Bryony Gordon:

Thank goodness the Government has announced detailed guidance on beard trimming – heaven knows I will be needing such services when the beauty industry begins to open back up on Monday.

Advice from on high states that any work on facial hair should be limited to “simple beard trims, thinning or removing bulk or length, which can be done using clippers or scissors”, and that stylists should cut from the side or by circling the client to avoid the face-toface “zone”.

“Intricate” shaping or shaving of areas such as moustaches should not be carried out. Which is a shame, because at one point during lockdown, I had begun to imagine what I might look like with a handlebar moustache.

My facial hair is not quite as luxuriant as my husband’s, but it is certainly a lot wilder than I would ordinarily like it, and so I have booked myself in to my local barber’s for a beard trim.

I’d have preferred to visit my normal facial threader, but she still isn’t allowed to practise under the new “eased” restrictions – where getting blind drunk at a pub is apparently considered safer than threading some eyebrows, an activity that takes place entirely with the therapist behind the client.

There’s no reason why the predominantly male Cabinet should know this, of course – though given their job is to represent an entire population, you’d think they might have bothered to properly investigate the safety of such practices before announcing that the predominantly female workforce this guidance affects are unable to resume employment.

This may seem trivial to some – but I can’t see why having your facial hair removed is any more trivial an issue than the right to go out on the lash with your mates. And why is it OK to remove male facial hair, but not that belonging to females?

Still, perhaps I should not be surprised by this sexism, which is so deeply ingrained that they don’t seem to know they are doing it. The pubs are open, the football is back on… what else do we want? To not look like a member of the circus, that’s what.

The beauty industry is often dismissed as a vanity, a superfluous, self-indulgent sector that contributes little to the world other than a crashing sense of insecurity in women. The reality, should anyone in Government have bothered to look into it, is far different.

On a purely economic level, it is worth far more to the UK economy than the car industry – around £30billion a year – but while car showrooms have been open since the middle of June, only a tiny proportion of the beauty industry will actually be back at work on Monday. All treatments to the face remain banned (unless they involve beards, of course), meaning that many therapists will not be able to offer their services.

On a well-being level, it is almost impossible to put a price on the beauty industry. The idea that it does women down and traps us in a set of unrealistic physical ideals is a thoroughly outdated one – today’s industry is fresh and empowering and brands that promise to eradicate cellulite or wrinkles are quickly put in their place by women who want to remove the balderdash and baloney from beauty.

A shining example is Caroline Hirons, a British expert whose no-nonsense skincare advice has amassed her millions of followers online (myself included). Hirons does not suffer fools gladly – either in the beauty industry or the Government – and last week her new book became the first beauty title to top the bestsellers’ list.

The true vanity, then, comes from a Government that considers itself in touch with the people, while simultaneously ignoring 51 per cent of us.

It must be heartbreaking for hard-working beauty therapists to have their livelihoods placed on the line by a group of men who seem to have prioritised the population’s need to drink itself into a stupor over its need to take care of itself.

But at every turn, members of this Government have shown themselves as casual misogynists, too caught up in their own brilliance to see the madness of a mini Budget that incentivises eating out at fast food restaurants, while neglecting to even mention childcare.

The dismissal of the beauty industry is only the tip of the sexist iceberg – for more evidence of its size, see the report on the vaginal mesh scandal that was published this week, which found that many thousands of women had their health concerns ignored by mostly male doctors.

An ugly truth is being revealed. We must face it head on, bearded or not.

The dismissal of the beauty industry is only the tip of the sexist iceberg