Beauty fails

Many women to go through a lot of effort to maintain appearances these days. The pressure of the media has morphed our societies' perception of beauty and what 'standard is'. And a tremendous amount of time, effort and money goes into doing so.

Even something as simple as getting your nails done. It can cost on average around £25 a fortnight, thats £50 a month, so that's £600 a year (if you maintain them). Imagine all the things you could do with £600. Perhaps buy a small car? And it all goes on having pretty fingertips.

There's nothing wrong with a high maintenance beauty routine, and I'm not going to pretend like I'm innocent, I may have a slight problem with buying make up I don't need...

But sometimes we can go a little OTT with the procedures. For example, (this is a very embarrassing story) when I was 15, my friends and I went for our first spray tan. And as you do when you're 15, you try and find it as cheap as possible. So we all ended up going to this dodgy, low-rent salon in Bath. When we arrived we all stood in the middle of the salon looking awkward until a little Chinese lady came though and guided us to the back of the shop.

She takes us to a very hot, crowded and poorly lit room and tells us to get ready. I have to note at this point the only thing separating us from the whole salon was a pathetic little curtain across the door (so that was terrifying enough).

So we crack on with the tanning and take it in turns to be sprayed with this suffocating mist which we hoped would make us look like Kim Kardashian. And after we had all been coated, we looked in the mirror but didn't really see much of a difference. My Italian friend, Lulu was already much darker than us so asked if she could have a second coating.

And of course, we all followed like sheep and wanted a second coating as well. (In our defence the lady said the colour we had immediately was the finished result).

After around 3 coats each (yes, three) we decided our colour was sufficient.

And then we stepped outside into true daylight, and let's just say I've never been starred at so much in my life.

You can only imagine what I woke up to when I looked in the mirror the next day. I would have give the Oompa Loompas a run for their money. And better yet, I had to go to school.

So there we were at school, walking around like a bag of Wotsits, getting mocked by absolutely everyone, even the teachers joined in.

So, moral of the story, sometimes less is more, ladies!

Oh and also don't go to dodgy salons.