Polly Vernon
Last week, a Tokyo transport company released a video imploring women not to do their make-up on the city’s subway system. It incorporates singing, dancing interventions on women who are doing their make-up on the subway, culminating with the warning, ‘Your eyebrows restored, eyelashes multiplied… but your transformations has been witnessed!’ Da, da, daaaaaa! It has polarised Japan, half of which agrees the public application of cosmetics is hopelessly déclassé, the other half of which thinks it’s fine.
I’m with that other half. I cannot imagine how a woman slapping up on public transport could be offensive. I consider it a) an efficient deployment of dead time; and b) mesmerising. It’s nice, comparing the way another woman wields a mascara wand to the way I do it; I like getting an ‘in’ on such an unselfconscious, intimate act of female-ness. Plus I’m a sucker for a physical transformation. I’ve missed my stop more than once, waiting for the chick opposite to finish her face.
‘I just don’t see why it’s a problem!’ I announce in Grazia conference, confidently expecting everyone to congratulate me on my enlightened world view. They don’t.
‘It’s vile!’ says Rose from Beauty. ‘It’s unhygienic!’ says Charlie from Fashion. ‘I find it disturbing,’ says someone else.
‘Why?’ I say, annoyed because people aren’t agreeing with me emphatically, as they’re supposed to. ‘It’s no different from me popping into a department store beauty hall and redoing my face with the testers, because I’ve got a free half-hour.’
‘YOU DO WHAT?’ says Rose Beauty. ‘Pervert!’ says someone else. ‘You’ll get chlamydia from the lipsticks!’ warns Charlie Fashion. ‘I won’t!’ I say. ‘That’s not how chlamydia works! And anyway, I always give them a quick wipe with the free counter tissues first.’ (This isn’t true. I hardly ever bother, but I feel like everyone thinks I’m contagious.) ‘Also, don’t you lot know we’re getting so squeamish about germs, we’re undermining our natural immunities with our compulsive disinfecting? We need to be dirtier!’
‘You don’t,’ says Charlie. Rose, meanwhile, mutters something about ‘might as well drink tramp’s wee’. ‘ Testing sample lipstick is not the same as drinking tramp’s wee!’ I tell Rose. She gives me a look that says, ‘Isn’t it, Polly? Isn’t it?’ Then she reaches for some hand sanitiser.