I used to be in the army, and people sometimes ask me the biggest difference between real life and the there. There are so many to choose from…but I think I’d have to say the way people present themselves. It’s hard to explain, but in the army, everyone is just so…casual with their appearance, at least while you’re actually posted. There’s no such thing as a bad hair day, and if it’s looking bad nobody notices. You don’t feel the need to shave every day, you can get smudges on your face and it just isn’t a thing and even the women on tour are kind of just the same. It’s freeing, in a way, but I’m not criticizing how it’s done back home.
The I see people here doing an actual diploma of beauty therapy course. Like, people go to uni to learn that kind of thing. They actually spend time in classrooms…learning how to do beauty stuff.
It actually took me a little bit to get used to, people spending their lives in entirely different pursuits, ones that didn’t involve being shot at. Meanwhile, I had to get back into the habit of making my facial hair look acceptable, or not letting my hair get too shaggy (though shaggy kind of works for me, fortunately).
Anyway, nowadays I’m a lot more acclimatised. I get it, some people want to be birthday clowns or dance choreographers. They wouldn’t be all that good in a firefight in the middle east, but neither would I be all that great if you took me backstage and told me to make someone look like a cat. This is actual, real, non-army life where skills are diversified instead of being intensely structured. Not that I’m going for a diploma of specialist makeup any time soon. That’d be pushing it.
-Ian