Beauty and the Flea Market

A couple of weekends ago DD and I decided to wander off the beaten path (well, at least “our” beaten path) and headed to the “World's Nicest Flea Market”. Now, understand this is a flea market, with nothing in common with Brimfield, Round Top or even Lakewood Antiques Fair; rather this is a veritable cornucopia of ethnicities and 100% Made-in-China gobble-D-gook…not to mention some glamorous “beautification” kiosk/booths. You see all kinds of things there, and I mean all kinds of things! Oh, and if you park in just the right part of the parking lot you can walk through the “farm yard”, which I do love to do. I love to look at the chickens – you know the ones with feathers on their legs and look like they have on fancy pants…love them! I also like to look at the ducks…it all fits with my inner-fantasy of being a farmer, or at the very least an eccentric, old lady with a big straw hat and a pack of big dogs hanging around all the while I sell over-priced, rusted farm implements to tourists – can’t you just picture it???

Anyway, I digress, a few weeks ago I had a little venting session on the proliferation of teeth whitening kiosks at the mall – and NO,I haven’t seen anyone actually use those Southern Somedays: What in the world??? . I really thought that was gross until…you guessed it - I went to the flea market and saw their personal improvement/beautification/self improvement offerings! Oh, MY word…you just would NOT believe! There were booths for things like ear coning (which, if you don’t know, is a process whereas someone puts a paper (?) cone in your ear and lights a candle in there and something, something, something happens – that would be my technical understanding of it), make-up sales (apparently Clique and Elizabeth Arden are doing a booming business), and hair salons. The two that really take the cake for me, though, are the eyebrow plucking kiosk and the tattoo booth.

As DD and I made our way through the crowd we noticed a huge group of on-lookers gathered around a particular kiosk. Getting closer, we saw what they were watching; some gal was lying back in a chair while a lady was threading her eyebrows. It was even being viewed on the closed-circuit TV on the rolling cart next to the chair! I can’t help but wonder, did this gal plan on having her eyebrows done at the Flea Market or was this an impulse buy? Did her lovely, hunk of a honey, see this kiosk and look longingly at her and say, “Purdy, I will pop to get them thangs shaped like Pamela Anderson’s!” I guess I am struggling with seeing how you find yourself sitting in a chair at the flea market placing your eyebrows in the hands of??? Well…nothing says, I am a qualified, professionally trained esthetician like a kiosk at the flea arket…not even a booth – a kiosk!!!

This brings me to the next spot of lovelification – the tattoo booth (yes, a full fledged, semi-permanent, plywood walled booth!). I, personally, have had lingering thoughts about the cleanliness and practice of many tattoo artists, particularly those in questionable locales with signs made of poster board and using ball point pens as instruments. I mean, is there like a health department official that checks these things? Anyway, at the flea market you can get yourself a tattoo (don’t know if it is cheaper there or not!). As we walk by; there was a guy getting one…around his nipple, no less. He is there on display, getting a tattoo, in the middle of the afternoon, appearing to be sober, all the while trying not to make eye contact with the curious on-lookers, or in our case: stunned, open mouthed gawkers. I suspect if he had faltered, and made eye contact, the horror in our faces would have caused him to cry like a baby. All I can say is he is a real man, a real man with a tattooed nipple, but a real man, no less!

Geez, I thought teeth whitening in the shadow of Macy’s was bad.