By BR Kellie
There's nothing quite like your first time...
Heads out of the gutters, ladies! I'm talking in the beauty sense! Things took a nostalgic turn in BRHQ recently as we wandered down memory lane, recalling the tentative steps we took in the beauty world. The things we tried that lead us to become our beauty loving... okay, obsessed... selves.
So what were the rituals we dipped our toes in before diving in? Read on...
The first shave. Okay, I now have Rod crooning in my head - 'the first cut is the deepest...' The first time you shave your legs is like a step into adulthood. Shedding the baby fur that kept your leggy-loos warm through your childhood. The first time you swipe your hand over smooth skin is unforgettable. I am woman, hear my furless legged self roar.
I feel like young women today have it good. When it comes to applying their first foundation they have YouTube. They have beauty gurus. We had teen girl mags that didn't really tell us much of anything. We had no knowledge of swatching. We had demarcation lines and pancake application... BUT, we thought we were fab. Which, of course, we were. Until we looked back and realised we were doing it wrong. But at least we all were...
Hands up whose first hair colour was Sun In? That bottle of lightening liquid turned our mops into variable shades of blonde, strawberry blonde, possibly even a touch red. Just spray and sit in the sun, or hit your head up with the hair dryer, and you were on your way to an beautiful, natural *cough* shade of blonde. Bliss.
The first eyeliner. If it wasn't thick and black and rimming the inner and outer parts of your eyes, you were doing it wrong. As for using eyeshadow to create a smokey line? Well that was just crazy talk.
Oh to look like a golden goddess! Evenly tanned from top to toe. No strap marks or patchy areas to be seen. Self-tanning seemed like the ultimate way to get that sophisticated 'just be on holiday at a fancy tropical resort' look without having to spend the money, or sit out in the sun all day, or bare your bare bum to a complete stranger at a salon. Nobody tells you though about the discoloured ankles and knees. The yellow palms. The streakiness... Once done wrong, never done again. OR, done much more carefully the second time round.
Which leads us to... The first spray tan. If you're anything like me, you gave up on self-tanning. But, one day, you find yourself off on holiday and you want to step out in your swimsuit with a tan already plastered to your body. So you book in for a spray tan and quickly discover that it is possible to hit new heights of humiliation. Between the paper g-string, the getting your girls out in front of a complete stranger, and doing a slow version of the robot in order to ensure every part of you is getting a good colour on, it's a moment you'll never forget... even if you want to.
'Take your top and your bra off and lie face down.' Not to be mistaken for a line in a really bad romance book, this is how we're so often introduced to our first massage. Chances are, you've never taken your bra and top off in a strange room for a stranger before. Will they see side-boob? Will they judge back pimples? Will they... and then they begin working out the knots in your back and you suddenly stop caring.
Do I talk? Do I not talk? Do I keep my eyes shut? Do I open them? Is taking a nap okay? Ah, the questions posed by the first facial. Once you've found a therapist and worked out your groove though, you go back again and again and again, and sometimes it'll develop into one of the most meaningful relationships of your life.
Oh the Sun In, I used it religiously for most of my teenage years and was left with a lovely shade of orange.