THE BEAUTY GIRLS
A Floundering Woman’s Midlife Career Change to Beauty School
Carol Leonard
Bad Beaver Publishing
Hopkinton, NH
Copyright 2010 by Carol Leonard
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
Smashwords edition
Photos on pages 73, 109, 143 courtesy of Esthetics Institute, Inc., Concord, NH. Cover photo of Kudra MacCaillech and all other photos are property of Bad Beaver Publishing, 2009.
All line drawings by Carol Leonard.
Bad Beaver Publishing
585 Hopkinton Road
Hopkinton, NH 03229
603.224.4596
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Leonard, Carol
The Beauty Girls/ Carol Leonard.
p.cm
ISBN 978-0-615-33602-2
Second Printing [with 18 Illustrations]
Also by Carol Leonard
Lady’s Hands, Lion’s Heart, A Midwife’s Saga
The Women’s Wheel of Life
(Co-authored with Elizabeth Davis)
Women of the Thirteenth Moon,
A Baby Boomer’s Survival Guide to Menopause
“Medea” (short story)
The Making of Bad Beaver Farm (DownEast Magazine)
Dedications
This book is dedicated to my little sister, Wendy Leonard Hayes, who suffered through my Beauty School debacle as my “test rat”. She stoically volunteered to be my “practice model” for my licensing exam and sat patiently while I did her make-up. Unfortunately, the end result looked frighteningly like Joan Crawford. Wendy is also the genius who came up with the fabulous name “Wraps & Paps.” Thank you, Sistah. You are the original Beauty Girl!
And…I want to thank my dear husband, Tom Lajoie, for his saint-like patience with my severe postmenopausal insomnia while writing this book. I so appreciate him for not kicking me out of bed when I was laughing like a hyena and getting up to write while remembering the previous day’s events.
I love you Tom…you are a precious rock.
Table of Contents
Week One: In the Convent Again
Week Two: Gorbachev’s Forehead
Week Three: Shrimpy’s Hysterectomy
Week Five: The Masturbator Muscle
Week Six: Want a Glass of Wine With That?
Week Eight: Halloween and Shaman Smoke
Week Eleven: La Femme Nikita’s Broken Nose
Week Thirteen: Queen of WhoHa’s
Week Fourteen: Holy Mother of Pearl
Week Fifteen: So Long Scrotum Eyes!
Week Sixteen: A Christmas Story
The Hot Flash Row
Carol Leonard at her birth center,
Longmeadow Farm Birthing Home
Hopkinton, NH ~ 2005
PROLOGUE
Winter 2005 ~ I close my thriving birth center due to lack of third party reimbursement and it damn near breaks my heart. It is a beautiful facility that has a fabulous reputation and I can’t make a go of it without insurance coverage. It makes no sense for the insurance companies to refuse to cover us...we save them a ton of money, but they refuse anyway and drive us out of business.
The bastards.
I retire from catching babies and wander around aimlessly. I have been a midwife for thirty years and I love my profession more than life itself. I was the first midwife in New Hampshire and have delivered a bazillion kids but I don’t really have any other employable skills. I garden and take care of our farm. I spend the day in my brown velour sweats and crack my first beer of the day for lunch and email legislators about shitty legislation to make myself feel productive.
I know my husband Tom is concerned about me, but he never says much more than, “Honey, I’ve always loved you in brown.” What a great guy. He’s a survivor. He knows how to protect himself from great bodily harm.
I start to get worried about me too. The physical hygiene has been definitely slipping. I garden all day, am coated with dirt and sweat. I fall asleep for the night dirty without bothering to shower. When I look in the mirror in the morning, I see a wild postmenopausal woman with edematous, fluid-filled sacs under her eyes looking back.
My scrotum eyes.
I have been able to get by for fifty-five years on a great smile, good genes and a diet of nutritious food and lots of wine…but now I am starting to seriously look like the functional bag lady I really am; no question. This is bad, something’s got to give, but I have no idea what.
Late Summer 2005 ~ I am sitting in my car on Main Street, Concord, pissed that I have yet another parking ticket. Soon I’m going to get the proverbial Boot. Concord has the worst frustrating parking problem. I look up to see a marquee that says:
ESTHETICS INSTITUTE FOR
ADVANCED SKIN CARE
~ Enroll now for Fall Classes starting in September ~
I sit there looking at the sign until I wonder if I’ve had a stroke. Can’t move. Yeah, right. You’re contemplating going to Beauty School. You are desperate, girl. Wicked desperate.
Yeah? Well, listen, Scrotum Eyes…how’s this sound? The thing you loved the most about the Birth Center was the “Spa” aspect...the sense of community, the sense of a beautiful place where women could go for their health care and feel included and be heard and respected…not a cold medical/clinical environment to be dreaded but a delicious place to be pampered and take care of one’s necessary Whole Woman health regimen.
Epiphany 101 ~ I start to grin as the concept begins to develop. Right! I could get licensed as an Esthetician and open a Spa. Women can come in for their annual exams…and have a yummy facial and get checked under the hood. They can have breast exams, seaweed algae wraps, lash tinting, blood work, Pap smears! Brazilians! The Works! After a woman has her pelvic exam and her feet are in stirrups…she can have a pedicure! I am on fire. I will name my Spa…
WRAPS & PAPS!
OK...I’m gonna do it. I’m going to Beauty School.
I tell Tom that I plan to enroll in Beauty School. I can feel his eyes bore right through me. I know he thinks I won’t last one week. But being the gentleman he is, he doesn’t say this.
Instead he says, “Do whatever you want to do...because I know you will anyway.” I know the boy has serious reservations.
I tell my friends I’m thinking about going to Beauty School. They say, “You’ve got to be kidding.” I say, No, listen, I want to open a Holistic Health Spa for Natural Women’s Healthcare. They make fun of me. They say I’m going to be surrounded by vacuous nineteen year olds. I don’t care; I think the idea is genius.
I go to the school to check it out. It is a huge old green Victorian house that has been converted to a clinic in the front and classrooms in the back. The main classroom is two stories high and looks like a basketball court. It has a walkway around the second floor that looks like it’s for the Wardens. There are a few women in white lab coats huddled around a table in the back eating chocolate. They look bored out of their minds.
I am given a “Complimentary Facial” for prospective students. An Instructor supervises the service. The Instructor is a full-figured blond with short spiky hair and twinkling blue eyes. She’s probably a little younger than I. She reminds me of my sister. The student’s touch is timid and starts to get annoying but I don’t say anything. The Instructor gently corrects her a couple of times. She tells the student I have “mature” skin. I think that’s a very diplomatic way of saying I’m aging quickly. Well, at least something about me is mature.
The Instructor asks if I am a midwife. I say Yes, how did she know? She says by my email address--“CLmidwife.”
She asks why I want to come to school and I say because I can’t tolerate being on-call anymore. It’s funny because this is the first time I have admitted that. She says she knows the feeling because she used to be a respiratory therapist and couldn’t stand the night call anymore either. I like her immediately.
I meet with the owner. The owner looks a little like Nancy Reagan. She has had so many facelifts she looks like a dog sticking its head out of the window of a car going sixty. The owner knows me. I ask her if I would be the oldest woman ever to enroll and she laughs. She tells me lots of women have “mid-life career changes.” I think, “You mean mid-life crisis.” She is pleasant and sweet and encouraging. I take a deep breath, make the financial arrangements and sign up for 600 hours.
September 2005 ~ It is the night before the first day of school. I toss and turn and can’t sleep. I’m nervous as hell. What the hell am I doing anyway? What am I out of my mind? I have never put anything on my face except Ivory Soap and Nivea. Beauty School? Yeeesh.
Around 3:00 in the morning I realize I forgot to make my lunch. I get up, take one of Tom’s insulated beer coolers with a contractor’s logo on it and make a snack. I pack leftover salmon and rice and tomatoes from the garden. Little School Girl.
When I finally do fall asleep, I have an anxiety dream that I have overslept and have missed the first day of school. I realize it has been approximately forty years since I last had that dream.
When I am getting dressed for school, Tom sings “Beauty School Drop-Out” to me at the top of his lungs. I have to wear a “uniform” of black shoes, black pants and a white top. I have been instructed to wear “subtle” make-up. Jesus.
I walk in the front door of the clinic side of the school. There are two other women nervously waiting. They are both wearing the requisite black and white student outfit. One woman is of indeterminate age; the other is around my age. Definitely around my age, if not older. She is non-descript and pudgy. They seem friendly. I relax a little bit.
It is 8:30 AM. More women start pouring in. They are pretty silent. Some are whispering. We are herded up to the “Trainee” classroom in the back where we will be sequestered for the next eight weeks. My class is huge—two times the normal size. There are twelve of us. I am in the middle row with the Woman of Indeterminate Age and the Pudgy One sitting to my left. The seats are filling up. At the last minute a buxom brunette with spiky hair and purple eye shadow rushes in and sits to my right. She’s around my age too.
The women in the row in front of us are all in their early twenties and are all drop-dead gorgeous. I mean seriously gorgeous in a healthy, glowing, long blond hair, classic Christie Brinkley kind of way. I turn around. The women in the row in back of us are also all in their early twenties with the same stunningly attractive, classy “Town & Country” kind of blond, blinding white teeth, All-American natural beauty.
All except for the young dark haired woman at the end of the row with the eyebrows shaved off. Her hair is short and teased and her eyebrows are penciled in high and arched. She reminds me of Divine in “Pink Flamingo.” She has a black tattoo on her neck. She shoots me a dark look like, “What the hell are you looking at?” I whip back around in my seat. She scares the shit out of me.
I begin to get incredibly hot. I ask the women in my row if it’s really hot in here or is it just me? The Woman of Indeterminate Age says, “No, you’re having a hot flash.” She laughs and says, “Me too.”
The instructor comes in. It is the same zaftig woman I met before. I am happy to see her. Her name is Sophie and we are going to be stuck with her for the first eight weeks of our curriculum. We go around the room doing introductions. Most of the women are in the “food service industry,” are waitresses and want to get out of “dead end jobs.”
The Pudgy woman next to me is a Zen Buddhist and the Brunette is a Nail Tech. The Dark Haired One in the back row is a bartender and says her goal is to make tons of money doing make-up for the strippers before they do their routines in the Combat Zone in Boston. I turn around and grin at her. This girl has balls. Her name is Vivienne.
Our Instructor, Sophie, is telling us the rules. We must be here and signed in promptly at 8:30 AM or the door will be closed and we will be locked out until lunchtime. We will be signed out at 4:30 PM. No chewing gum, hair will be pulled back neatly away from our faces, no dangling jewelry, subtle makeup must be worn at all times. Plain black, soft-soled shoes only, no heels. Lab coats must be pressed, no wrinkles allowed—ever. She asks that we not change our seats so she can remember our names. Some of the young women are taking notes.
In the middle of all this I get poked in the side. It’s the buxom brunette with the purple eye shadow.
She says, “You have my pen.”
I look down. Damn, I do. I hand it to her, “Sorry.”
She rolls her eyes and does a big dramatic sigh. She levels me with a bold, confrontational stare. I can hear her thinking, “Shit. This is gonna be a looong six months.”
At the last minute before the door slams shut, a very young, very tiny, dark haired kid sneaks in the back and quietly slides in to the last empty seat. I grin to myself. We’re all here. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
In the Convent Again
Meet Veronica:
Vivienne's Mannequin
Chapter 1
Every morning at 8:31 at the Esthetics Institute we have “Assembly.” All the students gather in the big fluorescent-lit two-story room to listen to the Director of Clinical Studies and the Instructors tell us the day’s agenda.
The Seniors are with us for this part, then they go out front to work in the clinic. The Director is standing in front of the Head Table welcoming us, the new September class, to the school. She has flawless skin, is probably in her early sixties, and while I can see her lips smiling, her eyes do not. The Director has steel behind those eyes.
I am starting to get that nagging, disorienting feeling that accompanies de’ja vu. I have been here before. I know this scene all too well. Then I remember. In the late Sixties I attended a Catholic girls’ college.
How I got there in the Convent, not being a Catholic, is another story. Suffice it to say, however, I got kicked out after three months for insubordination, disobeying all the rules, smoking dope, not wearing a bra, etc. The Director is reminding me of the Mother Superior. I am in the Convent again. This does not bode well.
I make it to Friday. I have not dropped out yet despite Tom’s singing “Beauty School Drop-Out” to me every single morning. I am unbelievably excited that it’s the weekend and I am going to be out of this room. One week down and only nineteen more to go. Moving right along.
We are sitting in our seats listening to Sophie instruct us as to the proper techniques for Cleansing, Toning and Moisturizing the skin. We are going to work on each other for the first time this afternoon. I am starting to space out. I get poked in the side again; it’s my neighbor, Bette, the big brunette with the purple eye shadow and the gorgeous earrings.
She points to my hand. She’s angry. She says, “You have my pen.”
I look down. Damn, I do. Again. I hand it to her, “Shit. Sorry.”
She rolls her eyes and does a big dramatic sigh. She growls, “What the fuck?”
Yow! I turn away but out of the corner of my eye I see Bette crack a smile. Then she cracks a huge smile and laughs out loud.
“Really had you going didn’t I?” she says.
“Dammit, Bette, you scared the crap out of me.”
She’s laughing a huge, wide open-mouth laugh now. I realize she has a beautiful smile, her whole face lights up. She’s absolutely cracking her own self up. She really is lovely, sort of a cross between Ricki Lake and the young Elizabeth Taylor. I give her another damn pen. She is still laughing.
It’s afternoon and we are preparing to Cleanse, Tone and Moisturize each other. Bette and I pair up. One of us is absent today, so Vivienne has to work on a mannequin. The mannequin is only rubber shoulders, neck and bald head. It is left over from when the school was a cosmetology school and they used to do hair. Vivienne names her mannequin Veronica.
The Trainee room is lined with bare facial beds called tables. Sophie has instructed us as to how to properly drape and prepare our tables and heat and fold our towels. Of the paired students, one of us is to be the Client and one the Esthetician. We are to do this professionally and prepare our products to use on each other as though this were the real thing. We are instructed to begin.
Bedlam ensues. Towels are flying everywhere. Hand sanitizer squirts across the room. Someone laughs and calls that the “Money Shot.”
I hear a “What the fuckin’ shit? You dumb ho bitch!” from the next table. Nikita.
Nikita is a beautiful blue-eyed blond with long thick curly streaked hair. She has freckles and a cute nose, looks like an innocent Barbie until she opens her mouth. Nikita has the mouth of a trucker.
I’m standing in the middle of a holocaust…my class is so noisy we can barely hear Sophie who is yelling, “Ladies! LADIES! Please!” Finally she yells, “SHUT…UUUP!” The din settles down to a dull roar.
Sophie looks over the top of her glasses and mutters to herself, “Holy Mother of God.”
Vivienne raises her hand.
Sophie nods to her, “Yes, Vivienne?”
“My client, Veronica, has issues.” She puts a protective hand on her mannequin’s shoulder. “She’s very sensitive about her height. You know, being so vertically challenged and all. She’s feeling like she’s being laughed at all the time. Also, between you and me…I’m beginning to think she may be anorexic.”
The whole class explodes all over again. Sophie gives up, tells us we’re done for the day. I am so happy to get out of there for the weekend. It’s weird, but as I sign out and realize I’ll be away for three whole days…I kind of feel like I’ll miss these guys.
Gorbachev’s Forehead
The Convent
Chapter 2
Back in the Convent for Round Two. It’s starting to fall into a predictable routine. Tests every morning on our assigned Chapter, followed by a lecture with practical hands-on treatments in the afternoon.
On Tuesday we exfoliate. I have never exfoliated in my life, and it probably shows. Fifty-five years of built up sludge. Yick. Some of my classmates exfoliate every day—which seems a little excessive since their skin is so young and dewy; I can’t imagine they have any excess smegma to get rid of.
We also learn Skin Analysis under the “Loupe” which is an intense magnifying lamp that magnifies the face to help estheticians analyze and treat the skin. I’m analyzing Nikita’s face with this light and the first time I see this big honking zit on her chin, I almost scream. Under the Loupe, the zit looks like a veritable volcano. Terrifying.
On Wednesday, after the test on the Physiology and Histology of the Skin, which several of my Peeps tanked, they are in rare form at lunch. They are blowing off tension from the morning.
Nikita is holding court, describing her typical morning before leaving for school. The stream of obscenities is like a tsunami. She imitates her boyfriend, Wes, getting up in the morning. She stands up and scratches her package, then raises her arm to sniff her armpit. She “fake” burps, farts, then says in a low voice,
“Hey, morning Babe.”
Then she says, “I’m taking a shower in the downstairs bathroom. There are two bathrooms in our house, but that motherfucker has to come in to where I am to drop the kids off at the pool. Stinks up the whole place ‘til I gag.”
I have never heard that particular expression. It may be fifth grade bathroom humor but I am laughing so hard I have tears streaming down my face. Our whole class is laughing so hard the sound is deafening.
Nikita imitates her boyfriend sending her off to school. She scratches her crotch again, says he scratches his bubblegum, then fake farts, says, “See ya, Babe. Love you.” Burp.
I laugh so hard I feel like I am going to throw up. The Beauty Girls are screaming now, big huge open mouths full of food and tonsils. For one brief moment, the September class has become a collective, synchronized alien entity. Our sounds reverberate in the big cavernous gymnasium of a room until it is overwhelming.
I look over to the Head Table. The instructors are looking at us with their mouths dropped open. Mother Superior scowls. They look worried. The September class is out-of-control.
On Thursday we learn massage. We are licensed to massage only from the shoulders up. The massage routine we learn is one the Institute has standardized and it’s nice. I learned massage from the yoga center, Kripalu, two decades ago and this is very similar. I feel comfortable with this and it is healing and gentle and rhythmic. I feel I am good at it.
On Friday we do our first mask. The mask is “Moor Mud,” supposedly from the moors of Transylvania or somewhere and theoretically has great restorative powers. It is dark and thick and I get the shit everywhere. I call it Petrified Donkey Dung and am not real sure I want it on my face. This will take some practice.
It is Friday afternoon. 60 hours down—540 to go. But who’s counting?
On the weekend, I experiment by making my own beauty “products” at home, even though we are warned to never do this. I, of course, am defiant and start mixing up all kinds of toners and masks in my kitchen. I am having a ball putting various concoctions on my face. My own all-natural line of beauty products. My favorite invention is:
Cleansing Kitchen Mask
2 Green Tea Bags
½ C Oats
1 t Baking Soda
1 T Honey
½ Avocado, mashed
1 egg
1 T Plain Yogurt
Open the tea bags and let steep in a little warm water to cover. Combine everything else together and pour in enough Green Tea to make a mush. Apply immediately to clean skin and leave on for 10 to 15 minutes. Rinse off with warm water. Do not lie down with this mask on anyplace where there may be ants.
The milk from the oats contains salicylic acid to soothe the skin, and the baking soda leaves your skin silky smooth. The Cleansing Kitchen Mask gives the skin a good dose of vitamins, proteins, antioxidants, lecithin and essential fatty acids. You can eat the rest.
That weekend, I get the fabulous idea to try putting pomegranate on my face. Fruit acids are all the “industry buzz,” and pomegranate in particular. I grind up fresh pomegranate seeds in my food processor. I apply to my face and leave on for 15 minutes. I rinse. It does not come off. My face is stained a rich Port Wine color that will not wash off. My entire face looks like Mikhail Gorbachev’s forehead. It lasts for twenty-four hours. I decide to leave the chemistry to the pros.
Shrimpy’s Hysterectomy
Shrimpy’s Hysterectomy
Chapter 3
The little dark-haired kid has taken to following me around. I’m not sure why exactly, but every time I turn around, there she is. Her name is Crystal but I call her Shrimpy because she weighs ninety pounds soaking wet.
Shrimpy and I are walking down the block to the local pizza place to grab something for lunch. It’s nice to be outside, away from the fluorescent lights.
She looks up at me and says, “I want to ask you a question.”