British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s annual make-up spend differs, it seems, according to what paper you look at. I read that since 2003 it was £1 000, plus £791,20 on make-up artists. My boyfriend came up with the rather more outlandish figure of two grand per press conference; he must have misunderstood. For that kind of money, the prime minister could have substantial new breasts implanted for every occasion, and would by now look like a healthy heifer.
Still, it’s a lot of money. I doubt if we’re approaching an actor or model’s outlay, but he effortlessly outstrips the spending of the average British woman (£195 a year) and, unless the world turned upside down without my noticing, he must have spent in two years what the average British man would spend in two or three lifetimes.
It’s not exactly a Fisher model of statistical analysis, but I still, in my humble way, think it’s fair to extrapolate thus: if fleshtone Blair spends about 10 times what a regular woman spends on make-up, then he probably spends in the same ratio on shoes. Research a fortnight ago showed that the average woman, in her lifetime, spent £32 000 on pleasing footwear. Take Blair’s tenure as prime minister to be, so far, one-tenth of his life expectancy, and he’s already coughed up nearly 40 grand on shoes.
For that, you could buy a hospital, albeit quite a small one. I wonder if it was public money? I wonder if he ever wears them? I wonder if he has loads of black pairs that, to the naked eye, seem quite identical? Fancy having to wait until after recess to get these questions answered.
Now, the general rule with all cosmetic enhancements is that if you’re embarrassed to admit it, then don’t do it. I happened to be at the press conference in which Blair famously claimed to have got his facial tanning from the ”Downing Street garden”, which was unlikely for so many reasons; it was two weeks before the election, for starters, a time not spent swivelling in the backyard like a pig on a spit; plus, this alert Londoner noticed immediately that, unless Downing Street gets a special kind of weather, it wasn’t actually that hot. Straight away, then, you have a man who’s ashamed of himself and pretending not to be.
The problem is, everyone is ashamed of this stamp of vanity, apart from sociopaths. Silvio Berlusconi was openly delighted with his facial surgery.
The juxtaposition of those two sentences might lead some to suppose that I’m calling Berlusconi a sociopath. For legal reasons, I’d like to stress that that definitely isn’t what I’m saying. Easy, you might say — if make-up is embarrassing, and you don’t want to be embarrassed, and you don’t want to lie, then don’t wear it. But this leaves you with a whole new set of problems — namely, a grey complexion and tired eyes.
Blair has always been accused of trading on his attractiveness to the lady voter, but I think the truth is something even more icky — he has in fact been stressing his youth, forging this very unsophisticated connection between his revolutionary new ways of being a ”socialist” and the fact that his physique is firmer than the other older geezers.
Now he’s lodged this alliance between ideology and aesthetic in our minds, he simply cannot afford to age gracefully; if the British wanted rugged authenticity, they’d get it from the United Kingdom’s Finance Minister Gordon Brown. So in many ways, it is a straight choice between a shed load of blusher and standing down, and you can see why he’s chosen as he has.
Let’s not forget, moreover, the threat posed by the Tory leadership election — with the present Tory leader Michael Howard and his monochrome visage out of the picture, they are free to go as fresh as they like. They’re a treacherous bunch, there’s no knowing what they might do. They could get one with a whole load of hair.
In the spirit of goodwill, here are my suggestions: first, tone the slap down. You only need to be an even colour all over. Second, money and thereby awkwardness will be saved if you learn to apply it yourself. It’s a simple buffing motion, most adults can master it.
Third, if you ever put your hands in your own pockets and paid for it out of your substantial salary, though it was for public engagements, then you might find scandals of this sort didn’t happen. Honestly, if he wasn’t such a skinflint, his skincare would be nobody’s business but his. — Â