Who You Callin' Beautiful?

A few years back, my favorite beauty-product mecca made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: membership in something they called the Very Important Beauty program. All I had to do was spend $300/year there, which is what I was already doing anyway. As a member, I get special deals, offers, and samples throughout the year. It’s very nice and I’m not complaining, but I’ve never felt 100% comfortable with this program. For one thing, if I really believed myself to be beautiful, I probably wouldn’t spend $300/year on cosmetics. They don’t want me to look in a mirror and think, “Beautiful!” They want me to look in a mirror and think, “Needs improvement!” For another thing, all the emails they send me start with something like “Hey there Beauty!”, which I can’t help reading as sarcasm. It reminds me of the day on the middle school bus when the 8th grade girls started calling me “cool girl” and complimenting my outfit while their friends were putting boogers in my hair.  That’s a flashback I don’t need. But I’ve always heard you should never criticize something unless you have a solution, and luckily that’s just what I’ve got! I hereby officially propose the creation of the VIP (Very Insecure Person) program. Let me break it down for you…

Instead of a sexy font calling me "Beauty", all VIP communications will be written in purple comic sans, and the salutation will read: “Hey there Annie Average! How was the tub of cold fried chicken you had for breakfast?”

As a VIB, you are occasionally invited to special pre-sales for the latest seasonal colors and formulas. Rich teenagers and amazonian glamour models in designer dresses mill around oohing and aahing at “jewel tones” and “prismatic colors” at 30% off while house music pounds out of the speakers. As a VIP, you would be occasionally invited to special after-midnight VIP-only shopping hours, where regular women would wander in wearing huge t-shirts, hospital scrubs, and mud masks. The soundtrack would be all 80s soft rock, anti-aging products would be 40% off, and there would be free milk and cookies in the back.

As a VIB, you get free samples of things like hot new perfumes, whatever bronzer Jennifer Aniston’s currently endorsing, or the hot pink lipstick that looks AMAZING…if you’re a tan, skinny 18 year old model who lives in Miami. Let me tell you: I have no use whatsoever for hot pink lipstick. As a VIP, you would still get samples, but they would consist entirely of either the latest high-tech way to violently rip out body hair, or value-sized tubs of Face Caulk® Facial Crevasse Filler.

VIBs get a special treat on their birthdays - usually a birthday-cake scented bath gel. Fun! But VIPs don’t need fun; we need functional. So every year we would get a bottle of Wide Load® Fat-Eating Concentrated Sulfuric Acid Soak instead! It might not smell like cake, but it will allow us to eat our birthday cake without feeling guilty, which is much more fun than just having cake-scented armpits.

New initiates to the VIB program are given a 10% discount off any one purchase, so they can use it to buy the hot new mascara made with gardenia essence and real dolphin tears. But the VIP demographic will tend to be buying such big-ticket items (the Beauty Cocoon® At-Home Face Transplant System - only $2,000!) that 10% is more than the store can afford to lose. Instead, people like me will get an XXL t-shirt that says “I TRIED, OK?” and a coupon for 50% off their next purchase at Dairy Queen.

I truly believe this program is in the best interests of everyone involved - I’d be spared the paranoia of constantly being called “beauty”, and the store could rest easy in the knowledge that I’ll remain sufficiently insecure to keep them open for years to come. I hope to see you all at the 2am Everyone’s a Beauty in the Dark Sale & Pajama Party!