I perched on the cold lid of the toilet seat in my friend’s apartment, twisting a flimsy Peppa Pig-themed party hat in my hands as my friend, Suhani, maneuvered her Dyson through my hair.
After spending the previous two hours blinking back hot tears in the mirror as my hair refused to be the perfect amount of tousled, I was feeling a little giddy, girly, a bit brighter, bathed in a soft glow that had nothing to do with the hot air blowing over my face from the hair dryer. Noticing my constant fiddling with my hair, Suhani had offered to help me “get ready.” As she twirled the tool’s brush up and out of my hair, she instructed me to stand, face the mirror and flip my hair. I caught her gaze in the mirror, and she smiled.
“I just love helping my friends get ready and getting ready with them,” she said, adjusting her own matching birthday hat. “It’s like an act of helping each other become the best versions of themselves.”
As she unplugged the Dyson, handed me back my Peppa Pig party hat and rejoined the party, I stood there, a little bit awed. I felt transformed, ready to take on the birthday party and the bar-hopping that awaited us — and it had nothing to do with my new blowout. It had everything to do with that small act of kindness, of implicit understanding and unconditional assistance in getting ready with friends.
We had, in other words, participated in a small microcosm of the unique “getting ready” ritual.
As early as my freshman year of high school, I began to learn that no dance, party or event with my friends could be properly enjoyed without participating in this little tradition. No one told me this was the way — there was no section on how to approach the preparation for a night out in the little purple adolescent health booklets they passed out in middle school, nor did I watch my mom do this growing up. “Getting ready” was an intimate, intentional act of vulnerability, and everyone around me seemed to understand this.
My first exposure to this sort of exclusive ritual was during my freshman year of high school homecoming dance preparty. These were almost, if not equally as important, as the afterparties (though the preparties were more exclusive). This was your chance to truly bond with your designated friend group for the night by communing together in someone’s bedroom — or, in my case, a barren, teal-painted room with walls of floor-to-ceiling mirrors — and forging a bond by putting on your makeup and buckling your heels together before heading out into the social performance of the dance.
This was an entirely foreign concept to me, even though I grew up with a sister 11 months younger than me. I shared a room (and a bathroom) with her my entire life, but I never felt as if I was embarking on something sacred every time we discreetly nudged each other’s makeup to get more counter space in the bathroom. Most of the time, we got ready in tandem, her with her overstuffed floral-print makeup bags and me with my solitary concealer-mascara-eyebrow gel formula.
There was a hum of camaraderie when I arrived at my group’s preparty house, a fine, vanilla-scented mist of Victoria’s Secret “Warm & Cozy” glittering in the suspended evening light. I was the last to arrive, as I took my time zipping up my dress and curling my eyelashes at home, unaware of the social gaffe I was creating. I had missed a crucial step in the unvoiced requirements to have a good night — I was not going to “get ready” with my friends.
Seven mirrored reflections stared back at me as I took in the scene from the doorway, eyes wide with my fading tan Target heels dangling in my hand. Fetty Wap’s “1738” blared from someone’s tiny iPhone speaker. I had never seen so many people — so many girls — chattering and squealing and asking, “Do you think my hair looks alright?” in one place before. I stood there, feet rooted in the carpeted entryway, and tried not to be stunned at the swath of femininity and friendship before me.
I’d gotten ready with other people, sure — at one point, I shared a bathroom with all four of my siblings. I’d buckled my sister’s heels, checked her mascara and made sure she didn’t have lip gloss on her teeth before heading out to a birthday party. I’d heard my brothers jab at each other for knocking over each other’s toothbrushes, and I’d jockeyed for elbow space over the sink. I had never really, truly gotten ready with friends like this. I did that individually, arriving polished and zipped up in my dress when the other girls were still in sweatpants.
I still had fun at the homecoming dances — I posed for pictures on breakaway walls on Lake St. Clair, I tried to “juju on that beat” on the blue tarp passing for a dance floor in the gym — but I couldn’t help but feel a little bit bummed as I stepped into the noise of the gym with my friends. There was some intangible, fuzzy bit of experience I was missing out on — some unvoiced thread of connection that tied all the girls that got ready together. Something that, if I knew that I had it, I would have had just a little more fun that night.
Throughout my time at the University of Michigan, this difference became all the more apparent; it was almost an unspoken mandate. I quickly learned that freshman year when I saw all my friends dutifully filter into one of their dorm rooms on the eve of a Cantina push. I’d hang back at first, trying to curl my hair in the relative comfort of my desk under my lofted bed and would hear their chatter drift through my open door.
“Do you think this top is better for tonight? Or should I do my blue one?”
“Can I use your perfume? Mine’s all out.”
“I messed up my wing again. Can you do the eyeliner?”
Whenever I rolled up to the pregame, the pregame to the pregame or the actual event itself after getting my outfit and makeup sorted on my own, I felt almost bashful. A little bit wrong, even, especially when all my friends around me were in various states of disarray — tie-back tops strewn over mirrors, tubes of mascara tipped over, soldiers of various lipglosses stacked haphazardly on whatever surface space was free. Here I was, already prepared for the house party, bar or dorm-friendly version of “Around the World,” social mask and mode already set in place — and they were still deep in the throes of preparation.
As I headed towards a Halloween pregame dressed as Indiana Jones last semester, I was spectacularly failing to exude his bravado and confidence. My hat refused to stay tipped just so on the top of my hair, my mascara was pooling underneath my eyes and the frizz in my hair was probably visible to anyone in a half-mile radius. I was dreading the celebratory photoshoot we certainly would do almost as much as the hours weaving in and out of loud, humid house parties.
After walking in and settling on the couch, seeing the buzz of “getting ready” already well underway — a siren queen adjusting the shell accouterments on her skirt in one room, Joker applying her peel-off tattoos across her collarbones near the coffee table, Taylor Swift lining her lips in the bathroom mirror at the kitchen table — I was hit with a pang of FOMO. Here I was, already done up for the night, and I had nothing to do but wallow in my certainly-failed costume and lack of intrinsic bonding and relation to everyone else around me.
Without even so much as turning around, my Taylor Swift-impersonating friend asked me if she could put some dirt on my face and if I could write a “13” on her hand. I was shocked for a second and then readily agreed.
Here was an opportunity to participate in this bonding, in the ritual I had observed for so long with a very distinct amount of separation. I didn’t necessarily want to get ready alone, but whether it was for my design fraternity’s formal or a relaxing wine night, the pressure I felt to (literally) put my best face forward was too much. Just the thought of showing up in any state less than perfect, of arriving with messed-up hair and smudged makeup, made my heart skitter.
I sat on the couch as my friend dipped her thumb in the brown eyeshadow palette and dabbed “bruises” on my cheek and forehead, while others took turns commenting on where I needed more injuries or fake blood. It wasn’t glamorous, but I found myself feeling measurably better by the minute. I found my frustration and dour mood had all but disappeared. I was now excited at the prospect of going out after their help.
Even though the makeup did cause a friend’s mom to ask if I got beat up before going out, whenever people commented on it, I proudly credited my friends. “They did it,” I’d say, clutching my red solo cup full of some mysterious neon-blue drink. “They helped me get ready.”
They helped me in a very literal sense, and they helped me in a very abstract, indefinite sense. Participating in the act of getting ready together imbued my night with a sense of wholeness, completeness and bonding with the girls around me in a way my attempts to mimic this ritual had not. They had helped me be the best version of myself, to quote my friend, and not just in the sense of being the best portrayal of Indiana Jones on a budget. I had arrived at their house in a vulnerable state, un-ready and not confident in the face I was going to share with the great wide world of engineering fraternity Halloween parties. Rather than casting me out to fix it myself, they took in my imperfect state and helped me build it up to how I wanted it to be.
Getting ready with my friends wasn’t the magical solution to the less-than-perfect nights out. It wasn’t the ultimate predictor of experiencing three successful, wildly dazzling hours on the Skeeps dance floor. But it was a milestone for my friendships, no matter if we were best friends or merely lecture friends. Once we crossed that invisible line, our friendship shifted a bit, almost imperceptibly. It was strengthened by our participation in sharing our vulnerable states. With every shared perfume spritz or rushed eyeliner fix, this ritual — this tradition — has become so quintessentially right for my nights out.
Well after I affixed the paper Peppa Pig hat back on my head, as I was swept up into the night’s events of the gauging the Skeeps line creeping into the parking lot to a co-op with live music to the lobby of Pizza House, I found that I walked a little slower — stood a little straighter. As we moved from party to party and finally closed the door to my room, I felt an intangible bit of lightness, barely out of reach, that had nothing to do with how my post-blowout hair looked.
I carefully placed the paper hat on the corner of my dresser next to my travel makeup bag, spinning it so Peppa could see herself in the mirror.
Statement Columnist Charlotte Parent can be reached at cmparent@umich.edu.