Should I Buy This?

Yesterday, a situation with my client made it clear to me why, in part, the "beauty industry" is no longer for me.

After diffusing the client's hair, I applied some hairspray to help keep her hair from flattening out. She said she loved her hair and the smell of the hairspray. I asked if she wanted the hairspray. She looked at me with confusion and said, "Are you asking me if I want to add this hairspray to my arsenal?" I said yes, and she said, "If I need it, tell me to buy it!" This instantly brought conflict. Would it help her hair? Yes possibly. Do I think she 'needs" it? No! Do I want to tell her to buy it? No! I ultimately said yes, and she bought it. I am still conflicted. "Need" and "tell me" are where my issues come in.

We need oxygen. We need food and water. We need Jesus. We do not need beauty products. We especially do not need very expensive beauty products. Our understanding of need versus want has become very distorted in part by our superficial, vain culture. A culture that tells us that we have to look a certain way, we need to have no gray in our hair, and we need to have no lines on our faces. That our hair needs to be frizz-free. And that we should be willing to spend whatever amount of money is necessary to bring ourselves wellness. To engage in "self-care." These terms, along with the manipulative mindset behind them, are repulsive to me.

The world is convinced that vanity is good. While the "99%" rail against the greed of corporations and billionaires and the damage their activities do to the environment, they ignore the greed required and the damage done to the environment by their self-caring wellness.

Hair color, acrylic powder, acetone, peroxide, the chemicals and fumes in nail polish, and the exorbitant prices of many services both cause damage to the environment and require excessive amounts of money. To tell them they "need" these services and products so they can feel better about themselves as we encourage them, and they choose to participate in the same greedy, destructive culture they and some of us claim to be so repulsed by seems, and I believe is hypocritical.

The second part is the "tell me" part. I have no problem telling people they need to have a relationship with Jesus and His Church for a fulfilled, joyful, peaceful life on this side of the veil and eternity spent with him on the other side. I have no problem telling people that life begins at conception. I have no problem telling people the truth of the Church. This is necessary for their salvation and for the true quality of life we all seek. But telling someone to buy an unnecessary product that, in my opinion, is overpriced, telling them to cover their gray when I believe they shouldn't, and telling them they need a haircut when they would be fine without one is contributing to the sickness of our culture in my opinion.

I believe this focus on the outside is part of the reason people lack interest in more important things like their souls. I believe that by participating in an industry that needs people to be vain and insecure about their appearance, I am aiding and making money by leading people astray. I am increasingly unable to justify this, making it increasingly difficult for me to manage a business that requires and engages in these activities.

Life should be focused on our true needs, not on superficial trivialities. I have the choice to make this my focus, but it requires a sacrifice—a letting go—a focus on the world's real needs and shoulds. All that is required is a step away from management and the security it brings me into trust. Lord, help me.

Not coincidentally, this is the reading for the Office Of Readings for this morning: From the pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world of the Second Vatican Council

"... The world of today reveals itself as at once powerful and weak, capable of achieving the best or the worst. There lies open before it the way to freedom or slavery, progress or regression, brotherhood or hatred. In addition, man is becoming aware that it is for himself to give the right direction to forces that he himself has awakened, forces that can be his master or his servant. He therefore puts questions to himself.

The tensions disturbing the world of today are in fact related to a more fundamental tension rooted in the human heart...that he is called to a higher kind of life.

Many things compete for his attention, but he is always compelled to make a choice among them, and to renounce some..."

The tension between true needs and shoulds and the false needs and shoulds of the world must be differentiated. This industry does not. It deceptively tries to combine them so as to soothe the feeling many have that the focus we place on the outside is misplaced. This is evil in my mind, deception, and trickery. They keep us from the higher calling we all have and keep us focused on this lower life of body image and beauty. This tension must be resolved within me so I can help others resolve it in themselves.

"In consequence, he suffers from a conflict within himself, and this in turn gives rise to so many great tensions in society."

The suffering this brings to many is soothed by wellness. The phrase "be well" means do what you feel you must to feel better. And for many, this means rejection of our higher calling and its replacement with a false higher calling that is, in fact, the calling of this world. Focus on you. Your beauty. Your comfort. Buy that $45 can of hairspray rather than let your hair be frizzy and flat and feed a starving person. Get that $156 facial rather than support the Church and her mission. Pay $600 for fake eyebrows rather than for a child to attend a better school. And all the time, rail against the greedy, destructive elitists who you don't even notice you have become one of.

"... Very many people, infected as they are with a materialistic way of life, cannot see this dramatic state of affairs in all its clarity, or at least are prevented from giving thought to it because of the unhappiness that they themselves experience..."

Unhappiness we in this industry contribute to by focusing on the distractions that blind the masses to the unhappiness that wellness-related shoulds and needs can not treat but only by metanoia and Divinization.

Written 2/27/21 AD

Human-written, AI spell-checked

Image from hairfinder.com