wash 'n go gal?

There are girls out there who wake up with perfectly rumpled hair. Their freckles are adorably scattered around their neat little noses, there is no toothpaste residue caked in the corners of their pink mouths. Their lashes are long and dark, without the help of make-up. They bound out of bed to the bathroom, garbed in adorable pajamas with lambs in sleeping caps on them, yawning and rubbing the last bit of tired out from under their eyes, and splash cold water on their faces. They don't need practical things like cleanser for 'combination skin', because they don't get pimples. They don't have to deal with the kind of sulphuric morning breath reserved for feral animals and city sewage systems, nor do they have to contend with last night's eyeliner forging its shadowy passage south of the eyelid into the no-man's land of undereye circles. They awake from slumber glowing.

I torture myself with the idea of these girls.
I want to be one of them.
But really, I'm low maintenance theory trapped in the body of high maintenance practice.

I never jump out of bed ten minutes before I'm due for work. There's no such thing as a lick of mascara for me. I take a shower, yes, but there is multiple product usage-shampoo, conditioner, body wash, shaving cream, razor, loofah, spot cream. Then I'm on to make-up. Having trained as a make-up artist, I am quite resourceful with time and eyeshadow. I'm not one of those girls who can't leave the house without make-up, I frequently do. It's just that I love make-up, it's candy for my face. (And I do like candy!) Then I have to decide what to wear, which would seem easy, I mean, I have a closet full of wearable clothes. But the criterium for garment selection is based on mood, and I am cursed with far more moods than clothing options;
The 'I-want-to-be-invisible' mood
The 'I-want-to-be-noticed' mood
The 'I'm bloated' mood(frequent)
The 'I'm-so-not-concerned-with-trivialities-like-fashion' mood(rare)

I think what I'm struggling with isn't so much being low or high maintenance. I'm struggling with the stigma of vanity. The perception of self is meant to be tempered with modesty, but that modesty is really for the benefit of the outside world, the jury of our lives. If women are seen as putting too much effort into their appearance, they are criticized from all sides, mostly by other women, I suspect.(We are terribly watchful of each other) They are scorned for trying to attract male attention, or reviled for trying to incite female envy. They are seen as shallow and vapid. With the merest whiff of vanity, their intelligence is subtracted from their sum total as a person.

We've set ourselves up for failure. We just can't get a break. The entertainment and marketing industries commodify, and thus, demand aesthetic perfection from its female participants, and they, in desperate turn, buy every bottle and jar of overpriced promise of beauty they can afford. And we admire the beautific results, but we loathe the efforts it takes. We look each other up and down, assess, appraise, rate, and largely disapprove. A judgement takes place where there should simply be acceptance, and even admiration. There are cracks and fractures within the framework of womanhood. And vanity just doesn't seem like a viable enough explanation for me. Especially when the branding and stigmatising is at the hands of other women.

I'm not trying to scapegoat. I think every person has to excercise the choice of self-determination, because there's enough information on hand to make an informed one. So why does an intelligent, socially aware girl like myself self-determine and still feel the weight of the scrutinizing gaze? Why do I feel like my femininity negates my feminism? Why do I want to be effortlessly lovely when I clearly enjoy taking the time to commit a little artistry and thought to my looks? This false modesty we perpetuate is more damaging than indulging in a little vanity, because it holds us accountable to ridiculous standards we had virtually no say in designing. Quite frankly, there is nothing wrong with taking a break from the near-constant cultivation of interior beauty most of us engage in and having some rollicking fun with the packaging we put it in.

Or at least just wiping the morning crust out of our eyes.