Chasing beauty

I can't believe the amount of time and effort and money people spend on beautifying themselves. The beauty industry is worth hundreds of billions of pounds as people slap on the moisturisers, mascara and hair-dye and make furtive visits to the botox clinic or the plastic surgeon.

Personally I'm quite happy with my appearance. I have no beauty routine of any kind. I wash, wash my hair, shave, get dressed, that's it. I never tried to look like some fashionable male model or rock star*. I don't spend hours in front of the mirror wondering how to improve my looks. I have far more interesting things to do.

Women have always been told, one way or another, that their natural appearance isn't good enough and a vast range of beauty routines is needed to make them fit to be looked at and admired. Thorough depilation, skilful make-up, frequent hair-dos, flattering clothes - the list is endless.

It's not just women either. Plenty of men are now being sucked into the beauty game with their own lengthy requirements list. Thin and muscular, a full head of hair, no man-boobs, perfect skin. They're just as likely to be hogging the bathroom mirror first thing in the morning, hard at work with the eye-bag concealer.

I must say all this beautifying leaves me cold. I've always been drawn to natural-looking women, who to my mind look fine just as they are. Women with fancy hair-dos, thick make-up and skin-tight dresses look more like drag queens.

And the quest for a perfect body leads to all sorts of mental and emotional problems. The number of men and women being treated for eating disorders is rising rapidly. So too is the number of girls wanting to be boys because of the relentless pressure on girls to be physically flawless.

The frantic pursuit of unattainable beauty leaves a lot of casualties in its wake.

*except for a brief John Lennon period when I had long hair and a beard.

PS: Hair dye can be toxic. Actor Keira Knightley revealed that she now wears wigs in her films as constant hair-dyeing caused her hair to start falling out.

Groom or doom

Surveys keep telling us most women dislike their bodies and would like to change them. Well of course they dislike their bodies. Is that surprising when everyone around them says they're not attractive until they've been through a string of laborious grooming procedures? The obvious conclusion - their natural self without all the recommended beautifying and prettifying must be a hideous sight nobody wants to look at.

The message blares out endlessly from the mass media, from movies, from parents, even from friends - if you've missed out on make-up, skincare, body-hair removal, weekly hairdos, nail polish, push-up bras or shapewear, then you're simply not feminine or glamorous enough and nobody will give you a second glance.

The message for men is totally different, in fact almost the opposite. If they pay any undue attention to their appearance, they're just narcissistic - or maybe gay. Real men simply sling on a few nondescript clothes, comb their hair and that's that. Nobody cares two hoots about the condition of their skin, or when they last had a haircut, or all the hair carpeting their chest. Nobody suggests their natural self is something to be worked on obsessively to make it passably attractive.

In fact some men seem to revel so shamelessly in their wild and woolly appearance that I sometimes think a little pressure to beautify themselves female-style wouldn't come amiss.

Of course there's nothing wrong with prettifying yourself as such. It must be a lot of fun dolling yourself up occasionally. I'd quite like to doll myself up now and again but gender forbids. No, the problem is the implication that if women don't doll themselves up, they're ugly ducklings who'll never get to the ball.

Well, ducklings look pretty good to me, even without make-up....