England is full of things I just don't understand.
I can go to the doctor. For free. Whenever I want. For whatever I want.
Hot and cold water come from two different taps, on opposites sides of the sink.
People have an automatic instinct to queue....regardless of whether or not there is anything at the end of the queue, they just form one and wait. No questions asked, no fusses fussed.
But what struck me today....and I don't know why this bothers me so very much...is the amount of make-up worn by people playing sports. I've seen it on tennis fields, football pitches, rowing boats, frisbee starts and (today) in a rugby match. People (primarily women, but not always) arriving to a sporting event as players, who have gone to all the trouble to put on make-up.
And by "make-up" I don't mean that you threw on a little eyeliner and then reached into a bucket of paint and smeared your team colors across your face such that your enemies quaked in fear as you approached. No. I mean the "this-took-over-an-hour" and "I-used-products-whose-total-cost-is-in-the-hundreds-of-dollars-range" kinda make-up. The amount of make-up that starts with an exfoliating cleanser and moves on through lotion, a liquid base, powder base and primer before you even apply what-ever color palate number your skin is going to be today kinda make-up and all that comes before blusher, bronzer, the "eye set", lips and highlights. The sort of make-up that I imagine models apply before someone photo-shops it all off and redoes the coloring kinda make-up.
And don't get me wrong. It looks damn good. Given that when I engage in the one-sport I've kept up in this country (rowing) I usually enter the boat looking as pale and attractive as a pithed-frog, and climb out of it 2 hours later, covered in sweat, bright red, resembling a dying blobfish that just got stuck in a net and wondering if my heart can keep up that rate for another minute before my shaking legs collapse, I can't say that a little #287 bronzer wouldn't do me some good. That is, if it didn't run off my face during the outings first piece, further polluting the no-where-near-clean River Cam and making my eyes burn as badly as my legs during a full-course (2ishK) piece from bridge to bridge.
But I just don't understand it. Maybe that's because I (like everyone else) engages to some degree in body-image policing, and make-up just doesn't mesh with my normative view of sports (which I--of course--feel compelled to impose onto others). Or maybe it's just that I've never considered make-up when I engage in a sport, because I know I'll just sweat it off, since I can't play at anything less than "I-Think-I'll-Die-During-This-Bout" intensity level. Maybe it has to do with an expectation of what sport is. For person A) it's a mostly social activity, with some effort, or me (person be) an all out battle to the death because on some level as an oldest-kid raised in America, I know that I only matter if I win and win hard.
Either way, I've added this full-on makeup while engaging in "sport" to my list of strange British things I just don't understand.
Right underneath the fact that strikes are organised such to not disrupt work, and directly over KinderEggs. Because it makes total sense to give a child a small plastic toy encased in candy and expect them not to swallow the toy.
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