Beauty Therapy

Beauty therapists are the profession that used to be known as beauticians but everyone is a therapist now. Cleaning ladies are house therapists, writers even do narrative therapy. I'm a late adherent to beauty therapy, as I am in everything except marriage. Although I am often assumed to be of the generation that grew up as hippies, the year I went to university (which is when life used to start), hippiedom was over and it was the age of the 'new romantics', David Bowie, Adam Ant, and... dare I say his name... Gary Glitter.
But the influence of the hippies was strong, even in the Tory bastion of St. Andrews, home of the Adam Smith Institute. The politically correct stance was that we should be admired just as we were, sans make-up, hairy armpits etc, as were the blokes. The sales of Rimmel and Max Factor and much borrowing of boyfriends' razors belied this, but beauty was a hidden activity. When I went to U.B.C in Vancouver in 1975, the power of the sisterhood was still much in evidence. Vancouver was the home of draft avoiders from the U.S, dope smoking and all-night beach parties; a really laid back, 'right on' place. Hirsute armpits, dungarees, hair tied back in an ethnic headscarf (preferably Musqueam Indian) and a couple of babies, one at the breast and one on the hip, were de riguer. Although much plucking, shaving and ex-foliation went on in private, I can't remember seeing a beauty salon in Vancouver.
I arrived back in the U.K. in 1981, complete with baby, ethnic headscarves etc. and was surprised to find the sisterhood still held court at our local church hall playgroup, although the Thatcher era was almost upon us. My health visitor cast her gimlet eye over me and my baby girl and remarked that we weren't quite ready for the Lytton Road Under-Fives and she was right, I was terrified of them. They still wore dungarees, had their hair tied up in plaits and were breast-feeding four year olds. One of them child-minded all our babies and breast-fed them when they cried. Now these women are working, heading up Education and Social Care in Leicester, or executive headteachers in flagship schools. If I see them, they glance at me from under (plucked) eyebrows and avoid my eye. No one wants to be reminded of Lytton Road Under Fives.
Anyway, I wasn't aware of anyone having anything 'done', except their hair. As soon as I found one white hair in my thirties, I had my hair professionally henna'd, since it was so tedious and messy to do at home. But beauty 'treatments' belonged to the rich, an outrageous expense for anyone with children. The change came when places like Ragdale Hall opened their doors for day visits and soon, carloads of very ordinary ladies from Leicester were heading up the A46, happy to spend a day in a white towelling robe having massages, facials and a calorie-controlled lunch in the wood panelled dining room. My friends and I were at the front of the queue, four of us crammed into a Ford Fiesta, bleary eyed at eight on a Saturday morning ('day guests must arrive by nine a.m.'), propelled into a world of luxury where porters carried our Nike bags into the changing room and then escorted us to the Orangerie for a cappuchino before our timetable of sybaritic pleasure. Our first day cost fifty pounds each. We became so blase that on one visit, a hot day in June, we lay by the pool and forgot to go for our 'treatments.'
What the sisters rejected, but their mothers knew well, was that beauty treatments, make-up and lovely clothes are fun and I'm glad I found out that simple thing before it was too late. I do believe that people should be judged as they are but as a psychologist I also know that how you present yourself tells people how you feel about yourself. If you feel crap, taking the time to look great helps you to feel better because people treat you as if you aren't feeling crap. Only the most depressed can't do this and that's why it's a key sign of true depression.
So now I'm an enthusiast and a regular. It doesn't make me look younger, just good for my age. My 'therapist' is Varshna, a Hindu lady who gets more religious with every year that passes. She's not into the menopause yet, so when she asked me (look away chaps) if I wanted even more hair removed from bits of my body as yet unexplored, I explained to her that the upside of being post-menopausal is that hair leaves the body. The downside is that it gravitates to the face. She looked at me wide-eyed, absolutely horrified. 'God must hate women' she said at last.