A rant against 'so-called beauticians'

If a genie appeared offered a woman 3 wished they would be to pretty, prettier and the prettiest. With no real-life genies, the only option is beauty parlors.

If a genie appeared before a woman and offered to grant her three wishes, she would probably choose to become pretty, prettier, and prettiest.

With ever-growing exposure to more beautiful women through media, fairness creams advertisements declaring beauty to be ‘power’ and portrayals that only beautiful, fair-complexioned and skinny women are chosen by eligible bachelors, women are becoming obsessed with beautifying themselves and changing their look overnight. Women face pressure from their peers, husbands or by their husbands 'to-be' to look like the woman of their dreams.

Unfortunately as there are no real-life genies available, the only option left for most women is to go to a beauty parlor.

Beauty parlor brigade

Beauty parlors and salons are the fastest growing businesses in Karachi. Every nook and corner of the city has plenty of them and women from the nearby areas  swarm them day and night.

In a single area, there are around five to six beauty parlors, and more of them popping up every now and then. And these beauty parlors are competing with each other in every possible way. If one of them decreases their service rates, the other one does the same in order to attract customers. Some of them offer packages like ‘free eyebrow grooming with facials etc’.

The scam

The sad part is that when these parlors decrease their rates, they use cheaper products. Women, who want to look beautiful, blindly fall prey to the charms of these so-called beauticians who are heedless of the repercussions of using cheap and sub-standard products on people’s skins, just to earn money.

Some of them even hire untrained and non-professional personnel on low salaries. Most women who visit these home-based parlors are unaware of the fact that a single wrong stroke during facial massages etc, can actually damage their skin.

False facials

Most of these beauty parlors fool their customers in many ways. For instance, they offer a variety of facial massages namely, ‘normal facial’, ‘herbal facial’, ‘pearl facial’, ‘green facial’, ‘fruit facial’, ‘acne/whitening facial’ etc, using more or less the same procedures and same products but customers have to pay more and more for a newly named facial.

Bridal 'bling'

When it comes to bridal makeover, when every girl dreams to look her best on her big day, some of these non-professional beauty parlors apply every possible cosmetic on the faces of the brides, making them look horrible. Usage of skin lightening base, without checking compatibility to the original skin tone, makes a bride look overdone. Moreover, using dark shade of lip colors which make the lips appear bigger and too visible, and application of blusher on the cheeks which is most of the time too heavy-handed, making the bride look like a clown. So for a comparatively cheaper bridal make over, many women’s dreams are spoilt.

On the other hand, the professional beauty salons, parlors and spas, which have properly trained staff, are so expensive that they can only be afforded by particular elite. Most of them are either located in posh areas or expensive hotels where women from the middle-class stratum cannot even think of going to.

Bridal makeovers by well-known salons, which are really commendable, are as expensive as Rs30,000! So naturally, not every one can afford to go to these parlors.

So the dilemma: if women want to beautify themselves at an affordable rate, they have to go to home-based parlors or not go anywhere at all, because the best ones are unaffordable.

The main thing which most women fail to realize is that cosmetics can only change their looks temporarily and do not ensure true beauty. Beautiful skin comes from eating a balanced diet, proper sleep and through a depression free life. Massages are necessary too, in order to remove dirt and oil from the skin and giving skin an even tone. But getting that done needs professional help.

Fake degrees, or no degrees?

There is also a lack of training available for beauticians because most people don’t send their females to study to be a beautician. If they can afford education, they choose some other area of study. So surprisingly, with such a rise in demand for beauticians, no one has stepped in to launch training centers for practicing beauticians which would be equally lucrative and cure the problem.

So women should not fall prey to the advertisements by these so-called ‘beauticians’, guaranteeing miraculous results. Some of them are making money at the cost of people’s health. Beware of these fake beauticians - save your money and your skin.