I am NOT listening to these people anymore.

Its festive season in India and most of us like to feel and look our best especially around this time. Festive season also comes with a lot of offers, discounts, sale on various services and products. We also like to pamper ourselves and festive season allows most of a some breather where we can visit beauty salons, hair salons, spas, etc and get the most awaited make-over or relaxing massages. Who wouldn’t mind a few compliments and lovely pictures for our social media feeds and stories?! 😊

Festive season is also a bit of a slack period for some businesses, and holidays for salaried professionals which allows you to unwind and binge watch movies or web series with your loved ones. So just last week I happened to watch a very intriguing drama web series. In one of the episodes I witnessed a small conversation between a lower middle-class couple which surely caught my attention and I decided to write my next article about it.

This web-series features a female beautician’s character who is from a small town in India and now works at a posh salon in New Delhi. She has shifted to New Delhi recently after being married to a lawyer who has been living in Delhi for sometime. Delhi and its hustle bustle is new for her and working in a salon of a cosmopolitan city is also an all new experience for her. She likes being a beautician as she likes to bring joy to her clients’ face by serving them and making them feel good about themselves. However one fine day when her husband comes home, she looks a bit upset. So the concerned husband curiously enquires about it and asks what happened, why was she looking upset. She, with a very dull and sad face and a low tone of voice shares with him that all beauticians have now been given sales targets of selling beauty products and services, whereas she is a beautician, so she quit her job. She won’t work in any salon anymore. To which the husband quips and asks what was the big deal about it as this is how the world works and she must take this as an opportunity to make some extra incentives by doing sales. The beautician looks very dismayed and further shares that she has no concerns of making the sale, but with the sales strategy. The sales strategy was to make the clients feel bad about themselves by making statements like your hair/skin is too dry and dull, you are looking older than your age and positioning their products that can work ‘miraculously’ in making their hair/skin look and feel better. She adds that she became a beautician solely as she likes to make her clients feel beautiful and more accepting about themselves. By being in this race, she will only be adding to their probable existing insecurities and shake their confidence levels. She will not be able to do this at the cost of her client’s happiness and false claims of them looking inadequate in any manner.

In this moment she also decides to open her own salon, start small from her residence and continue to make her clients feel beautiful and worthy. The husband smiles and supports her brave decision.

Point to ponder:

The internet, movies, web content are feeding us with a lot of unrealistic standards of living, beauty, body, quality of life, etc. Consciously or subconsciously many of us are falling for these standards and are willing to go out of our way to achieve these in the form of bigger houses (not caring about health or work-life balance, or increasing debt), to achieve perfect bodies (not caring to know that most photos of our ‘idols’ are photoshopped), to achieve and meet standards of beauty and youth (not caring to realise that aging is only natural).To add to this when one visits a salon or dermatologist for a genuine ailment or for a basic treatment, we are being sold DESPAIR and not HOPE. We are being made to feel BAD about ourselves and the way we look.

Words you hear from your hair stylists- "Your hair is too dry and dull. What shampoo and conditioner are you using, you have been using wrong products."

Words that you hear from your beauticians - "Your skin looks tanned and dull, when did you last get your facial". "You must come for monthly facials else your face will look dull as you age."

Words you hear from your dermatologist – "Crow feet/ wrinkles is developing around your eyes/face. You are looking older than your age". "You have a broad jaw-line, sorry but it makes you look manly. "

Some major Salon brands/Skin Clinics are resorting to such sick practices just to achieve their sales targets and increase top line. Well, its time for them to think that a woke customer will never return to a salon where she can sense that her confidence is being attacked and instead of right consultation, she is being fed with statements filled with despair.   

The questions that emerge are:

Are you selling Hope or are you feeding despair?

How are you serving humanity while you achieve your sales targets?

Image Source: Margaret Blaine

Written by- Monica Arora

Independent HR Consultant and Coach