The Look: Polished versus Unpolished

Wig Styling by Benita Blocker. (The polished look)

This article was inspired by the 2016 Olympics in Rio surrounding Gabby Douglas' hair.

I disagreed with negative comments that I heard firsthand such as:

"I can not believe she came back to the Olympics with her looking like that again after all the complaints about her hair at the 2012 Olympics.  What did she expect?"

In my opinion, Gabby Douglas showed up to the Olympics to compete and win.  She was not in a pageant or a sales meeting presenting a sales pitch.  She is an athlete.  It is a little hard to worry about hairline edges holding straight while executing gymnastics.

This insensitivity to Gabby Douglas' natural texture being unique to her hit a personal note with me.

A polished look is typically composed of new clothes, new shoes, smooth edges, pearl necklace, pearl earrings, no hair out of place and so on.

I had a similar situation going on while working for Carolinas Healthcare System.  As a hairdresser at a nursing home, dressy casual was my standard for the amount of manual labor required to care for the residents in a skilled nursing facility.  Apparently, my last manager really never understood the scope of the work that I performed in the nursing home beauty shop.

A meeting between my last manager and the Regional Human Resources Director yielded such comments as "you are very polished" by the Regional HR Director all the way to "you trying to get me fired" by my last manager.  Apparently, he did not expect me to dress up for the meeting.  He apparently did not know me well.

I know how to dress on many different levels.  It is all costume.  True beauty and true ugliness comes from inside the soul.

To clarify, unkempt edges has nothing to do with intellect nor skill set.  It just means that one is confident enough to be seen in one's own God given beauty without the need to submit themselves to look like the "polished" upper echelon all the time.