Area Woman Blows Gasket (4 page)

Beauty Shop Bullies

I have stumbled across a book,
Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping,
that finally explains why I would rather be stuck in an elevator with bees than shop for cosmetics.

According to the author, Paco Underhill, fancy-ass makeup sold at gleaming department store counters by what he calls "the
dolls in the official white lab coats (and Saturday-night-out makeup)" make women like me feel like dirt. On purpose. It's
a sales strategy.

Why am I not surprised?

"This is the high-pressure school of cosmetics selling," Underhill, a retail anthropologist, reveals. "You sit on the stool,
she turns you into a slightly toned-down version of herself, and you buy what she urges on you (in theory, at least). The
prices are intentionally obscure, figuring that you'll be too intimidated to ask."

Isn't that exactly right? What woman but Nicole Kidman has ever felt comfortable entering the perfumed zone of department
stores, with their cold chrome counters and ultra-polished sales women, who remind you of the cool girls in high school who
knew how to put on eyeliner without looking like hungover raccoons?

I always feel like a loser at makeup counters. One minute I'm strolling through the hosiery section in an upbeat mood, and
the next thing I know I'm at the Lancome counter staring into the huge blown-up face of Elizabeth Jagger. I instantly feel
so unfashionable that it seems impudent for me even to be there, let alone solicit the attention of the Cool Girls.

It's like a hostile little ecosystem of female rivalry, with a smell of sugar-coated bitchiness in the air, which is what
I always think of when I sniff Poison and Eternity.

So, over the years, I've reduced my cosmetics purchases to two items: Lancome's intencils mascara, which I can dart in, grab,
and dart out again with, never having asked the price, and M#A#C's Twig lipstick, ditto.

Another problem women face in the cosmetics bazaar, Underhill points out, is that "manufacturers and retailers want to sell
the products in as clean and orderly a way as possible." Women, however, "want to try before they buy, which is not always
a clean and orderly impulse. The interest of seller and buyer shouldn't be at odds, but often, they are."

Indeed, who wants to hang around being stared at by a Cool Girl while trying to imagine what "hydrating and matifying long-lasting
treatment oil-free fresh gel" feels like without being able to touch it?

Not only does the anal-retentive environment remind you of standing in your boyfriend's mother's kitchen during college, noticing
that the bananas are Saran-wrapped and wondering if you dare have a snack, but the products are mystifying.

How, without sampling, are you supposed to decide between Lancome's four types of "cleanser with water," two "without water,"
four toners, two makeup removers, four exfoliators, and three hand creams? Certainly not from their names, which are a ludicrous
jumble of pseudo-science and quasi-French. What is Hydra Controle? Is it the same thing as Primordiale Nuit? Do I wish to
ask the Cool Girl? No, I do not.

Later, I learned from Lancome's Web site that Primordiale Nuit results in "soft and appeased skin" due to the cream's unique
delivery system of "nanocapsules" of Vitamin A. I did not learn the price.

Underhill has done a study of women's behavior in drugstore cosmetic aisles and determined that female shoppers like to study
the information on product packaging before they buy. (And you wonder why.) Perhaps for this reason, more and more cosmetics
companies are going on-line, where women can ponder the offerings at their leisure.

Also, according to Underhill, some makeup retailers have been persuaded by market research to switch to an "open sell" strategy,
in which the lipsticks and shadows are available for handling and sampling, rather than being locked in cases as if women
were dirty toddlers not to be trusted.

Cosmetics bazaars are still nowhere near the level of comfort you feel in some record stores now, where you can listen to
CDs entirely unobserved, potentially for hours. But if they were, you wouldn't be too intimidated to ask the price, now, would
you? Ah, the beauty myth— exploiting it can be such a tricky job.

Shave and a Haircut

I had my hair cut in a barber shop the other day. I know that's a bit of a transgression for a female. But I needed to do
it. I finally just refuse to fork over seventy-five dollars plus tip merely to lose two inches straight off the back.

I have been envying my husband for years on this count— the way he just strolls home with a spontaneously acquired haircut,
as casually purchased as batteries from the corner store. He gets his hair cut without thinking about it twice, as if out
to mow the lawn or sheer a sheep. "Less hair, please. Thank you, here is eleven dollars."

By contrast, I find haircuts to be a deeply tormenting experience. I never find the right stylist. Every six months I begin
all over again by carefully scrutinizing the hair of every woman I know, then interrogating them about their stylist until
I'm satisfied that the stylist in question will actually do something competent to my head in exchange for a great deal of
money.

I arrive at the hair salon, which reeks of aromatherapy, and check in with a receptionist who sports a nose jewel and has
some wholly indefinable way of making me feel as if I do not belong to her club because, well,
just look at my dorky hair.
Then I have to change out of my clothes and don a cranberry-colored robe, as if I'm about to undergo a CAT scan. Thus stripped
of whatever personality I can project through personal fashion, I discuss numerous haircuts with a sycophantic stylist, who
is really just pondering my face in his hotly unflattering lights and thinking that it's irredeemably loaf-shaped.

Having arrived at some inscrutable decision about how, precisely, he is going to cut two inches off the back of my hair, he
turns me over to an eighteen-year-old in three-story-high platform shoes, who starts massaging my hands with aromatherapeutic
almond-scented oil, making them so slippery that I can't grip my coffee mug.

I get escorted to the sinks to have my hair lathered with Product, even if I have washed it already that day, and for the
ensuing hour, the highly fashionable stylist clips microscopic strands of hair from all over my head while engaging in forced
banter.

"Who trimmed your bangs— they look fabulous."

"I did, with nail scissors."

Silence.

"So, what do you do?"

"I'm a writer."

"Oh cool."

Silence.

"Do you ever dream," I ask sometimes, trying to hot­wire the conversation, "that you're cutting someone's hair, only instead
of using scissors, you find that you're holding a stalk of asparagus or something?"

"No, not really."

Silence.

I can't read because the stylist wants my head up straight, so I have to stare into the mirror at all times. It's like the
stylist is shouting "Look at yourself! Look. At. Yourself." It reminds me of that classic
Saturday Night Live
skit, in which a drill sergeant is haranguing his recruits by calling them names; he says to one of them: "You! Yeah, you.
You with that . . . hair . . . on your head. Know what I'm gonna call you? HAIR HEAD."

I walk out with a "hairdo" that falls apart as soon as I wash out the conditioner/touch of mousse/finishing spray that has
propped it up like egg white in meringue.

Some women love going to the hair salon, I realize, so I should point out that I have straight super-fine hair. There is simply
nothing you can do with straight super-fine hair that makes any difference if you don't have a one-inch wide face. If your
cheekbones aren't apparent, and your chin doesn't end in a piquant point like Gwyneth Paltrow's, then this kind of hair is
going to be the bane of your existence no matter how much cash you have. I always leave feeling disappointed and shafted,
and over the years, the intervals between salon visits has been lengthening.

Finally, the moment of eureka. I went to a barber. Mind you, this was easier to conceive of than to execute. It took me weeks
to pluck up my courage. But at last I felt bold (or desperate) enough to walk into Enzo's Hairstyles for Men, a plain room
in Toronto's Little Italy, which was truthfully and indeed very clearly marked Enzo's Hairstyles for Men. I sat down in an
old vinyl chair beside a stack of
Sports Illustrated
magazines and waited my turn. Enzo, barber and proprietor, nodded at me courteously when he spied me on the chair. He didn't
seem to balk at my presence. It was all about my own confidence, I felt certain. All I had to do was get over the feeling
that I had walked into Enzo's Hairstyles for Men, and I would be free. Free at last!

Enzo was attired in pale yellow work shirt and gray pants. He could as easily have been a hardware store manager. He was using
a straight razor on a sallow young man with round wire-rimmed spectacles who was dressed all in black and seemed penniless,
perhaps scribbling away at a novel. Another fellow waiting for a cut was burly and macho in his soiled white T-shirt— perhaps
a mechanic. It occurred to me that the last thing these three men had in common was an interest in fashion. On the other hand,
they were having a great, animated conversation about who was destined to win the World Cup.

"Spain," vowed Enzo.

"Argentina for sure," offered the burly man.

"I think Somalia might stay in the game," said the probable-novelist, just to be provocative.

They all pooh-poohed the Portuguese, who were just then cruising by with horns a-blazing, having beaten the Poles in a match.

"So what?" said the burly fellow.

"They're going to start a fight with the Italians around here." Enzo seemed worried.

The walls, I noticed, were festooned with posters of Italian soccer players and Canadian hockey stars. None of them had visibly
styled hair. A tinny radio played Golden Oldies somewhere in the back, primarily for the entertainment of Enzo. He was smoking.
That was how the room smelled— faintly of smoke, then more strongly of coffee, and the breeze of a fine June morning.

When my turn came, I hopped into his worn-leather barber chair, and Enzo covered me with a linen cloth.

"Two inches off the back," I announced.

He swiveled the chair away from the mirror, calmly and gently combed my dry hair, and snipped.
Snip, snip, snip.
It took five minutes. Cost fifteen dollars. Praise the Lord, I'm free at last.

Buy Toothpaste, Call Dad, Plan Funeral
for Self

Lately, I've been getting these flyers in the mail from local funeral homes that cheerfully encourage me to come in and arrange
my own burial. I find this a bit disconcerting. I have many things on my to-do list: Enroll daughter in summer camp, buy husband
birthday present, stop skipping yoga class, read Tolstoy, figure out why God made dinosaurs. "Plan funeral for self" isn't
one of them.

Obviously the funeral industry thinks that it should be, because I get these flyers, and I noticed a big ad in the paper recently
that promised anyone who bought a cemetery plot the chance to win a Carribean cruise. Pay now, die later! But, for God's sake,
pay now.

Trying to figure out how this would benefit me, as opposed to the funeral industry, I went on the Internet and found a helpful
Web site prepared by the Preplanning Network, an association of North American funeral homes engaged in the business of getting
you to come in bursting with health and vitality to finalize the details of your death.

The site has a Procrastination Help Center, which never actually mentions the words
death
or
funeral.
Instead, it gently points out that "people who procrastinate to excess are prone to nagging guilt, self-downing, anxiety
and a numbing feeling of powerlessness."

Empower yourself: Rot your own way!

Not convinced?

Well, consider that the desperate fear of confronting one's own mortality—" I'm too young!"— is just one of "the most common
excuses not to preplan," according to the Preplanning Network, whose members appear to have lost perspective about what motivates
most of humanity. "The younger generations are the ones who will benefit the most from preneed funeral arrangements," the
site argues. "With increasing funeral costs your services will be locked in."

Maybe they will. But surely the funeral people can come up with a more compelling incentive.

I decided to visit my local funeral home to find out what on earth they were trying to accomplish. Two "advance planning administrators"
greeted me graciously in the silent beige-toned front parlor of Earle Elliott Funeral Home on Dovercourt Road in Toronto.
They wore shades of gray and black, as did I, so we were all very appropriate. Funeral homes are nothing if not appropriate,
which is why they have a hard time engaging in self-promotion: It's hardly appropriate at times like these.

"Funeral homes didn't traditionally advertise," Crystal Middelkamp told me, speaking in hushed tones, out of professional
habit, "but they have become very concerned about educating the public."

"Educating them about what?" I asked in a normal voice, which somehow sounded like shouting.

"The value of having a service," she replied. For a while there, people were opting for simplicity, and that didn't work out.
Not for them, and not— I presume— for the funeral industry, which is engaged in a frantic scrabble for business at the moment,
with huge corporate chains like Service Corporation International (SCI) and The Loewen Group aggressively focusing on profit
while small homes like this one fight back with their own competitive push. Or have you not been watching
Six Feet Under?

According to the Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA) in Hinesburg, Vermont, the Houston-based SCI distributed a company memo
recently advising staff to bag one "preneeds contract" for every actual dead person. At several funeral homes, staffers now
work on commission. Part of the issue is an industry out of kilter with demand: In New York State, 661 funeral homes are necessary
to handle the population of deceased people every year, according to FCA. But the state has 1,981 homes in operation. The
ratio is similar in most other states, and probably also in Canada. How do you drum up nonexistent business? You get people
to pay up before they're even dead.

"We offer a wide variety of services," Middelkamp went on. "Burial, cremation, church service, location of the ceremony, if
you want to have a service on top of the CN Tower, we can do that. We've had people bring in items to display from home, favorite
chairs, pictures, live jazz bands, pets . . ."

"The younger generation is starting to get imaginative," interjected Karie, Crystal's colleague. "The baby boomers expect
a lot of choices because of their attitude as consumers."

This put me in mind of a custom-ordered casket company called White Light Inc. that operates out of Dallas. From them, you
can order a coffin painted as a brown paper parcel with RETURN TO SENDER stamped on it in red letters. Har, har. Or if you
were into the Indy 500, you could get a coffin with race cars zooming all over it. Hunters can choose a deer and rabbit motif;
gardeners pick flowers. People used to be memorialized according to their virtues: the brave warrior, the wise ruler, the
great poet. Now they head into eternity with Knit-Wit.

"But even if people want more ritual," I said, "why can't they jot it down in a will, or leave it to the family? Why do it
themselves?" The short answer, according to Crystal, is that it's easier to shop when you're not grieving. "A lot of times,
families come in [after the death] and they're totally overwhelmed. With preplanning, there's no rush, you can spend all afternoon,
you're having a cup of tea and laughing. It's more relaxed."

Padding silently across the plush carpet, Crystal and Karie led me to inspect my options as a future dead person. I could,
for example, choose from a few vaults, which are an increasingly popular accessory, although the only thing they accomplish
is to ease cemetery maintenance by warding off grave cave-ins. If people are worried about their caskets decaying in my opinion
they might consider burial in the tundra. I myself would like to be buried in a bed of soft lake sediment so that I can turn
up in 215 million years as an interesting fossil. But that isn't the point of vaults from a funeral home's point of view.

Near the vault models was a crucifix display, as well as some stationery, and a variety of guest books to choose from.
Hmmm.
The few times in my life that I've imagined my funeral, it has been a revenge fantasy, wherein an ex-boyfriend or nasty colleague
stumbles into the church with teary eyes, regretting everything they said. I hadn't thought about stationery, or a guest book.
I sometimes imagine what music I'd like people to be listening to as they mourn me, but I change my mind too often to "lock
it in." (N.B. to self: Make sure family knows that I am not, under any circumstances, to be memorialized to the careering
drone of Anglican hymns.)

We floated downstairs to the coffin display room. They all looked the same to me— bloody terrifying. What was the selection
criteria? Was I supposed to lie down in each one to see which best flattered my corpse? I contemplated the Sheraton, a plum-colored
casket with pink satin lining. Then I mused over the Ladies Octagon Oak, with its embroidered roses. "You know what? Why don't
you just bury me in a paper bag," I suggested.

Karie and Crystal immediately protested in hushed alarm. "But it's not for you— it's for your family! For the service, where
they need support! They're going through the roughest days they'll ever face."

Oh geez, we come full circle then, don't we? If it's not for me, then someone else can plan it. And in the meantime, I can
drive and cook dinner and dance as I fantasize about my all-time favorite send-off songs.