Fake It Until You Make It

In my weaker moments, I wonder, why did I need to mutilate my body? Why do I like to wear high heels and the feel of skirts playing against my legs? Have I become plastic? Have I become fake?

Maybe a little bit. Today, I wore fake hair to work. I wore it for two reasons: 1) in defense of some of the girls that I teach and who are constantly taunted by their male peers for wearing hair extensions and clip-ins, and 2) because I followed an impulse to pluck it up and put it on when I got to work. This is the same impulse that prompted me to buy the thing this summer whilst impulsively getting a second set of piercings in my ears (again...so re-piercing). I do that a lot.

Intently or intensely, I end up improv-ing most of my life. I spend most of my time vacilating between sticky notes with lists scrawled primly upon them and split second decisions to turn left or right or to buy a fake hair piece after surprise-violating my ears. All of these things are part of my ongoing and epic battle for control of my life and my body.

As my Dad says, "You might as well pee in the sea for all the difference it will make."

When I think about what it means to be "fake" I struggle with the idea of what it means to be "real." In my world, being "real" is a fake tv show on a fake music network. But beyond that, it's also a world filled with women who are told they are too fat, too thin, too curvy, too straight, too tall, too short, too smart, too dumb, too happy, too sad...too everything.

I'm not alone in my doubt of my body and my doubt of my choices. I'm not the only woman who has felt the need to "fix" everything. Is this wrong? I've come to decide that it's not. It's not wrong to want to feel comfortable in your body and it's even less wrong to want to feel comfortable in your mind. What is wrong is thinking these things so easily happen with anything you can do to "fix" yourself.

Today I wore fake hair to prove a point, but not just to my students. I wore it to prove something to myself. I enjoyed the fake hair. I enjoyed the different feeling and image of the fake hair. But it did feel like playing at wearing some sort of Halloween costume. One of my coworkers said, "You look like Aphrodite." I found this both flattering and embarassing. I felt like a caricature of an ideal. And that's what most people--not just women...men find themselves contained by all sorts of cultural assumptions, too--spend their lives trying to become. A image of something they think they are supposed to resemble.

Don't get me wrong; I think being compared to a legendarily beautiful woman is pretty sweet. But I think her job is pretty hard--always being perfect and expecting it from her followers. In my strongest moments, I imagine that I don't have control over anything. That my body is not my own and that written on me are the words and pictures of my culture, my fears, and my hopes. I wonder, have I become a real girl? Do my flaws show? Can I see my imperfections and find comfort in them?

So ladies (and gentlemen), raise your hair up if you're a little tarnished and flawed--maybe it's better to be Hephaestus.