There should be some kind of Blue Peter badge for the ability to make a feminist beef out of almost anything. If that badge existed, I would have it. Yet, when beauticians were not allowed to open in England, but beard trimming was permitted, and people were saying: “This is the patriarchy in action – how is a beard more important than eyebrow threading?” I finally hit my ceiling.
We can’t have it both ways, sisters. We can’t say that beauty standards are male oppression, yet also argue that being barred from meeting those standards is male oppression. At some point, men are going to turn round and say that the requirement to have a tidy beard, if you must have one at all, is matriarchal oppression rather than hygiene – and then where will we be? Surrounded by a load of smelly facial hair, unable to distinguish our feminist arse from our feminist elbow.
Anyway, that is only partly relevant: I have just taken my youngest and her friend to have their nails done. It is not what I consider core self-care, but I guess I came down on the side of the beauty industry over Germaine Greer here, just because I am so desperate for one day to feel different from the last.
It was quite intense: plastic screens shield every customer; face masks are mandatory; there are a whole load of urgent orders (“Sit over there!” “Leave the room if you’re not engaging in nail care!” “Choose your colour from a 1-metre distance!”). Everything you think about the beauty industry – that it is about pampering, that it is in any way relaxing – has been capsized by the new regulations. Now, it is like your first day at work when you haven’t read the induction pack, when your mentor-buddy is off sick, when everything you do is wrong, but you don’t find out until there is someone shouting at you.
But nobody minded – everyone loved it.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
