First Days in Beauty School

Rage and pleasure, a cocktail of the Gods

A week into cosmetology school, I drilled my own manicure off in rage while watching an intro video. I would say that school is going well! I mentioned that I was beginning classes briefly in an earlier newsletter, but I honestly forgot when school started until the day before - talk about a busy schedule. This ended up being fine as the introductory classes for cosmetology are all conducted online asynchronously. The former Dean’s List Asian in me had a panic attack for maybe two minutes before I relaxed back into myself.

arabellesicardi

A post shared by @arabellesicardi

My last manicure, inspired by Dali, Pat McGrath’s makeup for Margiela, and all the weird shit on my Pinterest board. I’ve been asking manicurists to riff off this particular collection of images for the past two months to very different, fun results.

It’s been some years since I’ve been in college, though I’ve taken writing classes, workshops, craft talks, seminars on and off every year with great joy and devotion. Writing community is very different than cosmetology school though - there is as of yet no particular community collective of students, just names on the screen answering the same rote questions for course credit and moving on with our lives. This is fine for now, in the introductory courses, where we’re just learning the bare basics that nail artists keep telling me I’ll forget immediately as soon I pass the board exams.

The intro classes in beauty school are all chemistry courses, which surprised me for some reason and enraged my inner child. Maybe not for the reason you’d imagine, though -