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Last Word: It's Not The Journey
What's the fun of going anywhere if you can't take your beauty products?
by Nancy Zintak
June 1, 2008
I
t’s travel season, and I’ve had a relatively dark history with luggage.
When I was a young girl, we traveled to Florida once for vacation, and when we arrived it
was discovered that an entire suitcase had flown off the roof of our car. It was the suitcase
containing all of the clothes for four kids and our mother for a week. Naturally, the more
disposable suitcase (our father’s) remained intact on the luggage rack. My mother is still
haunted by the memory of all those Florence Eiseman’s strewn across I-75 somewhere between Perry
and Tifton.
The next luggage
incident occurred while on study abroad during college. We began our studies in Florence,
Italy, and a fellow student, Sue Jacoby, thought it would be a keen idea to buy her boyfriend a
marble chess set. There are several things to note regarding this purchase:
(a) Sue chose to purchase this stunning marble chess set (weighing about 123 pounds) on the
first day of our semester abroad.
(b) It slipped Sue’s mind that she had chronic back trouble.
(c) Sue’s suitcase was an equally heavy, yellow wheelless Samsonite, quite obviously a
hand-me-down from a dead grandmother.
(d) Let me repeat: Sue had a bad back.
By the end of the semester, I had dragged that garish yellow Samsonite from Florence to
Venice to Rome to Naples to Capri and back to the U.S. I entertained fantasies about deplaning and
smashing that 800-pound marble chess set over her boyfriend’s head and then folding the two of them
up in the Samsonite and throwing it off an overpass.
But that was such a long time ago, and such great progress has been made in the luggage
industry! Today’s luggage has wheels, there’s a new suitcase with a pullout desk, there’s an
American Idol suitcase, and there’s even a “green” suitcase made of recycled water
bottles.
But what good is a suitcase if you can’t carry anything in it onto the
plane?
New travel restrictions are impossible to follow! How do these women travel with those
little things that look like shoe boxes on wheels – their suitcases are the size of my makeup bag –
not the one I pack for a trip, the one I carry in my purse everyday. I need product! I need
equipment! I need Xanex!
My hair-packing needs are enormous – Must have a filtered blow-dryer to cut down on frizz,
then the flat iron to straighten, then a small set of rollers (just six) to add a smoothing flip at
the bottom. Following that destructive behavior, I need to replenish my hair with gallons (not
ounces!) of moisturizing Emu shampoo, golden root shiner, and then, of course, finish off with a
transparent sealer – honestly, hair is one suitcase alone!
So I consulted TSA, to find out more. I’m restricted to 3 ounces of liquid and
realized that number includes foundation! I need 3 or more ounces per application: one in the
morning and a late-afternoon touch-up that that could easily fall into the 3-4 ounce
range.
Then there’s liquid concealer, which is practically a prescription, it’s so important!
Then there’s my energizing face spritz – how can you be expected to sit on an arid,
moisture-sucking airplane without face spritzer? I need a cello case just for my
makeup!
So I went back to the TSA web site for the exact amounts of hair and beauty items one may
carry on the flight. I learned more about the severely limiting 3-to-1 rule. I learned that
piercings are permitted, but best to advise the Homeland Security attendant first. Breast milk is
allowed, as is yogurt with a sealed cap. Meat cleavers and fire hydrants are not allowed,
blah, blah, blah.
So it seems impossible to carry on all that is needed, so I’ve decided I will always check
my bags. But to be safe in case of misplaced luggage, I now always travel with several
3-ounce containers of the basics, along with a couple of bottles of “breast milk”… just in
case.
