Beauty products gone bad

When I think of the Balaklava Cup I think of diverse fashion and beauty. Where else but at a horse racing event can you see high street fashion and champagne glasses standing right next to singlets, football shorts and beer cans?  In the past I’ve gone to some crazy lengths to look my best on Balaklava’s busiest day; and so it got me thinking about beauty products.

One thing I won’t try again is sanding my legs. I’m not kidding guys.  Some bright spark folded a piece of low grit sandpaper up into the shape of a glove, whacked a pink package around it and marketed it as something like ‘velvety legs’ or some such other gimmicky name. It promised to smooth my skin painlessly. I think we can all predict that this cunningly disguised hardware sundry promoted as a hair removal tool did indeed ‘smooth’ my skin. And by smooth, I mean scrape the epidermis from my limb and leave it looking a rather frightful sight.  

You can understand that the offending glove was tossed out with other failures such as the lip gloss that didn’t last eight hours, the mascara that did last 48 hours (even after trying to remove it) and of course, the fake tan in a can which was the most remarkable shade of orange.

There are items I’m terribly thankful for though. I was blessed with hair as coarse as a scourer, and with all the condition of discarded wool frib. Enter my new best friend, the hair straightener. In minutes my boof was tamed to a manageable mass of brunette hair. Indeed so effective that I went down a hat size!

So what will I try next?  Well, given that I have my Italian father’s generous brow line, I might try ‘threading’. Have you heard of threading? It’s one of the more recent trends to hit Western culture, possibly started in India. Harder to explain than to do, it’s a hair removal technique that involves cotton thread anchored in the therapist’s mouth, and another two pieces of cotton which slide against the groomee’s hair like a guillotine. You can watch a youtube video of it here.  Women’s eyebrows and the beards and hairlines of men are the common targets.  Quick, relatively painless (they always say that!) and very accurate. Anyway, I’m feeling brave. Watch this space. Or face…