Welcome to Shelf Life, where Olympians are breaking down the beauty routines carrying them through the 2024 Paris Games. Today, Team USA rugby center Ilona Maher reveals the secret to indestructible braids (it’s not just hair gel), the deodorant that keeps her fresh for hours on end of high-impact exercise, and the reason she’s always wearing lipstick on the pitch.
Even on a rugby pitch full of women, it’s easy to spot Ilona Maher. Her face, instantly recognizable from TikTok (where she has more than a million followers), is often accentuated with poppy red or ruddy terra cotta lips framing bright white flashes of her mouth guard—a necessity when your job involves head-on collisions and keeping possession of the ball at any cost.
Maher would rather subvert stereotypes of female rugby players than give in to them. She wears makeup on the field just like she would anywhere else, she says, and competing in the Paris 2024 Olympics is no exception.
Much like the last time Maher joined Team USA rugby at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, she plans to spend her downtime in Paris documenting the goings-on in the Olympic Village to her massive social media following—and not just for fun. “It’s not just for me… It is for me, of course, but also for my sport,” Maher says. “Olympics are where sports get seen and people get made, and I want people to tune in to rugby and have their daughters be like, ‘Hey dad, I want to try that. Mom, that looks really cool.’”
And given Maher’s instant likeability on and off the pitch, it’s easy to tune in. During our chat, Maher broke down the beauty routine she uses head to toe during and after rugby tournaments, including her signature lipstick, the deodorant that keeps her feeling fresh, and the reason she actually prefers to have really, really, really dirty hair sometimes.
Hair
“The dirtier [my hair], the better at times. A lot of us don’t wash our hair throughout the whole tournament schedule because [we play] six games over three days. Before games we like to get our hair braided because it’s going to be in scrums [where players pack closely together with their heads down], we’re tackling, so it’s going to get messed up. I get it braided with a lot of gel just so it can withstand rugby. You want your hair to stay in whatever style it’s in.
