I know what you are all thinking. “That girl is such a natural beauty”. You weren’t? What gives? All us girls know that to leave the house looking like this would be social suicide. But why? Coco the Clown isn’t bang on trend for spring summer 2012? Jeeeeeeez.
We are all guilty of a little fakery. Whether you wear that uber bra that makes you look four cup sizes bigger, meticulously stick on fake lashes before you go out for the night or stain your bed sheets orange trying to get that perfect sunkissed look, it’s all the same.
But the interesting point is the difference between what us girls think is too much and what the men folk around us deem to be unacceptable. My first boyfriend once informed me that he hated it when I wore makeup, yet hadn’t even noticed my existence at college until I lost the glasses in favour of contacts, and put a bit of makeup on. Funny that.
I love a fake eyelash or two and I fake tan in the winter months to stop people mistaking me for Casper the Friendly Ghost. A tan really makes you feel your best, and as I don’t live in a country where we see the sun on more than a monthly basis, fake tan is the only way (believe me, I am working on my living situation…) The idea of possible skin cancer on a sunbed counts that one out for me, so slathering myself in creosote coloured lotion is the only way, and I go through fits and starts as to whether I wish to be a bronzed goddess or pale and interesting.
I wear makeup as not to scare small children, and sometimes I dye my hair, but as April will tell you, not often enough. (When will you notice those roots??!!!) So where do we draw the line? A friend of mine rushed out and purchased the new La Senza boob enhancing bra, but after a few weeks she cast it aside in favour of her trusty old bras. When questioned on this point she admitted to feeling bad, as when she met guys she felt that she was false advertising the size of her boobs. Which made me laugh. Men I have dated have marveled at the difference when one of my old housemates wore her fake hair and didn’t, citing it to be false advertising to new boys on the block, and my Dad often looks at me with incredulous wonder when I am at the fake tan stage where I look like I have been down a mine, and simply asks “Why?”.
The boy perspective is often amusing to us girls who are so used to the rituals of layering on lotions and potions, colours and scents to make us feel our best. First boyfriend could smell fake tan a mile off and often accused me of smelling like ‘a digestive’. I have laughed with friends about the ritual of dying the bed sheets orange, or disasters where you wake up and realise you fell asleep without washing your hands and now have palms the colour of terracotta. I love fake lashes, makeup and hair dye but I draw the line at actually clipping someone else’s discarded hair into my own, while other girls see nothing wrong with tinting their eyebrows, bleaching their bum holes and rocking a head of hair that once belonged to someone else.
I think for me the real answer is that it is simply too much bother. I don’t mind myself too much without all the additions, so I can’t be arsed to get up three hours early just to make myself look like someone else.
But I want your opinion! Girls, what are you prepared to do to look good, and what is a waste of time? And men, what are your thoughts on the multi million pound industry that is fakery?
What do you think? What counts as enhancement, and what counts as false advertising?
