Showing posts with label false eyelashes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label false eyelashes. Show all posts

17 Jun 2019

On Essex Girls and Eyelashes

Image via whisper.sh


I.

Essex is home to many things, including a huge number of beauty salons offering eyelash extensions; there's at least a dozen such venues in Romford alone. It's hardly surprising, therefore, to see numerous young women walking around with cosmetically-enhanced lashes that make me open my own eyes wide with astonishment.    

The funny thing is, after prolonged exposure to these and other essential elements of an Essex girl's look - spray tans, sculpted brows, big hair - one starts to appreciate the defiantly artificial, high maintenance and rather exotic aesthetic. 

In fact, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine (or remember) other looks and I fear that if my exile continues for much longer I'll succumb to the belief that the only way is Essex. For the look is not only exaggerated in a porno-cartoonish manner, it's compelling in its flawlessness. Some people like to sneer at Essex girls and deride the look, but this is mostly a mixture of snobbery and envy.      


II.

Having expressed my concern that I'm potentially at risk of becoming enamoured with Essex girls, the truth is I'm probably immune because I don't tie my understanding of beauty to an idea that bigger is always better when it comes to breasts, lips, or, indeed, eyelashes.

Ultimately, I prefer the idea of queering or perverting beauty rather than simply enhancing or augmenting it. Thus, for example, I prefer those women - few in number and not often encountered on the 174 - who do a bit more with their lashes than simply lengthen and thicken them.

For example: women who choose to wear mink eyelashes encrusted with diamonds; or women who wear paper eyelashes inspired by the art of Chinese paper-cutting; or women who wear eyelashes made from colourful bird feathers or flower petals; or women, finally, who would dare to wear the flylashes (below) made by British artist Jessica Harrison from the legs of dead flies.*
  



* For details and images of these plus several other designs see: '10 Strangest Eyelash Extensions', posted by Ruth on Oddee (12 Feb 2011): click here.