The excruciating sleepwalk from my house to the bus stop got me thinking. I said sleepwalk because my eyes are usually open by exactly a millimetre so that I don’t kill myself. A typical girl that I am, I dress up for college. I like dressing up, generally. Before, I used to be excited for college. But the novelty wore off and I realised that everybody is too annoyed at 6.30 in the morning to notice my clothes. Even I didn’t know.!
My point is that it’s not easy to put on makeup. I genuinely believe that I deserve an award for taking all the pain to not look a ragamuffin. Have you ever tried putting on eyeliner? Abinav Bhindra would struggle, believe me. It needs to be put exactly above the eyelashes and exactly at the end of the eyelids, with a micro-something width.
Then those manicure-pedicure things…! My nails grow at weird speeds at weird angles. You need all the patience and concentration in the world to apply nail colour without smudging it. Even a cockroach can’t distract a girl that time.
Now, don’t even get me started about my eyebrows. If I don’t shape them, they look like two caterpillars dead after a head-on collision. It takes all my willpower to not sob uncontrollably after the girl at the parlour finishes with one eyebrow and run away without a backward glance. But all the pain is forgotten when I look at my neat eyebrows.
Then comes my hair. It is my worst enemy. It has a mind of its own. I’ve to use some 25 clips to keep it in place, only to be teased that my head’s a fancy store. But, the second my neighbour carelessly opens the window of the bus, my hair happily goes back to its messy, complicated self, thank you very much.
The bottom line is, being a woman is not exactly a cakewalk.
The writer is a student of First Year, SVCE College
