The other day, my friend R. called to confess she was worried. She had recently purchased a set of long, flowing hair extensions. They were high quality, human hair and clipped in, so she could remove them at night. When she wore her hair in a ponytail they looked completely natural, even on the breeziest of days.
A little too natural, maybe.
“The trouble is,” she explained, “This new guy I’m seeing thinks the hair is real and keeps asking how long it took to grow it. He’s obsessed with my long hair! I just can’t bring myself to tell him the truth…”
“Has he tried running his fingers through it?” I asked, wondering how the passionate hair-grabbing ritual had been avoided.
“Only the ends,” she said. “I haven’t slept with him yet.”
It was a conundrum, alright. And it got me thinking, what are acceptable levels of fake in our modern times? Which crimes are unforgivable, and which are a non-issue?
FAKE POLITENESS:
We all know it’s good manners to be polite to people you hate at social functions. There always seems to be one person you can’t stand at a party, as though they have shown up just to annoy you. Your skin prickles as the afflicted shakes your hand… limply. Or worse, leans in for a sweaty kiss on the cheek that leaves your face wet. Disgusting. You are repelled by their proximity, but still you say “Oh, how nice to see you again!”
Being nice at parties, and “Yes, darling, it was wonderful!” are two of the biggest lies going. But still we do it, and I think it’s a necessary evil, just to keep the peace.
FAKE JEWELRY:
Absolutely acceptable. The great style maven Chanel used to mix the jewel-gifts from her lovers with costume pieces for an over-the-top effect. It was she who created the fashion of elaborate faux pearl-ropes. “Why would anyone wear a REAL flower?” was her analogy. “Fakes, darling.”
FAKE HANDBAGS:
This is another story altogether. While I was walking home from the hair salon the other day, I spied a street vendor selling fake Louis Vuitton handbags. I have always taken the stance that only wealthy foreign women and professional escorts buy Louis Vuitton – it’s not very cool, actually. But I was in the mood for mischief, so I bought a mid-sized LV knock-off for $30. I wanted to see if anyone would ask me whether it was real or not, and whether they would profess scorn or even give a damn.
I carried it around for a week and aside from some glares on the subway, the only person who said anything was my friend M., who sarcastically remarked, “Nice purse.”
“I’m experimenting for an article I'm writing,” I replied defensively, suddenly embarrassed by the knock off.
“Well, you have to carry it around, not me,” she said. “It’s not even the right pattern. If you want a good fake I’ll take you to Chinatown.”
I went home and retired the purse to my closet. The strap was uncomfortable on my shoulder, and my experiment was done. The moral of the story: fake handbags are an unacceptable alternative to the real thing. Buy a no-name bag over a faux-name bag.
FAKE BREASTS:
People are split down the middle on this issue. So many women are worried about whether they ‘have enough’ and yet there are long term side effects such as rupturing, capsular contracture, and rippling. I know a girl who had a car accident, and her seat belt permanently ‘crinkled’ and hardened her implant. How is this attractive?
At an uptown bar last week I was confronted by the issue more directly. A guy was passing around a SILICONE IMPLANT!
“Why do you have this?” I asked, incredulous.
“My girlfriend is thinking about getting them, and I wanted to carry one around to see how it felt for a couple of days,” he said. “I work for a company that manufactures them – want to touch it?”
I cannot describe the absurdity of seeing this clear plastic, circular thing being thrown around, bounced off of the wooden bar and squeezed to see if it could be burst open. My God.
And the conversations amongst the men: who likes them, who doesn’t, how creepy they are, but how hot it looks when a skinny girl has big boobs…
This is one issue that will probably never be clearly resolved.
FAKE ORGASMS:
Faking orgasms seems so 1985, so ‘When Harry Met Sally’. Should sex be about connecting and experiencing pleasure on a variety of levels, or is it simply a goal-oriented activity with a prize at the end?
I had an interesting conversation with some girlfriends recently, about who fakes it and when. One girl said that she sometimes tells her husband she is too tired to have an orgasm, and she is happy to do it, but could he please finish quickly? Now, this is a girl who spends days in bed at a time and physical exhaustion is understandable.
Another girl actually gave advice on how to fake it: “Scream a little, contract your muscles in a 3-2-1 pattern, and he will think he’s done his job, and then you can get up and go to a movie or something.”
I have heard some guys say that they fake it because their skin is sore and they are bored, or they have decided they aren’t really attracted to their partner (I guess men really are the new women?).
It seems that faking orgasms is thought to be a polite thing to do to stroke someone’s ego.
However, I think if the other person is not ‘hitting it’ you should not have to stroke anything at all.
FAKE HAIR:
Speaking from experience, it is socially acceptable to dye or bleach the hell out of your hair. I always laughed when people asked whether my platinum locks were natural, and if I was Swedish. The thing is, usually only someone under the age of 5 or over the age of 50 has WHITE HAIR! However, most women and many men color their hair and there is nothing wrong with that. The only rules are: Roots must be maintained meticulously and if you are blonde, you must use a toner and not let it get brassy.
Hair extensions vary. It’s a part of life for many ethnic cultures that have difficulty controlling ‘nappy’ hair. In this case, extensions are acceptable when they’re well done and look good. And there is nothing wrong with adding a layer of thickness if you don’t like you own texture, or to add some highlights/lowlights without a permanent commitment. But be forewarned, as in the case of my poor friend R., extensions can complicate your life.
She called me a couple of days later with a conclusion to her story.
“I fell asleep at his house, and the next day he said he really wanted to see my hair down. He GRABBED my ponytail as though to take out the elastic. I instinctively screamed and slapped his hand away and yelled, ‘I have hair extensions, okay?’ Afterward, he took me home and was being weird in the car. The last thing he said is that he supposes all women have something FAKE about them. Can you believe it? He is so over!”
Maybe the key to acceptable levels of real vs. fake is to have a cavalier attitude, and if someone dares to ask whether something is real, sigh impatiently, shrug nonchalantly, and admit nothing…unless you are in the mood to confess.
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