Making It Up as I Go Along

by Marian Keyes

  At first glance, self-tan is a godsend for the likes of me, because I never enjoyed sunbathing. It was so boring, lying still, while sweat ran into my hair, and I never had anyone to talk to because I always went on holiday with devoted sun-lovers who believed that conversation cancelled out the efficacy of the sun’s rays. Besides, sunbathing never worked for me because (am I the only one?) I have entirely different types of skin on different parts of my body. This is how I tan: feet – golden. Stomach – mahogany. Shins – Germolene pink. Face – bluey-white, offset with a massive, red, peeling, Bozo-the-clown nose. At the end of two weeks in the sun I look like a patchwork quilt.

  And yet I refuse to bow to the inevitable and remain my natural milk-bottle pallor, so you’d think I’d be thrilled with fake tans. However, everything has a price and I can’t decide which is the worst:

  1) The horrific smell

  2) The curse of the orange paw

  3) The tie-dyed heels

  4) The hour of naked freestyle dancing, as I wait to dry

  5) The indelible amber-coloured stains on my sheets

  6) All of the above

  If I may come back to the horrific smell. The first time I ever ‘did’ myself, I went to bed, only to wake in terror in the middle of the night, wondering what the unspeakable stink was. The devil? Wasn’t he supposed to be preceded by dreadful, poo-type smells? Quaking with fear, I peeped over the covers, expecting to see coal-red eyes and a forked tail, only to discover that the choking stench was none other than my freshly tanned self. In recent years, cosmetic companies have been working hard on diluting the ferocious pong, and now some brands even claim to have ‘a pleasant fragrance’. Yes, indeed they do have a pleasant fragrance. But mark me well here, that’s as well as, that’s in addition to, the extremely unpleasant fragrance that is the hallmark of all self-tanners.

  I have made every fake-tan mistake in the book.

  Mistake number one: I was in a mad hurry for a colour and decided that one thick layer would do just as well as several thin layers. The result? My entire body looked like it had been tie-dyed and I couldn’t leave the house for a week.

  Mistake number two: forgetting to wash my hands after ‘applying’, so that I ended up with the orangest palms on earth; if I’d held them upwards, they could have been seen from outer space. However, I learnt one important thing from this tragic omission: surgical gloves. Not only do they save me from the curse of the orange paw, but I enjoy a delicious little ER moment whenever I snap them on – Nurse Keyes to the rescue.

  Mistake number three: I decided to do it properly. I’d do wafer-thin layers and leave plenty of time to dry between applications. But the thing is, I got a little obsessive about it and it took over my life. I’d apply a layer, then do some freestyle dancing as I waited for it to dry, then I’d apply another layer and do some more dancing, and when the colour still hadn’t come, I’d apply another layer. I’d even enlisted a floaty red scarf to waft about over my head during the dancing. At some point, the end product of a tan no longer seemed to matter: it was the doing that was the important thing (which, in fairness, is how self-help gurus are always telling us to live our lives).

  Then Himself walked into the room and yelped, ‘Jesus Christ!’ I thought it was the freestyle dancing and stopped abruptly, more than a little mortified by the scarf. ‘Look at yourself,’ he urged. ‘Look!’

  So I looked, and instead of the radiant golden hue I’d been expecting, I was a nasty Eurotrash mahogany which probably went all the way down to my internal organs. Again I couldn’t leave the house for a week. I mean, no one wants to be humiliated in the street by strangers shouting, ‘Who’s been drinking the fake tan, then?’

  Mistake number four: the mud, administered in a saloon by a professional. My first time, it was only when I was covered in the smelly muck that I discovered I couldn’t wash it off until the following morning.

  ‘Obviously you’ll look manky this evening,’ the girl said, ‘but tomorrow you’ll have a fabulous tan.’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ I said, in a high, tight voice.

  She seemed to pick up on my anxiety. ‘You hadn’t planned to go out tonight, had you?’

  ‘No, not really.’ Just for my mammy’s birthday.

  At the restaurant I caused a bit of a stir. As if the smell wasn’t bad enough, bits of the mud were going black and green and falling off my face into my dinner.

  So I’m asking myself, Is it worth it? Will this be the year I embrace my blue-white Irish skin? Maybe …

  Previously unpublished.

  Skincare

  For the first time in years, I’m on a strict skincare ‘diet’ – that is to say, I’m using one brand and one brand only for every single thing: make-up remover, toner, night serum, eye cream, day serum and day cream. It’s a French brand called Payot. I was persuaded to do the whole-hog thing by lovely Mihaela at my local saloon, Pretty Nails Pretty Face, because for many years I’ve been cherry-picking from a variety of brands that have caught my fancy.

  Anyway, the Payot is perfectly lovely and I would recommend it – my skin looks nice, it feels fine, and although the price isn’t low, it’s not extortionate either. However, amigos, I cannot do this. I cannot do skincare monogamy.

  When my Payot stuff runs out – and I’m hoping it will be soon because I am bored out of my skull – I will be moving on. Because that is my way.

  If I were a man and skincare brands were women, I would growl sexily at each new one I meet, ‘Don’t fall in love with me, baby, because I’ll only break your heart.’

  I cannot be faithful. I will never be faithful. My head is turned by each new brand I encounter – and there are so, so many. The market is absolutely saturated with them, all fighting for my attention and my money, and I want every single one of them.

  The whole matter is very tricky and I’ll try to articulate how I feel.

  Okay, the biggest promise from most skincare brands is young-looking-ness. As a feminist I have deep-seated objections to the ‘You ladies must stay young for ever’ message, but in the last few years the message has started being foisted on to men too. And I don’t think that makes things fairer or easier; it means that the burden to keep looking young is becoming heavier on everyone.

  The point is, how can the efficacy of a face cream ever be proved? I know most brands say stuff like ‘81 per cent of users noticed a reduction in fine lines’ and ‘78 per cent noticed an increase in resilience’ and so forth. But the only way the claims can ever really be proved is when I die, right? If God wheels out a far younger-looking version of me and says, ‘This is the face you would have had, if you had used Brand such-and-such every day of your life. But no! Despite all the ads featuring lovely luminous ladies splashing themselves with slow-motion water, you chose the inferior brand and you ended up looking like this. You big eejit!’

  I know that expensive skincare will not save me from ageing and dying, but I still have a powerful emotional response to it. I love it. Like, I LOVE it. Sometimes in the beauty halls in department stores, I get a funny taste in my mouth and I feel really thirsty and like I’m going to pass out.

  All those bottles and jars get me on some primal level which short-circuits the rational part of my brain – because if it was simply about a face cream’s efficacy, why would I be affected by the packaging, the colour, the smell and the ‘story’? What does it matter if it comes with a little ceramic spoon or a silver space-agey lid or a laboratory-style pipette? Or if it’s made from ingredients that are only picked at midnight under a full moon by naked p
eople who do the Lindy Hop as they work?

  Here’s how bad I am: when I went to Florence, I got far more excited about a jar of night cream from Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella than from seeing Michelangelo’s David. In the Farmaceutica, all they had to do was bandy around words like ‘friars’, ‘medicinal herbs’, ‘balms’ and ‘oldest chemist in the world’ and I was utterly enchanted.

  So here I am, stuck with a quarter-jar of the Payot cream (which really is excellent). But I’m champing at the bit, dying to move on to something new, while feeling terribly guilty. Which then makes me defensive, so every time I have to engage with it, I’m taking more and more out of the jar and shouting, ‘Stop looking at me in that mournful way and hurry up and be finished!’

  First published in Daily Mail Plus, August 2013.

  Nails

  May I speak freely and frankly with you about nails? Okay! Thank you! Well, for my whole life I’ve had very ugly hands. My fingers are short and stumpy, my knuckles always remind me of ET’s face, and as for my nails – don’t be talking to me! I’m not being self-deprecating here in the hope that you’ll like me, I really do have horrible nails and for my entire life they’ve made a show of me.

  It’s not just that they’re short and break the minute they grow a millimetre, it’s that they’re all different shapes. I’m like a variety pack of nails, where you get one of each of ten types. The nail on my index finger on my right hand is definitely my best: it looks normal and nail-shaped and it grows and doesn’t always break; I still remember the Summer of the Good Nail with wistful longing. (I was twelve at the time.)

  To strengthen my nails I tried doing that thing of eating a cube of jelly a day, but a) I think it might be an old wives’ tale, and b) I couldn’t stick to just one cube a day; instead I ate the whole packet every time.

  So basically I disengaged from my fingernails for most of my life. I didn’t even – gasp! – get a manicure for my wedding day! I just showed up with my bare, crooked-shaped nails, and although I try not to have regrets in life, that would definitely be one.

  The thing is, I love colour and I love nail varnish, so I’ve always painted my toenails. But I would punish my fingernails by showing them the varnish and saying, ‘Lovely, isn’t it? Well, NONE for you!’

  Then I started getting pedicures from my lovely friend Helen Cosgrove. She’d paint my toenails some gorgeous colour and then she’d insist on also painting my fingernails, even though I’d be shouting, ‘No, Helen, no! They don’t deserve it. Don’t encourage them.’

  However, I quickly grew to love having colouredy fingernails. I’m a divil for bright colours. They have a huge effect on my mood. They cheer me up enormously. When my nails are painted, it’s like having fruity hard-boiled sweets sellotaped on to the ends of my fingers. Nice nails make me deeply happy. (When I can force myself to do my gratitude list – I’m supposed to do it every night, but to be honest I only do it about once a week – coloured nails always feature. Hey, you take your pleasures where you can.)

  Then Helen gave me a present of a bottle of lilac nail varnish and, amigos, that was my gateway drug …

  I started buying nail varnishes. Left, right and centre, as is my way, when I’m in the grip of an obsession. I was – and still am – extremely attracted to Rimmel ones. They have a massive range of colours, and as well as having all the pinks and reds they also have edgy, directional colours – I’ve just bought a yellow one from them. And the thing about Rimmel is, their nail varnishes cost half nothing.

  Then I found an even cheaper brand. In my local chemist, where I spend a goodly portion of my life with my various ailments, I found a brand called Essence and I got the cutest glittery mauve one the other day for one euro, seventy-nine cents!

  Now I must veer off slightly to another story here, if you’ll bear with me. About a year ago, I started getting the Shellac and/or Gelish nails (they’re much the same). I’m sure you know about them, but just in case you don’t, they are sometimes called the ‘two-week manicure’. And sometimes they are even called the ‘three-week manicure’, and I can personally vouch for that. And in a world that’s full of marketing spake followed by crushing disappointment, this was a THRILLING success for me.

  I go to Elena and Mihaela in Pretty Nails Pretty Face in Stillorgan, where they paint some chemical on my nails, stick my hand under an LED light for thirty seconds, then paint on some lovely colouredy varnish and stick my hand under the yoke again, then once more. The nails are dry instantly!

  So I’m spared all that awful time hanging around, being underfoot in a saloon, waiting for them to dry. (It’s not so bad with hands, but my idea of hell is the time spent waiting for painted toenails to dry so that I can put my socks and boots back on and continue with my life. It is a purgatory of a time. I get more and more panicky as the minutes elapse – twenty minutes, thirty minutes – and I’m still not allowed to leave, and often I jump up and grab my socks and cry, ‘It’s fine! All dry! Please let me through. Leaving, goodbye, thank you! See you in three weeks, but I must leave now because I just must. No need to check the nails are dry, I am a woman of my word. Goodbye.’ Of course the nails are NOT dry and I am NOT a woman of my word and I get the pattern of my socks imprinted on to my still-wet toenails, but if I’d waited one second longer, I would have gone bananas. And I know I should get flipflops, but I live in Ireland. For much of the year I’d get trenchfoot if I started sporting flipflops.)

  So yes, Gelish or Shellac or Artistic Colour Gloss and their ilk are wonders. They don’t chip (except sometimes you can be unlucky and bang your hand off the corner of something and a piece of your Shellac-iness will choose to leave you). They come in a range of colours that is growing all the time, and they are getting blues and purples and turquoises and other lovely shades. And the best bit is that my own nails grow underneath – the hard cover of the Gelish/Shellac protects them from breaking – and for the first time ever my nails are long and my fingers feel slender and elegant. (Long nails are like high heels for the hands.)

  Naturally I wondered where the catch was – because there’s always a catch. Sure enough, dire warnings began to circulate that my natural nails would be ruined. But my natural nails were horrible anyway – they couldn’t BE any more ruined. I had nothing to lose!

  However! When you have your nails Gelished, you are stuck with that selfsame colour for two to three weeks, and I must whisper something to you … I started to get bored. All around me were delightful nail varnishes whispering, ‘Buy me, wear me,’ and I had to lift the palm of my hand and shove it at them, like Wonder Woman repelling something, and say, ‘I cannot. I am on a different path in life now. I am a Gelish-stroke-Shellac girl. Please stop tempting me, for I am weak …’

  But then! I came up with a WONDERFUL solution, which is all my own invention, if you will permit me to be a boasty boaster. What I do now is I get Gelished in clear varnish! Yes, so I get the strength and length and non-ridginess – and the chance to change my colour myself every two or three days. That is to say, I myself, not a manicure person, paint my nails and although I do an imperfect job it’s good enough for me. And so long as I use a remover that is acetone-free, it doesn’t damage my Gelish nails underneath.

  So I’ve mentioned Rimmel and Essence, and may I talk to you about Barry M? Everyone in the UK knows about Barry M, but I don’t think we get it in Ireland because when I discovered it in a Superdrug in Saffron Walden (land of my parents-in-law) I nearly took a weakness and keeled over in the shop. The colours! The glittery over-coats! The low cost!

  Then there’s Illamasqua! Be the Jane
ys, they really are ‘out there’ regarding the nails; they even have ones which promise a ‘rubberized’ finish, which I am desperately curious about. Anyway, I finally got my Speckle in lilac – I don’t know what went wrong with the post, but it took a month to get to me – and it is strange and beautiful and I love it.

  And please may I mention one more nail varnish. It’s called Vapor and is by the ever-fabulous Tom Ford. It’s a pearlescent white – yes! White! Which at times looks almost silvery and will be ’straordinarily striking on tanned hands and feet. It’s so … different. It blew my mind when I saw it and then I thought, ‘But of course. How come no one else thought of it!’

  I brought six nail varnishes over to my mammy the other evening, to paint her nails. She was baffled by the Rimmel yellow, utterly baffled. She couldn’t BELIEVE that people would wear yellow nail varnish. ‘But I am ould,’ she said. ‘What would I know?’ She lingered a while on the Illamasqua Speckle, obviously very drawn to it. But in the end, didn’t she go for the Tom Ford! ‘You have great taste,’ I told her. ‘Magazine editors and famous people will be wearing this colour this summer.’

  ‘Are oo in airnesht?’ she asked, evidently extremely pleased. (Translation: ‘Are you in earnest?’ aka, ‘Are you telling me the truth?’) ‘Say his name again for me,’ she says, ‘so I can tell them at bridge.’ So she wrote ‘Tim Vard, nail varnish’ on a little piece of paper and put it in her handbag, ready to do a bit of swanking around the bridge tables. I told her that she’d written the name wrong and she said she didn’t care, that her bridge players would still be impressed.

  So thank you, my amigos. It was all there in my heart, bursting to be let out. I really needed to ‘talk’ about all of this and thank you for indulging me. Just a few things I feel I should say. Item 1) Loving colourful nails is not incompatible with being a feminist. Item 2) PLEASE don’t ever spend money you haven’t got, on nail varnish or indeed any beauty product. Item 3) I am in the pay of no one. If I rave on to you about a product I love, it’s because I really do. What I’m trying to say is that you can trust me.