I flatter myself that I live fairly well at Mount Holyoke. With room and board covered, I can devote my extra money to securing all the necessities of college life. Most of my cash goes to buying snacks, doing laundry, and maintaining my supplies of pens and of basic toiletries. Let me emphasize the word basic. My shower tote lives in the bathroom and contains only shampoo, conditioner, soap, floss, toothbrush, and toothpaste. There's a razor too, but the cold Massachusetts winters make furry legs an asset, so it won't see much use until Spring. When I get to my room, my post-shower beauty and hygiene regimen requires only a hearty dollop of lotion--body lotion only. I've never gone in for that special face stuff. If my face thinks it's too high and mighty for the Lubriderm I smear on my bum, it can just think again.

So coming home for Christmas is something of a shock to my value-system (i.e. my devaluing of fancy beauty products). Home feels familiar only until I step into the bathroom I share with my younger sister. Entering there is like walking through the Stargate into an alien universe of bottles and jars and vials of one potion after another, each guaranteed to do something miraculous and make you look like Nicole Kidman. I only vaguely remember a time when my sister mourned her ultra-pale, Kidmanesque skin. I seem to remember an occasion on which she wished she could tan instead of burn, but the memory is faint. For at least the last seven years, she determinedly celebrated her pigmentless translucence by religiously applying sunscreen at every season of the year. Dozens of bottles of sunblock, SPF 300 and up, hide in drawers and on the shelves of the medicine cabinet. There they mingle with neglected bottles of acne cure-alls (though I confess, not all of these are Stacey's--in my time I, too, fell victim to the promise of "clearer skin in three days"). There are name-brand products, which get you to spend more money by insisting that they only work when paired with a supplement of the same brand. Heaven forbid Oil of Olay should moisturize skin cleansed by Neutrogena! Or there are the skin-clearing kits, like the Proactiv system of infomercial fame, peddled by Vanessa Williams and Jessica Simpson. Somehow it's hard to reconcile the luxurious, marbled bathrooms of those stars with the distinctly un-glamorous cardboard box and three plastic bottles I find inside this so called miracle package. Of course, the problem with these kits is that you inevitably run out of one component before the others, and unfortunately there's no way to buy more of just the overnight spot-zapping incredi-gel without buying the complete set. The whole system is incomplete and therefore useless, unless you suck it up and buy a whole nother box. Of course, after a few such cases, you end up with four extra bottles of squeaky-clean face cleanser, mm-mm moisturizer, and submarine-deep algae face mask that clutter up your cabinets while you try to squeeze enough spot-zapper out of five tiny, dried up tubes to cover the zit swelling dead center on your forehead. You end up calling for your sixth order in three months and asking if you get a discount for buying in bulk. That, anyway, is how I explain to myself the litter of half-empty and untouched Proactiv products in the cabinet under the sink.

But skin is only as good as what you cover it with, and my sister has the finest in make-up. Until I arrived home this year, I didn't realise how many different ways of lining one's eyes there actually are. Now I poke nosily through her stash of powders, smudge pots, pencils, and paintbrushes, testing the difference between liquid and solid liners and trying to understand why anyone would take so stiff a brush to sensitive eye skin. I don't even attempt to fathom the mystery that blending and matching shades of eye shadow presents. I just accept the assurance that there is, in fact, a difference between "shimmering opal" and "mother of pearl," despite all sensory evidence to the contrary. I merely note that the abundance of mascara wands could equip a miniature dance corps of chimney sweeps singing "Step-in-Time," dancing around on the jars and bottles that have set up permanent residence around the sink.

Various hair-grooming concoctions live on my counter: one to make hair wavy, another to make it straight. One that smells suspiciously like salt-water and claims to make your hair look "blown by an ocean breeze," and one that advertises itself as a "shine-enhancer" but that I secretly believe is canola oil. There are squeeze bottles sticky with goo that will bring out red highlights or enhance the brilliance of Stacey's natural brunette. Each bottle is from a different era of hairstyle, much like the curlers and straighteners that live in the bottom drawer with the now unused blow drier. There's a curl-enhancing mousse from the permed look she sported for all of three months. But three months is far too long for a single hairstyle, so in the third month of the perm she bought a (now neglected) "smooth and sleek" gel. I can still remember the chemical steam that enveloped our bathroom when the gelled, damp hair was pressed through a straightening iron. There are cute butterfly clips leftover from our middle school years and jumbo clips from the time when Stacey's hair was so long it dangled down to her navel. The most recent products are aimed at her current look: the punk-rocker pixie. A "molding gel" sits in the place of honor by the sink, making me yearn to take a handful of it for myself and "mold" my hair into a swan-shaped helmet that would impress even the boys from A Flock of Seagulls. Bobby pins are sprinkled like confetti over every possible surface of our bathroom. They turn up in every drawer and on every shelf, all over the counter and on the back of the toilet, on the floor, even in the shower.

I find the shower the most puzzling part of our bathroom these days. It is as stocked as the other nooks, but the products there are more surprising. There is shampoo in what appears to be a three liter bottle, and a fist-sized, half-empty pot of very highbrow conditioner. The frustrating thing about having a pot of liquid in the shower is the difficulty it presents in trying to get the conditioner out without letting water into the container. You have to unscrew the top and scoop the cream out in a claw-like movement, then try to screw the top back onto the jar with only one hand while the stuff you're about to use--growing more diluted by the second--seeps through the fingers of your other paw. I haven't yet figured out the best way to manage it. Shampoo and conditioner is generally all I use, but that hasn't kept me from investigating the other cosmetic concoctions. There's a salt scrub in a big jar that's supposed to smell like gingerbread, except it's too salty, so it ends up smelling like vinegar. There are three mini jars of French gommage (another scrub) that make me wonder why my seventeen-year-old sister wants to smell like "Merlot," "Cabernet," and "Sauvignon." There is a combination shampoo/body wash/bubble bath that smells very like the pumpkin its label professes it resembles. But there's something kind of rotten about the after-smell. The lingering note at the end of an inhalation gives one the same sensation that accompanies a swig of orange juice after you've just gargled with Listerine. And the pumpkin gunk is altogether too thick and syrupy to be a shampoo, though I imagine it must do quite well as a body wash. The wire rack that hangs over the shower head holds the requisite facial wash and two of my sister's toothbrushes, since she never manages to brush her teeth at the sink these days. If she's just showered, I know to look for the toothpaste on the side of the tub, and that I'll find a cold, wet washcloth on the tub floor that the OCD side of me can't help wringing out and hanging up. Used to be I would also find long strands of hair plastered to the shower's tile wall and wadded up in drain, but the advantage of the pixie cut is that her hair is too short to get caught in the drain and irritate my compulsive sensibilities.

The most bewitching thing about the shower, however, is not what it contains, but what it lacks. I stood baffled the first time I showered this vacation, incredulous that among all the goodies and marvels tucked into every corner of the room, the one essential was no where to be found. Dripping wet, I wrapped myself in a towel and went to my parents' room, where from under their sink I grabbed a new bar of plain, ivory soap.