Diary of a Gen Z Student: Nothing like a lick of fake tan to make me feel like a whole new woman

I’ll be there, eyes falling closed, just trying to eat my Coco Pops in peace, nodding away. It really is terrible, you’re right, dad.

Then my latest online order of nicely marketed lotions and potions will arrive at the door. Who knows what these products do? Certainly not me. Slap a nice pink label on the front of the bottle and I’m sold.

Put simply: I’m every marketing executive’s dream. Sorry dad.

Maybe if you bedazzled that soap box, I’d be a better consumer.

When it comes to beauty products and treatments, you can pretty much count me in.

When it comes to what I’ll spend money on, in the name of beauty, the limit does not exist.

As a proud Irish woman, one aspect of our culture that I fully embrace is the art of fake tan. It is an art, as far as I’m concerned.

Nothing like a lick of fake tan to make me feel like a whole new woman. I don’t want to blind anyone with the light reflecting abilities of my borderline albino skin.

Look, we’re not all blessed with golden goddess genetics. Some of us have to get our tan from a bottle.

I’ll be perfectly candid: Spray tans are not a glamorous affair.

You’re brought into a dimly lit backroom of a beauty salon. It’s all quite sensual, lavender oil, meditation music, burning candles.

In an exceedingly calming voice, the beautician tells you to take off all your clothes — they don’t even buy you dinner first!

But the beautician’s wish, is my command. Fret not, they’ll hand you some disposable mesh knickers to protect your dignity.

Though, in reality, those mesh knickers aren’t leaving anything to the imagination.

So, you’ll be well-acquainted with your beautician fairly quickly. It is around this time that you realise just how cold the room is — especially because you’ve got the nips out.

But you’re a fighter. You grow a proverbial pair of ovaries, and you get through it. You do a few poses that are a bit Renaissance statue-esque, so they can get into all the nooks and crannies.

Believe me, there’s more nooks and crannies than you realise. Like magic, 30 minutes later you walk out of there a bronzed goddess.

It also feels vaguely like you’ve fallen victim to a crime. However, you’re so delighted with your new look that it doesn’t matter. You’re ready to wear that skirt and get those legs out.

One of my personal favourite beauty treatments is the manicure, but they are — like the spray tan — an incredibly intimate experience.

Holding hands with a total stranger for upwards of an hour, you might be expecting a date afterwards.

Then you’re passed over to a new nail tech for your pedicure. As if all that hand holding meant nothing to them. 20-year-old boys would probably give these nail techs a standing ovation, at this point. That kind of indifference, is their endgame.

Then this new nail tech starts massaging your feet. I mean, seriously! There seems to be no boundaries here.

A total stranger can man handle my toes, paint them pink, and I’ll pay them to do it. I’m not complaining, but at what point did society agree that this was normal?

Looking this good doesn’t just happen, ladies. It takes serious graft. I have lashes to be lifted, legs to be waxed, brows to be plucked, and skin to be exfoliated.

A girl’s gotta do, what a girl’s gotta do. Sometimes that includes posing in your birthday suit, while a stranger spray paints you. I have no excuse for my frivolous behaviour. If it’s wrong, I don’t want to be right.

“These marketing people” have got my number.