By Laura Hutchinson
I’M not really a high-maintenance sort of person. (Quiet, you!) I don’t wear make-up, I rarely wear perfume, and I usually tend to choose comfort over... well, everything. All that primping and preening just isn’t for me. I barely brush my hair, let alone dye it or get highlights or curl it or straighten it or blow-dry it or use hair masks or go for regular trims. The most my hair ever sees is a bobbin and clip. And if I don’t have to leave the house on any particular day, I barely even manage to drag myself out of bed (and even then, it’s only as far as the couch).
So you can only imagine how much of a joy social events are for me. Making myself presentable for the outside world is rarely something I relish. For the most part, I’ve accepted the fact that, no matter how much I try, I’ll just never care about being the most polished person at the party. There’s always going to be someone there who looks better, purely because they spent the previous ten hours looking at themselves in a mirror and making sure that every single inch of themselves was pure perfection. But at the end of the evening, I go home comfortable and content, while you hobble home on blistered and swollen feet, knowing that you’ve an hour’s worth of work ahead of you removing all that gunk before your head can even hit the pillow. Meanwhile, I’m already well into a good night’s sleep.
And then I can have a bit of a lie-on in the mornings because you’re up at the crack of dawn re-applying all that crap (because, at this stage, people won’t even recognise you without it) and massaging your poor little tootsies before you squash them into another pair of skyscrapers. I, on the other hand, have a quick shower, throw on some clothes, grab some food and am out the door. All the while, you’ve barely got your false eyelashes on.
High heels are the biggest trouble-makers. I’ve had the misfortune of once actually seeing blood all over a woman’s foot because her shoes were slowly torturing her. The thing that first made me look down was the fact that she was barely able to walk, so I stopped to scoff at her shoes and her clear lack of common sense at thinking that pounding the pavements of Dublin in any sort of stiletto was a good idea. But when I saw the damage, all I could muster was sympathy.
Recent studies have apparently shown that a woman’s ability to walk in heels comes from her mother. Which explains a lot. I rarely wear heels if I can avoid it, and now I know it’s because my mother can barely even walk in flip-flops. Added to that is the fact that my left foot is one whole size bigger than my right, and you can see how I might have issues with shoes. If they’re not flat and I’m not strapped into them, I’m just asking for trouble.
I don’t know how many different ways I can say this, ladies, but pain is your body’s warning system. It’s telling you that something isn’t right. It’s telling you that you need to move your hand away from that heat source and take your feet out of those torture devices. If you get to the blisters and blood stage, you’re a lost cause – bleeding is your body’s way of crying.
While you literally reach new heights, all I’m reaching for is a bar of chocolate and a good book. So, to whoever said that pretty comes before practical, I say, “Throw us over me slippers”.