I went into No Chintz this morning to check out their drawer knobs (as you do). It’s actually rare that I go into a physical shop these days, so enamoured am I with the online shopping choice and convenience. Even though I love him dearly, my postie hates me. It’s all those heavy parcels.
Anyway, I’m in No Chintz and I was thinking that there was actually a lot of chintz going on, really. Lots of florally, thick fabrics and tassley sort of adornments. Then it struck me that No Chintz was also full of chintzy ladies too. There are a lot of chintzy ladies in the area where I live. They are the sort of women that leave a trail of perfume and envy in their wake. Groomed, monied, blow-dried… bored.
Because they must be bored, right? I mean, I get a little glassy-eyed just brushing my teeth of a morning, let alone layering on the make up, layering on the creams, ironing out the hair, ironing out the lines. Add on all those hours in the salon getting the nails done and the hair coloured and the botox blasted in. Add on all the hours caring for expensive clothes that are Delicate and must be Hand Washed Only and god help you, you even have to somehow lie them flat in the shade to presumably spend a week watching them dry. Add on all the hours spent shoving shoe-preservers into thousand dollar shoes and all the extra hours trying to track down a shoe-preserver in the first place.
The very thought of all that personal grooming just makes me want to wet my pants – which would sort of wreck the whole grooming thing before I even began.
Despite my horror, I wish I had it in me. I so often wish I was the kind of woman who could endure all that boredom, just to look really good. I think it would make life a lot easier, I really do. I’ve never bought into the lie that all those chintzy women aren’t looking down at me with my no chintz ways. I feel judged in the flick of a mascared eye just about every day as I move about my neighbourhood in my go-faster flats and no-time hair. “I’ve got far more interesting things to do than remove last week’s nail polish!” I want to yell at them, pointing a half-manicured finger at them.
But to feel this way would imply that every super-groomed woman I see isn’t doing anything very interesting with her life. And that would be really, really wrong. Wouldn’t it.
[Image: I’ve been unable to trace the original. Please let me know if it’s yours.]