So You Want To Be A Stewardess

We don't wake up looking like this, you know.

The Singapore Girl look is 100% high maintenance, and almost takes up just as much time as the job itself.

Imagine wedding-day type makeup. Now imagine having to do this makeup yourself, every few days. That 3-shades-of-blue eyeshadow. Traffic-stopping red lips. Perfect red nails. Impeccably bunned up hair. And always, that ready smile.

You get full-on ready to shine, like a bride, except it's not your big day. It's a standard day at the office. For women like me, whose makeup kit prior to joining the airline contained just 3 items (foundation, eyeliner, lip gloss), this was a tough slog.

It seemed fun at the start though. The hair and makeup module was one of the first lessons covered in training. We were all excited about it. In my mind, I would come out looking like a Hollywood star wearing her red carpet look. How wrong I was.

I remember walking into the makeup room: a large space lined with dressing tables and mirrors on one side, and a whole suite of luxurious Lancome products on the other. From serums to mascaras, it was a veritable candy store. We ooh-ed and aah-ed, starving to get our hands on this beauty buffet. There was a Lancome rep, who helped decide if we suited a 'warm' or 'cool' look. Warm meant you got assigned brown eyeshadow, cool meant blue. I got blue.

We then sat down at the dressing tables and learnt the 257 steps it took to achieve the iconic Singapore Girl look. 

I won't list them all here, but just as an excerpt, I learned that lip makeup didn't mean lipstick. It meant lip exfoliator, primer, pencil, brush, then lipstick. Face makeup didn't just mean finding a foundation that's the right colour match for your skin. You didn't even start with foundation. You started with cleanser, toner, moisturiser, serum, sunblock, primer, concealer, then foundation. You get the idea.

It was the same for our hair, eyes, nails. I had never met a hairnet before this, but they became my instant sworn enemy. This sort of semi-pro makeup was an entire skill set that I was not prepared for, and I realised I was very untalented at it. 

When the lesson ended, I walked out a little shell-shocked, all sheepish and self-conscious with this amateurish yet overly dramatic makeover I had plastered on. I did not look like a Hollywood star. I looked like a monkey.

From thereon, we had to show up at training school daily in this exact hair and makeup. This look, though befitting the kebaya uniform, was ridiculously over-the-top when paired with the office wear we wore during training.

Eventually, once I started flying, I found ways to make it work. For one, I detested those hairnets, U-pins and bobby pins so much that I cut my hair short. Voila! Problem solved. I also concluded that my eyelashes were too short to worth bothering with. The eyelash curler always pinched my eyelids and mascara was a bitch to clean off, so I chucked them both and just drew my eyeliner extra thick.

Makeup aside, the pressure to look perfect was real. If you got a skin breakout, you could get reported and grounded till you fixed it. That was enough incentive for my lazy ass to keep my grooming game going.

So I amassed a mountain of beauty and skincare products. Every time I worked a flight to Japan, I dove deep into their pharmacies. From facial masks, I expanded my regime to include overnight moisturising gloves, feet exfoliation socks, eye drops that cleared up bloodshot eyes - anything that promised to improve my appearance.

But beauty is suffering, and the saddest collateral damage were my nails. I saw my manicurist more frequently than I saw most of my friends, maintaining a set of acrylic nails simply because fake nails looked perfect. My own poor nails became stained and thinned like old yellowed paper. Whenever I did remove my fake nails to let my natural ones breathe, I couldn't even scratch my face without them tearing.

Although I enjoyed looking impeccably groomed (who doesn't?), the best bits about quitting the airline were: going back to my 3-item makeup kit, throwing out those moisturising gloves and breaking up with acrylic nails forever.