Secret behind wearing masks in Tokyo
A year ago I moved to Tokyo and I loathed it. Not Tokyo - the mask. I struggled as is with the names of all the new people I was meeting - with half their faces covered I didn’t stand a chance.
That hideous piece of surgical fabric stretched across half the faces of perfectly healthy people: why? Pollution is negligible here (for a metropolis).
There are no epidemics or known germs floating around. Even if there were, that thin gauze isn’t going to shield them. So why? On Monday morning at school drop off I finally got part of the answer. I faux concernedly asked an exceptionally beautiful Japanese mama friend, who was wearing the mask, "Oh are you ill?".
Her answer, without a beat, "No, no I didn't have time to do my make up". So the days she doesn’t put her face on she puts on the mask!
I was about to to feel judgementally sorry for her till I realised that at that unearthly, unruly hour in the morning.
In the midst of being defeated by the first of many toddler tantrums of the day, I had put on a tiny bit of mascara, added a dash of blush, painted in my eyebrows, slapped on a blob of gloss, then repeated the process a few times till I looked like mutton dressed as lamb… If only I had that mask.
Now I’m lucky I inherited great skin, can go out easily without my "face on" and not scare anybody. Yet, I feel this pressure to look attractive even before I’m fully awake.
The beautifully brave Sonam Kapoor recently laid it bare that no one looks that good without a brigade. True that. Yet she does. Obviously because she has the brigade and then some.
I too want the battalion to make me look and feel (because they’re synonymous) like that, to be seen only when I’ve been worked on.
Therein lies the crux of the problem. I’m from the industry, I know it doesn’t exist, yet I want it because that’s all I see and that’s my idea of beauty.
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| Cindy Crawford’s untouched leaked photo, that was supposedly manipulated to look worse, was celebrated by women trying to embrace the natural us. |
If I were surrounded by more real images all the time (as opposed to only when a feminist point was being made), constantly exposed to things that jiggled, dimpled, bulged or creased but were still attractive (or even if they weren't) then they would form the psyche I’d aspire to.
Cindy Crawford’s untouched leaked photo, that was supposedly manipulated to look worse, was celebrated by women trying to embrace the natural us. I wanted to like it, I really did, instead I cringed. It was eeky to see a body I believed to be bionic all shrivelled, real or not.
Only because I’ve had limited public exposure to the natural phenomenon of wrinkles and other saggy bits.
Maybe if all models and actresses just appeared as they were we’d get accustomed to it and find beauty in it.
Anything over time and repetition becomes acceptable. It’s exactly why we mothers think our slobbery and often odd looking, hairy babies are gorgeous because we see nothing but them all day.
Now that I live in Tokyo I usually see my Indian friends after long intervals of time. Often I don’t recognise them and it’s bothersome. In lieu of the mask they have the local kirana plastic surgeon who literally fixes something new every time they step out for a blow dry.
A long time ago, my brother dropped his dinner plate when he was confronted with the scary, unnecessary new face of a young relative. Back then it was still an exception, today we would need a whole new dinner set.
Why do all women over 30 feel the need to get fillers? It can’t just be because they’re readily available? Fewer and fewer women around the world seem to be growing into their faces. They are ageing backwards - artificially and hideously so. There's only so much that stretched skin can hide. Why is no one telling them? Don’t they have friends?
I think before we all start looking like high cheek-boned, startled, pouting, mega-lashed clones (too late for some) it’s time to own our faces and our bodies. As individual a movement as it is, it cannot happen individually. We, especially the more famous of us have to stand in front of that camera as we are. Change what we see and show.
Don’t just tell us it’s not real - be real. Real can’t be the exception any longer, it has to be the rule.
Time to pull that mask off and say no to the lifts and fills. While I’m at it - definitely time to say no to those awful, amateur beauty apps you use on social media that turn you into featureless, identical, unblemished baby bottoms with big eyes and even bigger lips.
Everyone can see that's not you, it's time you did. So before school pick up I scrubbed my face clean and, as naked as that made me feel, I braved it.
I won’t tell you that as I waited for the dismissal bell, I was begging my Japanese friend for a mask. Lucky they always have extra.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)