when my archenemy taught me that natural beauty does not exist

I stopped being pretty when I was a kid.

After that, all the world’s grime polluted my skin and bones.

Til I no longer cared how I look.

See:

I’m too lazy to fix myself: I leave my hair unkempt even after taking a bath, I don’t put conditioner after shampoo, I don’t use any facial wash, I don’t apply lotion, I don’t scrub my feet, I don’t buy commercial beauty, basically. I go natural.

But then, my archenemy made fun of my hair, my feet, my legs, my face, my posture, me-self!

This archenemy is my sister:

I never usually don’t like her thoughts. Middling bit. But when it comes to Beauty Braggadocio ugh I can’t shush her. She has this superpower of making me feel so ugly and ugliest. Like, she would look closely at my face and poke it like stupid or she would caress my hair with a seriously sad face or she would sit beside me to look at my toes and then hers. Subtle torture.

But I tolerate love her still.

I actually listen to her when she tells me buy this! use that! what happened to your pores? visit this! go there!

If there’s anything I learned from this big girl, it would be:

Natural beauty does not exist. Sorry.

That was the time when I started allotting part of my monthly budget for Things Unnecessary Until Your Sister Tells You You Need Them, Badly.

So now. For the fun part. What did I buy the last time I went to shop for beauty?

1. ola! the expensive facial wash that promises age-defying supertwinklepowers! I feel like an aging person having to apply anti-aging on my aging skin.

2. ze veet ees forr zee hairrry veet.

But given the chance, I would kill, with passion, the one person who started women’s tradition of shaving body hair.

3. the wonder balm! I take pride in my father being a farmer, but when the Evil Monster Sister calls my feet that of a farmer’s… that’s a different story hey.

.

There’s a dozen others (toner, lotion, etc) and I don’t have time uploading pix, because I’m going to the bathroom now and make myself presentable.

***

Re-reading this now September 2012, and I wish I didn’t write this, but instead of deleting, this post shows how I changed over the years, in thinking and writing.