MIRROR, MIRROR

In a world where beauty is a highly covetable commodity, is there a sweet spot between minimal effort and obsessive vanity? India Knight has advice on how to make looking good a pleasure, not a chore

There is a part of me—quite an insistent part— that wants to wash her face in the morning, slap on some sunblock and be done with it. It’s the same part that, in a parallel universe, has stopped colouring her hair and wears utility clothing. This version of me intensely dislikes, and maybe even disapproves of, excessive vanity. It comes hurtling to the fore when I watch certain beauty influencers on TikTok. It isn’t just the outlandish amount of makeup they all trowel on, but also the fact that they’re so young. They start off with a bare face and you can see the pertness in their skin, the gorgeous peachy bloom that they will spend the coming decades trying to recapture. They look beautiful. “Leave your face alone,” I mutter at my phone. Then, as the videos progress: “OK, fine, that’s nice”, and next, “Lovely. Stop there”. But they never do. And that’s the point at which I go all intransigent and think, every single time, “Oh my God. How is it possible to be so vain?”