The Reality of the Aisle: Beyond the Velvet Ropes

I start walking slowly through the aisles filled with necessities heavily discounted, this temple of pragmatic individuals. Surrounding me: aunties competing aggressively to buy discount goods like a battlefront soldier, students purchasing packs of noodles, white-collar workers clinging to their coffee as if it’s their life support, and a kid screaming because he cannot purchase an entire aisle of candy.

This is REAL life: no velvet ropes, no champagne, and nobody here gives a damn about atmosphere. I’m here, the playgirl who used to suck out souls with a simple glare, searching for exfoliating gel, hopefully at budget-friendly prices for the now, hobo-me.

The Marketing of Fear and the Price of Beauty

Past the makeup counter, I sense my spine tensing involuntarily: involuntary response, trauma reaction, muscle memory, Warhorse on hearing the trumpets. The product lines are lined up in rows under glaring lights, with their bottles murmuring temptingly: Pick me. Make yourself whole. You’ll appear youthful.

I look at the products on display, a mixture of bemusement and primeval female sorrow welling up within me. How much time has been spent by women in front of mirrors, choosing between versions of themselves that are worthy enough to be funded by the cosmetics we use? How many billions has womankind collectively spent because of some marketing ploy that made us feel as though something about ourselves had to be corrected? I’m familiar with this, as I have been a professional participant.

I crouch down to examine the lower shelves, where the cheap items reside like social pariahs. Isn’t that the story of life? Useful items are seldom placed at eye level. I see gold containers with assurances of lifting, whitening, tightening, brightening, refining, rejuvenation, purification, clarification, and most likely electricity. Such a plethora of verbs. But none offering inner peace.

The Holy Grail: Finding the NT$19 Exfoliating Gel

I explore further. There are moisturizers whose names are in French, English, Korean, and Japanese. Every bottle is about some sort of fear marketing has planted in women’s heads: Wrinkles, Acne, Dullness, Pigmentation, Age, Texture, Visibility… especially age. How horrible that women are taught to be scared of living up to the moment they’ll become older!

This is me now, late thirties, transformed through a stroke, life derailed, and my identity shaken but not destroyed. Once upon a time, I hated laugh lines, seeing them as flaws. Today, however, I am grateful to still be alive and to have laugh lines. These are little victories – aging gracefully and accepting the body that I now inhabit.

I take a sharp turn. That’s it. I take a closer look at the dirty shelf at the bottom. I spot this one product: Lencolar Aloe Vera Moisturizing Exfoliating Gel. The suggested retail price reads NT$59; the actual price is labelled at NT$19. Less than $20 NT! I nearly laugh out loud. I have emotionally invested more in men who contributed less. Yet, here lies a possible miracle for a steal at pocket lint prices.

The Catharsis of Cleansing

Out on the street, the weather is hot. I clutch my small plastic bag. I get back home and go directly to the bathroom. A pale green gel lands on my fingers. The colour of modest hope. I apply it to my damp face. Finally, a relationship with realistic and equal expectations.

I begin rubbing in circles. Then, the first little roll of dead skin appears. The deep catharsis of watching the waste leave the body so immediately. I remember the stroke. Its effect on all things. How it made me into someone new. Yet I am here. Still silly. Still narcissistic. Still keenly observant. Still removing my dead epidermis like a champion. Perhaps surviving itself is exfoliating.