Ilona Maher’s $10 Lipstick Doesn’t Budge, Even In Head-On Rugby Collisions — Interview
Welcome to Shelf Life, the place Olympians are breaking down the sweetness routines carrying them through the 2024 Paris Video video games. Proper now, Workers USA rugby center Ilona Maher reveals the important thing to indestructible braids (it’s not merely hair gel), the deodorant that retains her latest for hours on end of high-impact prepare, and the rationale she’s on a regular basis sporting lipstick on the pitch.
Even on a rugby pitch full of girls, it’s easy to determine Ilona Maher. Her face, instantly recognizable from TikTok (the place she has better than 1,000,000 followers), is often accentuated with poppy pink or ruddy terra cotta lips framing shiny white flashes of her mouth guard—a necessity when your job entails head-on collisions and preserving possession of the ball at any worth.
Maher would pretty subvert stereotypes of female rugby avid gamers than give in to them. She wears make-up on the sphere equivalent to she would wherever else, she says, and competing throughout the Paris 2024 Olympics isn’t any exception.
Similar to the ultimate time Maher joined Workers USA rugby on the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, she plans to spend her downtime in Paris documenting the goings-on throughout the Olympic Village to her massive social media following—and by no means just for gratifying. “It is not just for me… It is for me, in spite of everything, however as well as for my sport,” Maher says. “Olympics are the place sports activities actions get seen and different folks get made, and I want people to tune in to rugby and have their daughters be like, ‘Hey dad, I want to attempt that. Mom, that seems really cool.’”
And given Maher’s instantaneous likeability on and off the pitch, it’s easy to tune in. All through our chat, Maher broke down the sweetness routine she makes use of head to toe all through and after rugby tournaments, collectively along with her signature lipstick, the deodorant that retains her feeling latest, and the rationale she really prefers to have really, really, really dirty hair usually.
Hair
“The dirtier [my hair]the upper at events. Loads of us don’t wash our hair all by means of all the occasion schedule on account of [we play] six video video games over three days. Sooner than video video games we desire to get our hair braided on account of it ought to be in scrums [where players pack closely together with their heads down]we’re tackling, so it ought to get tousled. I get it braided with numerous gel in order that it should probably stand as much as rugby. You want your hair to stay in regardless of mannequin it’s in.
