The Best Beauty Advice You’ll Ever Get

Beauty is indefinable. Some people find moustaches undeniably sexy and others believe that bald heads really will keep them warm at night. Regardless of how blasphemous it is to perm your hair in the 21st century, it’s whatever sets your love buds tingling.

The problem is that everyone seems to be looking for the latest ‘beauty tips’. They buy Heat magazine in the hope that Kim Kardashian has laid her DNA all over it ready for them to ingest or they crack eggs over their hair because some prankster on Google tells them it’s healthy. But this, right here, will lay bare the real ‘beauty tips’ for one and all to orgasm over on a Saturday evening.

Hair. Everyone has it scattered across their bodies in great, jumper-like thickness but most tend to whip it off quicker than you can say Pussy Galore. Whether it’s under your armpits or under your bellybutton, allow nature to take its course until its protruding through your clothes. At least then, you will have an extra layer for when the winter truly takes charge.

Make up. When used correctly, it can transform you from Ann Widdecombe to Kate Moss but when it’s not, hello Pete Burns. There is nothing attractive about pouring foundation over your face until it becomes Niagara Falls. Mascara is a nice subtle friend to us; do not use it to make your eyelashes look like long, thin spider legs. If you decide that lipstick is the way forward, be sure to stay within the lines. Practise using paint-by-numbers if you struggle to do so.

Skin. We have bad patches and imperfections but scrubbing your face with muesli isn’t appropriate. Forget buying mud masks, why not nip out into your garden after a fresh storm and face-plant into the soaked soil. You will save endless pounds and eventually come to realise that it makes you look more like something out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre than ‘ten years younger’.

Clothes. I have a phobia of suits with trainers. Don’t do it; it wasn’t cool in the eighties and it’s almost illegal now. Kitten-heeled shoes are forbidden and if you still decide to wear them, you belong in Back to the Future and should be locked in that terrible franchise forever. Sunglasses inside are not even awful, they’re just idiotic so don’t be like Kanye West all your life and put them away. Deciding on a white shirt out? Superb but don’t wear a black bra and think we all want to see two bobbling nipples darting through the transparency.

You. As long as you don’t believe in nasal hair and cropped tops in January, you don’t need all these endless beauty regimes that take up more of your time than an X Factor finale. Your eyebrows are fine, crayons are best left for the colouring book, and no doubt your eyes are already dazzling. Let’s forget about face contouring like we’re suddenly part of Mount Rushmore and focus on what really is beautiful in life – watching footballers run around in slow motion.

New Year, Old News

2015 has arrived in the usual unexciting, mundane New Year’s kind of way. January offers little and takes a lot; we get a new series of Celebrity Big Brother’s human hamster cage in exchange for giving up Cadbury’s chocolate and bad men or Cadbury’s chocolate on bad men depending on your taste buds.

In the dying months leading up to a new year we indulge in alcohol, yule logs and Bruce Forsyth’s ghostly face only just visible on the latest Strictly Come Walking. We allow ourselves to parade around in reindeer onesies with wine-stained teeth safe in the knowledge that next year, we could run for the president of the United States of America.

In December, we decide to make ‘New Year’s Resolutions’. It takes a while to start writing as our E.T looking hands fiddle with a pen that we haven’t held since 1997 until we get into the rhythm of writing. Optimism begins to flow as we imagine marital bliss on the beaches of Mexico having secretly eloped with a bigamist George Clooney. We see our dreams coming true because a new year allows for change and we can morph ourselves into anything; we could wake with Kim Kardashian’s buttocks.

Most people opt for the obvious; dieting or sucking on anything other than cigarettes. Others decide it is time to throw caution to the wind and do obscene, nearly-time-to-be-sectioned kind of things like botox and growing moustaches. Just remember that we have to be realistic when deciding; Madonna’s armpit hair was grown for artistic purposes and should never be imitated as part of our New Year feminist empowerment.

With the lists ready and January coming to unpack a hamper full of success and orgasms, we wait patiently until it begins. We cram in any last minute gorging of cheesecake and One Direction because after, we shall no longer be these sad, depressing, I-heart-Harry kinds of people.

All of last year’s disappointments are left behind as we try to forget exes, the World Cup and the continued existence of Kanye West. We can disregard the momentary joy we felt that Take That might finally be breaking up and the chance that X Factor would fall further than Louis Walsh’s reputation as a talent spotter. 2014 is long gone and we no longer have time for it.

So here she is one and all. Her majesty, January, with nothing but rain keeping you wet when you would rather it came from elsewhere. We’re only a week or so in and we could still marry Prince Harry, travel to Jamaica on a banana boat and befriend King Kong but maybe one less tube of Pringles on our hips may be a slightly more realistic prospect.

A Vow of Alcohol Celibacy

There is nothing worse than alcohol. I’ll be the first to admit it and I’ll probably be the last. Everyone talks about vodka-induced nights out as though they didn’t end with their hair dripping half way into a toilet but the reality is just that. It’s about time we all admitted that tequila is the leading cause in those dreaded wake-up-to-find-a-hairy-beast-of-a-man one night stands.  

The issue is that alcohol always starts as a good idea. No one thinks they’ll end the night half-naked at the bottom of their stairs because a striptease really did sound like a great idea. You believe that the world is, for the first time, your oyster. You can have anything you want regardless of expense or logic. If you want to dangle off the side of Ruby Blue’s balcony at half three on a nipple-decreasing Tuesday, you can do it. It’s only after drinking enough to sink the Titanic that you begin to understand that dribbling without knowing it is the least attractive thing since the mankini. It’s at this moment that you start to forget why tongues weren’t created for sordid kisses at the back of Yates and your friends despair at ever having known you.

In the process of drunkenness, we seem to lose all self-respect and do things that no human should ever do with or without a mature adult’s consent. I have unfortunately lost all dignity and bared my unshaven forest-like hairs on my thighs to an elderly gentleman on the ninety four bus. Others tend to scream their way into the Guinness World Records for being the most intoxicated person since Justin Beiber’s arrest.

I can’t deny that I have been one of these people. I have been all Bambi legs and Mr Bean dance moves whilst trying to chat up the Tottenham Hale bus driver post-Weatherspoons. I have been denied access from Leicester Square Burger King for being, in the burly security guard’s words, ‘drunk and disorderly’ and I have been known for the odd shot contest that ends with me hugging a chair and declaring my undying love for it. However, this happens once a year and for this, I am truly grateful.

For some people, hangovers are a myth. There’s no passing of the bucket or crying into the toilet bowl of shame; just a casual shower to soak away the memories of the night before.

For others, we wallow in self-pity and suffer in no silence. The day consists of head-pounding, toe-curling, vomit-inducing pains that make you want to give up life and surrender forever. It is a time when not even George Clooney’s naked self could bring you back to earth as you once knew it.

It is because of these reasons that I refuse to wear a vagina-skimming miniskirt and drown my tonsils in anything that has a percentage sign on the bottle. There will be no smudged mascara down my cheek and I refuse to sit on Santa Claus’ knee at the Christmas party. It’s all so mortifyingly embarrassing that someone has to take a vow of alcohol celibacy and declare themselves married to the joys of middle-aged hot drinks like Ovaltine and warm milk. I do take this vow.