhere from $13 (upper lip) to $140 (full leg/Brazilian) to "avoid mishaps and minimize the pain associated with hair removal."
Not surprisingly, my daughter and I - and my mother and I in years long past - are not in perfect accord with regard to how much time and money should be spent on personal beauty. Happily, in the PTO Thrift Shop, we can sometimes set aside these disagreements. How exciting to find these hot curlers nestled on the shelf during one of our thrift crawls. Only $2, and with that all-important word, "Works," penned in black Sharpie on a piece of masking tape, stuck to the bottom.
Emma left these behind when she packed for college. I would have kept them for her - no self-mutilation necessary! - but when I tested them, sadly, they no longer worked.
When she comes home, she'll be stuck with the lovely, shiny, ever-so slightly waved tresses God gave her. And 100 strokes each night with a hairbrush.
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