Beauty under construction

SUNDAY morning at Edinburgh's Royal Highland Centre may seem an unlikely setting for an event devoted to glamour and gorgeousness. Yet here I am, amid a crowd comprising thousands of visibly excited women, all of whom have come along to discover the latest secrets and hottest new trends of the global beauty industry.

Scottish Beauty 2008 is the highlight of our national beauty trade's calendar, an exhibition for industry professionals where some 150 health and beauty companies showcase their wares and flag up forthcoming trends for those who like to give Mother Nature's gift a helping hand.

It is easy to dismiss the world of body moisturisers, false eyelashes and nail polish as something trivial, but the statistics tell a different story. The average 30-year-old woman spends £253 a month on beauty products and treatments – more than 16 per cent of her salary and totalling £180,000 over a lifetime. There are some 32,000 beauty employees in the UK, and the global industry is worth £6.2 billion. That's a lot of lipstick.

Approaching the entrance, I spot a pair of women wearing white tabards and flip-flops, their fluorescent-blonde hair acting as a beacon. I stumble towards them, joining more and more immaculately groomed women.Once inside the vast exhibition hall, I'm eager to deduce which beauty product or brand is going to dominate my bathroom cabinet for the foreseeable future. It's not a difficult task: the first display that confronts me is the spectacular Fake Bake display stand – a temple to self-tanning, an enormous plastic altar at which hundreds of women are worshipping.

Wearing fuchsia-pink blouses, white shorts and vertiginous heels, a posse of terracotta-hued women (and one token Adonis, wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan 'MAN' – unnecessary, because he's the only one in the room) are brandishing spray-guns, ready to gild pasty newcomers with an artificial tan. I rush past, hastily concealing my pale arms.

It soon becomes apparent that fake-tanning – and the extensive paraphernalia that accompanies it – dominates this exhibition. Of the myriad ways in which Scotland's women might choose to enhance their appearance, it is clear that looking as though you've spent a fortnight in the Mediterranean is fundamental to being considered fashionably attractive. I count eight stands devoted solely to spray-tanning, one of which features the bizarre sight of a girl spraying frantically while wearing a pink sequined evening dress. Her assistant, in just a scrap of a bikini, is being re-sprayed every time I pass, and soon turns a deep shade of Girls Aloud.

There is just one lonely stand featuring sunbeds – it's not popular. Bronzing may be in, but burning is clearly out. "People don't want to damage their skin, and fake tan is so advanced that it looks as good as the real thing," says a Fake Bake representative. "It's just getting more and more popular."

By midday, I've spent so much time ogling the tanning stands that I begin to wonder if I have inadvertently picked up a coating of the stuff by proximity. I move on, picking my way past volunteers having their teeth whitened, nails painted and shoulders pummelled.

By this point, I wonder if I've been identified as an imposter. I'm paranoid that my make-up-free face and pale skin are being eyed suspiciously, and that the bacteria on my face is visible to all these beauty insiders.

As I work my way towards the back, the stands get noticeably sparklier and tackier. Before I know it, I've left behind Dermalogica and St Tropez and I'm browsing stands named 'Glamorous Bra Straps', 'For Now Art Tattoos' and 'Putting on the Glitz'. I'm surrounded by coloured hairpieces, tooth gems and diamante eyelash extensions.

I'm drawn to the relative safety of the Xtreme Lashes stand. After all, how extreme can eyelashes really be? As it turns out, terrifyingly so. They can be brightly coloured, encrusted with crystals, or just freakishly long. The saleswoman talks me through them, and I can't help but notice that her Xtreme Lashes are so extreme that they're grazing her eyebrows. With every blink they tangle with her brows, only serving to draw attention to how sparse her natural lashes really are.

Soon I've reached the back of the exhibition, and one of the highlights of the day: the Scottish Nail Technician of the Year competition. Behind a velvet rope sit some 50 nail technicians, silently buffing in unison. Each competitor is given up to two and a half hours to perfect the nails of their bored-looking volunteers, who, when suitably filed and polished, solemnly approach the judges' pavilion, fingers outstretched. The four judges sit behind a screen with a slot at hand-level. Volunteers shuffle along, placing their freshly-polished hands through the slot for each judge to scrutinise. Who knew it was such a serious business?

At another stand, a row of women are trying out some rapidly vibrating toning machines designed for the gym, shrieking with delight as their buttocks jiggle violently. Now, I accept that beauty necessitates a degree of pain, but must it also involve such lack of dignity? I step on, figuring I have nothing to lose.

As it turns out, I do: my lunch. With parts of me jiggling that I didn't know existed, I feel as if my internal organs are being rearranged. Feeling a little nauseous, I ask one of the representatives what these machines actually do, and he points wordlessly at a sign reading "Burns Fat! Lose Weight!" To say that I'm sceptical is an understatement. I step off and spend the next 20 minutes with my eyeballs still vibrating.

I'm confused. I've no confidence in the promises these people are making, and I'm even getting conflicting advice from different stands. One adviser tells me I'm scrubbing my face too hard, another says not hard enough.

The only thing that they really all have in common is that they're offering a solution. There's a sense of scare tactics that I'm uncomfortable with and they're being sold to salon owners, who may pass them on to their customers with complete conviction. It feels to me like a chain of misinformation.

It's also not clear how much of this is all that new. It seems it's the same old stuff with a bit of rebranding thrown in to make it look fresh. Still, there are trends emerging. The stands offering natural and organic treatments are popular, with one salon owner telling me: "More of my customers are asking about organic products, so I'm thinking about stocking them."

Teeth-whitening is another popular procedure, with shoals of salon owners crowding round the Denta-White and Hollywood Smiles stands. A few even shell out £200 to try it on the spot.

As the afternoon draws to a close and the fake tan supply (as well as the pale volunteers) begins to run out, I decide it's time to make an exit and head off to catch the shuttle bus back into town. A group of disgruntled beauticians waiting at the temporary stop say that there hasn't been a bus for two hours and there's no sign of one on the horizon.

I begin to panic. Might I be stuck here in this beauty desert with only organic face scrub for sustenance? Happily not. After 40 agonising minutes, the bus pulls into view and we pile on, the acrid stench of fake tan filling the air. As we pull away, I wonder what I've learned about the beauty world… and what I've learned about myself.

Well, I know that you should never settle for the eyelashes, skin tone or pores that nature bestowed upon you. I know that I have a bacteria-riddled face and am deathly, deathly pale. I also know that all these imperfections can (and must) be fixed with a swipe of my credit card. It's an ugly reality, no?