Khadija Magardie
Body Language
A close friend of mine, being born, as she woefully puts it, “without flowing-in-the-wind, shampoo-ad locks”, has had a love-hate relationship with tubes of hair straightener since her teens.
Of course, like the numerous women who still use skin-lightening creams, it is entirely her prerogative to use disguises to hide things; in her case, a “kroeskop” (curly hair) and, by extension, her racial origins.
The dubiousness only creeps in when, like many others before and after her, enquiries are met with complete denial. My good friend has become such a master of the art of subterfuge that even her own husband doesn’t have a clue that his better half had, once upon a time, anything less than the sleek, crease-free mane that cascades over his pillow every night.
The red-brick-house-and-white-picket-fence brigade assure us that they love their other half “warts and all”. Which has a bit of a hollow ring to it, if one considers how many of them out there are managing a life of whoring and playing good spouse, without the slightest twinge of conscience.
The reality is that, far from our hearts being filled with emotion as we get the whiff of gas from a farting husband or a look at the pallid mammary tools of a wife, we tend to feel rather disappointed. Not so much that the natural processes of ageing, or biological functions come as a shock, but rather that the person involved has given up the act.
“The act”, of course, is men and women resorting to extraordinary tactics to create, and maintain a perfect image. There are women out there who are so disciplined at rising at dawn to apply mascara and blusher, that their partners have never seen their plain faces. And there are men out there who would rather sleep in their Levi’s than expose their pale chicken legs to a woman, on the beach or in the bedroom. In short, we have become the masters of illusion.
Even though men are also becoming increasingly vanity conscious, women are by far the biggest culprits. We fake the hue in our cheeks, the curls in our hair and the length of our legs.
That is why entire industries are built around faking it; from the corsets of yore to the Wonderbra of today. There is also a connection between these purveyors of all that is fake and an acute lack of practicality or common sense. After all, walking around in high heels is disastrous for the posture and our feet, and it is impossible to type with scarlet-painted, 15cm fingernails.
Yet women, even before plastic surgery came along, have faked on spending scandalous amounts of money on tanning lotions, anti-wrinkle creams and padded bras, all in a bid to stave off the inevitable for as long as possible. And to please men.
Of course, there is the clich that no man wants to come home to a woman in her torn nightie, or with avocado on her face.
Women who have just given birth are warned “never, ever” to allow their man to see them in the stomach-flattening girdle so crucial in squeezing off the post-birth kilos, because he would be “put off”. This, one supposes, is only if witnessing the birth itself did not send him retching. The list is endless.
Consumerism caters for a range of disguises designed to suit women’s every need. From “barely there” underwear to “concealers”, capitalising on the female need to become what she isn’t is a sure money-spinner.
Women say they are under pressure to conform. Just as some people are inclined to be put off eating a gourmet meal by glancing at the conditions in the restaurant kitchen, and particularly whether or not the chef washes his hands, many men say they appreciate the primped, proper and “ready” woman who meets them at the door or the foot of the bed, but find the road there less palatable.
If relationships were all about love “through thick and thin”, it is now necessary to add “with a touch of concealer here, or perhaps a hint of padded breast there” to make it more realistic. And with beauty nothing more than an illusion no Wonderbra is a surefire guarantee that whoever the woman intends to keep will not stray anyway.