Damage Control

(HarperCollins Publishing, 273 pages)

FOR one woman, sitting exposed and vulnerable on a masseuse’s table rekindles painful memories of challenges her mother and grandmother endured. For another woman, a bad haircut leaves her in a choking rage.This collection of 21 short essays and 14 interviews, edited by Emma Forrest (pictd)<$>, is based on the premise that no one knows a woman’s body like the professionals who cater to its hygiene and upkeep. Most of the vignettes focus on women who achieve philosophical enlightenment while receiving services, or on the beauticians and therapists who perform those services.

While the essays largely make for entertaining reading, it’s sometimes hard to tell whether the stories have a point. In Felix Gets a Hcut<$>, Maggie Paley recounts the adventure of having her uncooperative cat professionally groomed. The five-page account is amusing, and there may be a metaphor in there somewhere, but a woman reader might not feel the sense of empowerment the book subtly promises.

Other essays are more direct. Francesca Lia Block eloquently describes the optimism she felt when she first underwent plastic surgery, and the subsequent lifetime of pain she endured when the results didn’t deliver what she expected.

The book, subtitled Women on the Therapists, Beauticians, and Trainers Who Navigate Their Bes, <$>opens with Academy Award nominee Minnie Driver’s insightful summary of how her frizzy hair defined her teenage years.

A few essays later, Helen Oyeyemi chronicles her obsession to straighten her hair, adding a line that might help men understand a woman’s fixation with a perfect haircut.

“Many men are demoralised by balding; many women are paralysed by scissors,” she writes, suggesting that a woman’s power is wrapped up in control of her hair, control that must unfortunately be ceded unilaterally to a hairdresser.

Women who read these stories will likely see themselves in an occasional vignette, but because the stories are more anecdotal than inspirational, the book doesn’t have a clear message. Whereas The Vagina Mongues <$>preached empowerment and pride, Damage Control seems like a tentative experiment to see whether massages and pedicures can inspire insightful narratives.

The experiment occasionally succeeds, but it tends to fall flat in the interviews. The beauticians and hairstylists do provide interesting behind-the-scenes details of their professions, but a reader looking for deeper meaning will probably be disappointed.

Even men might find some stories intriguing,ch as The Stripper’s Best Friend<$>, an anonymous account of a makeup artist in a strip club whose daily activities also include providing a sympathetic ear for strippers emotionally drained by their jobs.

As a straight read, Damage Control is often engaging and entertaining, and the stories are brief enough to appeal to readers with short attention spans. But despite its feminist overtones, the book is less a call to action than a snapshot of female reactions to the idiosyncrasies that go along with being a woman.