Bridal Beauty: Some time ago, I saw a picture of a Bengali woman on her wedding day; it was the picture of Dr Tasneem Jara dressed in a traditional, pale pink cotton saree, with a hijab covering her head, no stitch of makeup or an article of jewellery on her. The image was refreshing, raw, and bold.
I have attended many weddings to date. The most awaited moments of any Pakistani wedding are either the disclosure of food or the entrance of the bride — sometimes the former takes precedence over the latter. Since all the questions seem to circulate around her, brides play the most significant role during that day: Is she looking pretty? Is she prettier than the groom? How much gold is she wearing? How is her makeup? From where did she get ready? Oh, isn’t that an expensive salon? Nevertheless, the pressure is on her.
This long-standing pressure has conditioned our society to treat weddings as performances, the lead being the bride. The best of these performances will feature the lead in heavy designer lehengas, the shiniest pieces of gold or diamonds (your choice), and white, almost twilight-pale skin with layers of makeup that will blur her true features magically.
Bridal Beauty, Reimagined
I don’t know when bridal makeup became the ghost of our twisted belief about how beauty should look — rather than the much more dignified belief that makeup enhances the already beautiful features that God created all of us with. We should let the bride celebrate her uniqueness on her special day.
Acne, dark circles, hyper pigmentation — these are considered diseases of the skin, but glass skin, though a myth, is the goal to achieve with coats of primer, concealer, powder and two-tone fairer foundation. Natural dark brown irises are way too Asian, so we prefer the more unnatural-looking green, grey, blue, hazel, or honey contact lenses. Lips are contoured to look bigger, cheeks made to look like a dramatic flush of colour with two types of blushes: liquid then powder. Finally, the results are secured with a makeup fixer so it lasts through the five-hour function.
The flawless, filtered pictures make their debuts on the salon’s or the makeup artist’s Instagram pages, and likes and shares decide how beautiful the bride looked — and how much money she paid to look like this. This is the bridal makeup offered at your top salons and by the top makeup artists. This is the lie we have all been propagating to our impressionable young daughters, and this lie peaks on her wedding day.
Bridal salons
Bridal salons have also made people very conscious of their social class. Nabila Salon, the highest celebrity salon in this country, offers its services at starting prices of sixty-two thousand rupees for haircuts and (Pakistani Rupees) PKR twenty-four thousand for hair colour. The signature makeup, with consultation from a celebrity stylist, will cost you a whopping eighty-five thousand rupees (GST (Goods and Services Tax) excluded, please). Families now have to set a substantial budget for hair and makeup for their brides because it’s not just about makeup anymore.
Such places are much more than makeup, haircuts and manicure-pedicures — they are brands, they are names. Their labels bring fame, respect, and credibility to their clients; the bigger the name, the larger the social standing of the family. So, the next time someone asks, ‘From where did the bride get ready?’, the bride’s side can be proud to tell, ‘The biggest salon they could afford.’
As a little girl, whenever I thought of my wedding, I pictured myself very happy. I imagined a lot of trees and flowers around me, I thought of the cool breeze that would bring calmness and warmth inside me, I thought of all the happy faces that would surround me. However, I never thought of the designer dress I would wear or the branded makeup style I would carry or the pictures I would post on the internet. I don’t think that was ever the point.
Weeding Celebration
With time, priorities changed, and they changed so much that the new set of values permeated our sacred events too — marriage. I am not saying a girl shouldn’t think of how she wants to look or from where she wants to get it all done, but of all the days, she shouldn’t forget that she is beautiful the way she is, on her wedding day — and that nothing has to be too big in order to be better. Simplicity is just never out of style.