Your appearance is how you are instantly judged by the world and although I know we all get older, this is a process that I am not entirely comfortable with.  Over the last couple of years I have had the opportunity to discover what beauty means in many different cultures from Saudi Arabia to Antarctic, the differences have led to some laughs. 

Beauty in Antarctica is low maintenance, I have documented my beauty dilemmas with the environment down here and it is not improving the more time I spend here.  To set the scene, I am sitting in a vintage orange bucket chair at an old wooden desk, wearing a polar fleece on polar fleece ensemble, my hair is slightly multi-coloured -a couple of different shades of red mixed with brown due to a odd mix of regrowth, red dye and mahogany dye.  For the first time in many years it is a work day and I am make-up free and haven’t touched the hairdryer.  My biggest appearance related decision of the day involves toe nails… I am wondering which of my two nail polishes to use; hot pink or ice blue…  Clothing related decisions area as simple as make-up and hair, my only pair of jeans sustained a gymnastics related fatal injury AKA the jeans were not as flexible as me and ripped up the middle during a splits demonstration.  This was approx. 3 months ago and has left me with King Gee pants, 2 pairs of green cords (WTF) and some lovely polar fleece trackies that I found in the field store…  Polar fleece trackies are amazingly comfortable but woo mumma they are not flattering!!!!

Generally down here we quickly develop a odd sense of style, it seems both sexes let their inner earth mother/father come to the front and not in a stylish hippy way.  Probably primarily driven by the fact that we are predominantly asexual down here we seem to all embrace those things that are taboo’s at home.  The guys grow beards some quite spectacular, not the hipster groomed kind but big bush ranger sorts!!!  I have become used to sitting at the mess table and being confronted with beard hairs all over the table…they look very much like other body hairs which can be a little confronting at 0600 before your first coffee.  There is no such thing as hairstyles and clothes are becoming more hobo the soho as we wear holes in the oddest places on our clothes.  A new pair of thermals is quite a fashion statement, in fact you can wear what ever you want really, King Gee’s, thermals, torn pants, polar fleece pants… no-one really bats an eyelid. 

It is quite liberating to see how low maintenance you can go, interestingly every-one has a limit.  That point were you can’t stand yourself any more.  I have definitely reached it and am so hanging to get to a day spa, I always thought I was pretty low maintenance.  I am so not, I need access to hairdressers, waxing, spray tanning, botox, make up, moisturisers and facials on a fairly regular basis… or no mirrors.    

I came almost straight to Antarctica from Saudi Arabia, living in Saudi was a totally opposite experience to Antarctica!!! I know durrhhh of course.  Not for the reasons that you are probably thinking though.  In Saudi the female form is totally subjugated, you (the female) are completely to blame for enticing men into having uncontrollable sexual thoughts and behaviours.  Men have a lack of individual responsibility for their actions, the poor things they are so easily led astray, but that is another blog entry entirely.  So anyway before I went to Saudi, I purchased a very attractive abaya – the cloak reminiscent of Harry Potter,  and a few scarfs to wrap around my head and quite enjoyed the thought of not having to think about what to wear in public.  You can have on a bikini or your pjs and no-one is any the wiser.

One of the things that surprised me about Saudi was all the different nationalities that worked there.  Large populations of Phillipino’s, Indian’s, Irish, English, Americans, Jordanian’s, South Africans and Lebanese workers all drawn together in the organisation with a common goal to earn good money.  All had separate cultural ideas of beauty, the Irish, English, Americans and Australians were very similar, body shaped, make-up and hair styles.  We were the minority and it was surprisingly hard to find a hairdresser who shared our ideas on haircuts or colours, a waxer who could shape an eyebrow the way you wanted and near impossible to find some-one to do a spray tan!!!  So many little differences that you don’t realise until you go for an eyebrow wax and forget to tell the waxer not to go to thin… all of a sudden you have Arabic eyebrows, thin and narrow!!!  Or try to buy moisturiser and get offered the ones with bleaching cream, freckles were quite abhorrent in some Arabic and Asian cultures so I was offered lots of help to clear my Australian freckled skin.  The Indian women were proud of their tummies, it was a sign they had had children and were fertile, while the Australian’s and Irish were constantly bemoaning out tummies as symptoms of our inability to resist chocolate and wine.  The commonality between cultures was that people were distinctive in their cultural ideal of beauty, it was not very often that people crossed the cultural boundaries of what they considered beautiful.  Irish and Australian’s rarely worried about freckles and rarely relaxed about their muffin tops!!!  Arabic ladies usually dressed beautifully and modestly wearing their abaya’s at work and they always had the most beautiful headscarfs… even though they didn’t have to at work.  The Phillipino’s always had their umbrellas or hats to make sure they didn’t get a tan, compared to the Australian’s stretched out soaking up the sun.       

Beauty is a construct, it is different according to your culture and it is reinforced constantly by society.  There are not many places in the world like Antarctica were appearance isn’t important, unless you are a billionaire then it doesn’t matter 🙂

So while I have enjoyed this time of living in a community that doesn’t judge me for wearing polar fleece on polar fleece, I am off to the gym, its only 16 weeks till I get out of my polar fleece pants and into a dress again!!