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| Food for thought by Janice Budd |
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| Friday, 09 May 2008 | |
 What would you give up for food? The weekly trips to the hairdressers ... the clothes and nails? The RJR News Centre visited a street-side salon in downtown, Kingston to ask some so-called ‘hot girls' if they would sacrifice their beauty regimen for food. The heat and the estrogen rose with equal ferocity from the sidewalk on Princess Street where a group of women gathered. The tools of the trade were scattered around the makeshift salon; packets of multi-coloured hair, bottles of dark glue for attaching them to stocking caps, packets of false eyelashes, gels and hair creams. Many of the women who sat in the few chairs or stools being tended to had obviously bleached their skin and had eyebrows that had been tattooed on. Most had mirrors out and were patting and fluffing their new wigs which had been glued together on the spot. Keeping up apearances  One of the hairdressers, her own
hair a flaming pink, stood with scissors and comb in hand skillfully shaping a
new stocking-cap wig for a client. "We doing hair, gluing on a hair ... 27 pieces, spiral roll, cut down, the new Keisha Cole (style) for $1,800." She said there is no shortage of customers at her roadside beauty shop despite the shortage of money and high food prices. Her clients declared they had no intention of looking broke, even if they were. "Dem woman nowadays dem like to model and dem like talk bout demselves cause every woman a step out cause clothes get cheap, yuh have whole heap ah hair dats cheap dat yuh can still bob har a look pretty ... yuh have $200, $300 hair whey yuh can buy and pay di nice $1,300 or $1,500 an do yuh hair and still look pretty ... yuh can get it free sometimes." Another slender, well-spoken client was having fake eyelashes glued on, her eyes barely twitching despite the proximity of the glue bottle and tweezers. 
"People tend to treat you based
on how you present yourself so you have to spend to put yourself together so
you're presentable so that you'll get the right kinda circles to deal with you."... For her, spending money on beauty is an investment in her future and the sacrifice is worth it. "Yeah, I'm investing in my image, I'm a performing artiste and just about December I got rid of my dreads because I realized that they were not working for me so I started sporting a new look and it sort of shows that I'm flexible as an artist ... you have spend to gain." Even with an eyelash glue job going for $500 a pop, the equivalent of maybe a loaf of bread, a pound of sugar and a pound of rice, some of the ladies have no intention of sacrificing. "Mi waan look pretty cause di eyelash gi yuh a different look, mek yuh look like Beyonce." Implicit in their message is their belief that men, especially men who will spend money on them, want them to look a certain way. "A lot of men say that they don't like di fake look or they may not like a woman who is high maintenance but at the end of the day, when they're walking on the road they're not going to look at a woman who is low maintenance, because she, 90% of the time is not well put together in terms of appearance." Not all about looking good 
Of the group, only one woman said
she put her family's needs first."Mi have four children, mi mek sure di food inna di house first before mi spend ... di food haffi inna di house, di bills haffi pay, dem lunch money put aside and mi buy mi tings dem likkle likkle fi sort out myself," she said. On the question of whether women would give up their hair styles for food, she had this to say, "no man, yuh mad. If yuh a go gi up di hair style fi fod a nuh mash up yuh a go mash up completely? Yuh haffi look good, haffi out deh." But there is a flip side to this public bravado. We met a young bartender, who was also decked out in the latest clothing, her long fake eyelashes framing pretty eyes, her long weave caught up in a ponytail, her nails were beautifully manicured. But both she and her children were accustomed to going hungry from time to time. "Bwoy ah cope wid it very hard cause is every other week mi work and sometime ah go to my bed hungry, me an my kids dem ... sometimes I can hardly find di lunch money." She defended her expenditure on beauty products, however, she said she was a do it yourself beautician. "We do wi own ting by weself, wi duh wi one anada hair so wi nuh really gah a hairdresser ... but mi do it mainly when mi going out." But she like other women we met that day insist, money attracts money and if you look the part, maybe someday soon you will play the part and at that point, inflation will not be a problem. |