Morn­ing Lip­stick Ritual

In my pre­vi­ous French life, there was one thing I would never for­get before going to school in the morn­ing, no mat­ter how sleepy I was: to put make-up on. I’ve never been too high-maintenance, so most morn­ings, the rou­tine was eye­liner, eye shadow and mas­cara. I fought hard with my par­ents for the right to put make-up on when I was in my very early teens and I intended to use that right fully. Pretty much all of my friends wore make-up (includ­ing some guys, but that’s another mat­ter). I felt naked with­out it, I felt grown-up and mature with it.

Fast for­ward a few years. When I came to Canada for good in 2004, I brought my French prod­ucts. Creams, nail pol­ishes, lip­sticks, gloss, mas­cara, eye-shadow, pen­cils… It’s not that I didn’t trust Cana­dian prod­ucts – I was com­fort­able with mine.

How­ever, I soon faced a few prob­lems. First, if there was ever a place where make-up is not prac­ti­cal, that place is Canada. In sum­mer, it’s extremely hot and humid – runny mas­cara on sweaty skin, any­one? And in win­ter, I was slightly con­cerned that it would lit­er­ally freeze on my skin. Don’t laugh unless you have already expe­ri­enced going out­side with slightly wet hair, aka frozen hair.

My skin changed too. The Ottawa Val­ley is extremely wet accord­ing to Cana­di­ans. How­ever, to me, because I grew up by the sea­side in a very rainy city, the air was unbear­ably dry. My skin didn’t like it. While it had always been nor­mal or even slightly oily, it started to peel in the win­ter. Glam­orous, isn’t it? I would apply some of my pre­cious French cream and my thirsty skin would absorb it in no time. I began to under­stand why my local drug­store stocked so much Vase­line cream. Even­tu­ally, I had to switch to alcohol-free creams to avoid look­ing like Freddy from A Night­mare on Elm Street.

All that didn’t bother me so much because Cana­dian women seemed to have dif­fer­ent beauty obses­sions than French. I noticed that women here don’t wear as much makeup. A lit­tle bit of lip­stick or gloss maybe, or some eye shadow and mas­cara, but it’s very sub­tle (unless they are teens – but again, French teens tend to overdo it too). They may even skip it altogether.

How­ever, North Amer­i­can women seem to focus much more on their hair for instance. This is some­thing I had never ever cared about, as long as it’s healthy. I had long hair, short hair, red hair and I even had my friends cut my hair. Hair­cuts were for when I felt a bit down, mostly because I absolutely love hav­ing my hair washed. In France, straight­for­ward hair­cuts aver­aged 20 €. But in Ottawa, hair­cuts gen­er­ally start at $50, plus tax, plus tips… And North Amer­i­can women style their hair a lot: brush­ings, hair straight­en­ing, com­pli­cated buns… In France, the out-of-the-bed messy hair­style is not designed by fancy hair­styl­ists but cour­tesy of being too lazy to style.

Man­i­cures and pedi­cures are also much more pop­u­lar on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. There are salons every­where and it is pretty afford­able. Now, that’s a North Amer­ica beauty obses­sion I embrace: relax­ing for an hour on a com­fort­able mas­sage chair while some­one do my nails is bliss. Although I don’t under­stand what is so “French” in a French man­i­cure… oh, wait, it is because they are designed to resem­ble nat­ural nails? So why not grow nat­ural nails in the first place?

And this is one major dif­fer­ence between North Amer­i­can women and French. North Amer­i­cans tend to think that every­thing can be fixed and improved. Hav­ing small lips call for lip plumper or even cos­metic lips aug­men­ta­tion for fuller lips. Big breasts equal breast reduc­tion surgery and small breasts, breasts aug­men­ta­tion surgery. Unwanted hair can­not just be shaved (God for­bids!) or waxed, it calls for laser hair removal. Thin limbs? Work out at the gym and grow some mus­cles. Unhappy with your weight? Tons of crash diets to go on, plus pills, slim­ming prod­ucts and var­i­ous cos­metic procedures.

Mean­while, French have non­cha­lant atti­tudes towards their body and laissez-faire is a way of life: embrace your imper­fec­tions for that are part of your per­son­al­ity. I think that ulti­mately, this is still my phi­los­o­phy. I’m not per­fect, I know it, but I love it.

Related posts:

1. The Same… Just Different
2. Split­ting Hair on Hair­cuts in Canada
3. Two Soli­tudes And One Loneliness
4. French-Spotting and Rela­tion­ships in North America
5. Damn, I Wish I Had Known That…!