beauty courses

Back in the Early Beauty Days

beauty therapy short courses MelbourneRight, well…I’m putting a stop to all of this right now. I might not be in the teaching circuit any more, but I can see a generation growing up with skewed priorities. Back when I did my diploma of makeup and a Melbourne uni, well over fifty years ago when they first started offering them, we knew exactly what we were getting into.

No, wait…we DIDN’T know what we were getting into. Yep, that’s the one! See, it was a new industry, and people in stage had always done their own makeup or it’d been a family business. Now, there was choice! Little girls with particular skill or passion for makeup and general beauty therapy courses could go along and learn the skills that might get them a job in the unforgiving industry it used to be. My dear parents, rest their souls, wanted me to work in a sewing shop. Well, I tried that for two weeks I don’t think I could’ve lasted another moment. The boss was a tyrant! No, I had a passion for makeup, and I would often display it at county fairs by doing the best face-painting jobs you’ve ever seen. I was born for this job, to be sure, so to study makeup and make it a career…well, it would’ve been a dream!

So that’s what I did, and all these years later, I can look back and say it was the right decision. Oh, and these young people nowadays…all in a tizzy over what makeup is all about. It’s all ‘Wallflower’ this and ‘Firework’ that, forgetting that it’s all about the art form. You wouldn’t tell a painter what his paintings are for. You wouldn’t tell a writer what to write, or how it should be making people feel. Art is too big and wonderful to be put in a box, and makeup is exactly the same. Maybe it’s time to start teaching again. I didn’t complete a diploma of makeup to see Melbourne students years later dissolve into pointless in-fighting.

-Maria