Why so unlikely?
Throwback to 2004. I'm in college studying AS levels. I'm sat in the library studying. Every time I get up to grab a book or get my stuff from the printer, a group of girls on the table behind call me a grueller. I'd not heard this word, although I guessed it meant ugly (something that was confirmed a few months later by my boyfriend at the time when I heard he was getting close to a girl called Edwina – fucking Edwina lol! - when he denied it and called her a grueller. He told me after we split up that he had in fact slept with her, to which I replied “you fucked, her? The “grueller?”).
The girls at behind me were beauty therapy students. Fake-tanned, peroxide-haired, NVQ Nobodies who were going to spend their lives badly waxing eyebrows for a pittance, if they were lucky. If you've been to a college with a beauty therapy course then you know who I'm talking about. Not the artistic, dedicated, talented ones. The bitchy, workshy ones who were there because they thought it'd be a doss – something they found to be roundly false. Seemingly unwilling or unable to keep up with the sheer volume of work required to be a beautician, they have instead decided to let me know that they don't find me attractive.
And so this brings me to the topic of 'Unlikely'. To my eternal shame I must admit I did not recognise the two distinct types of beauty therapy student. I only knew of one type; the type that are calling me a grueller in the library. The ones who believe that all it takes to make it in the industry is having the 'right look' – no graft required, apparently. So insular that they don't even realise that their version of the 'right look' is low rent (think: massively unnatural skin and hair colour, overly thick drawn-on eyebrows, lip colour lighter than their skin colour, possible future boob job if their drug dealer boyfriends shift enough 'keys'... I'm harking back to 2004, yet this look is now very on-trend again. It has changed from thick, dark eyebrow pencil to big momping brow lamination or ghastly powder brows and drug-dealer *and/or* dog breeder boyfriend, but it is still low-rent and, to use one of my fave phrases, 'loud luxury' – or if we're being frank and classist, chavvy).
The truth is, without realising it, I was interested in beauty therapy. I was always making face masks and perfumes with home ingredients, even as a child. I loved doing my make up and nails would sit there for hours doing different looks. I'd sit there and mix nail varnish to make different colours – after a few failures, namely causing bottles to explode, I'd even learnt which brands were least likely to cause a chemical reaction. I'd mix powder eye shadows into clear lip gloss, and different eyeshadows into vaseline to make a heavily-pigmented eye gloss. And the reason I never saw myself as a beauty therapist is because I'm not skinny, blonde, tanned (I have been the latter two, but never the former, ha), and am not what I ever thought, or what people think the stereotypical beautican is, or looks like.
I went back to college later in life to study beauty therapy after a chance encounter while I was working in a job I detested. This chance encounter led me to doing some little individual treatment courses, these courses made me realise that I was on the right path, and led me to going to college full time to study beauty therapy. I'm now a spa therapist and aesthetician working with a big brand (earning a pittance lol) and guess what? I've discovered through college and my work that there are so, so many women like me. So not your (or maybe, my) stereotypical beauty therapist. Nice women, women who aren’t caked in make up, women who aren't particularly glamorous or showy. Dynamic, intelligent women who don't fit the beauty mold. Women who bust their asses and ruin their backs giving the best treatments every day. Attaining their sales targets, always doing treatment and product knowledge training, always striving to be better.
Does this sound like you? Are you a hard-working woman who feels like she doesn't fit the beauty mold? Then this article is dedicated to you, fellow unlikely beautician or unlikely beauty lover.
May you shed your prejudice and enjoy a no-holds-barred account of beauty, life and whatever
Polly
