A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:Am I a horrible, fake person? I actually am starting to hate myself. This guy came back to mine last night and i realised I had hair extensions in, false eyelashes on, contacts in and dark makeup on!! It was projecting a complete false image, that i actually hated myself and felt bad for the guy who didn't have a clue and was attracted to the person i portrayed. I assume he probably was aware in the morning. But I just hated myself, i felt disgusting and wondered how he must of felt.l wear hair extensions for long hair, my hair isn't my natural colour, i wear coloured contacts in the evening, false eyelashes and dark makeup. I just feel so fake!! I know that those things, the hair, makeup and contacts are all my security blanket, because i am such an insecure person they give me confidence. But tomorrow i'm getting rid of my extensions and cutting my hair and dying it back to it's natural colour and then any false eyelashes i have i'm going to bin. I most likely will keep my contacts because they're harmless. But I'm just going to wear light makeup now. But knowing i'm doing that, i still feel fake and don't know if that feeling will go away and how i can do that?Do you think even after i have done all of this, i will still always be fake and projecting a false image. Because i'm really starting to hate myself and can't figure how to get rid of this feeling!!? I don't understand either how that one guy, who didn't say anything and still was sweet in the morning. Was my wake up call to change my image? Does this make sense at all!??
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (5 November 2011): I think Aunt Honesty is right - essentially it comes down to your confidence to feel okay about what you do.But I just want to add a couple of points:There has been a lot written recently - in intellectual circles as well as popular novels etc - about the way in which females 'perform' their femininity. For some women this will be a conscious "construction" - a bit like how you were describing how you "build" an image with all of this stuff that you use. For other women, femininity is about the opposite - not using any "props" at all, but just "performing" through their personality.Now you might think that the latter is a more "natural" way of behaving, and less fake. BUT, the point is that all women choose how they want to be IN PUBLIC. As soon as they make any choice at all, they are performing relative to a sense of society and being in the public eye; so even the women who seem "natural" are still operating their own choice. The vast majority of women operate somewhere in between these two extremes - you might get one woman with a very "false" looking hairstyle and yet completely natural body, or another with a very natural looking hairstyle and breast enhancements - it usually is a bit of a mixture.It sounds like you are just trying to "get on your level"and like you have been experimenting so far. Another thing that I would say is that you could be intuitively picking up on the fact that consumerism/capitalism really, really wants women to keep buying this stuff in order to make profits - so you might be picking up on the idea that this stuff is "tainted" by commerce. It should be said though, that you can also just "play" a bit with this and you don't have to get completely bought into it - in fact, it sounds like your recent rejection of most of what you were using is a very healthy way of balancing out what you are doing - a bit like chucking out all the chocolate cakes and ice-cream from your fridge and keeping maybe a small, healthier cake for a special treat!As to the guy in question - again, you sound very intuitive underneath all that stuff that you were wearing! Sounds to me like you feel he is just a straight up, nice guy and you started to like and feel safe with him. Seems like you suddenly started to realise you don't need to go to the extremes that you did because, even in a small way, this guy by comparison seemed to be very balanced in his behaviour etc. I would say what you are doing is part of a normal process of adjustment. In future, if you start to doubt your "authenticity", please remember what I said - everyone "performs" one way or another, but it is part of being normal and a social person - you can have fun with that, and play with your image and with developing your personality, without inwardly punishing yourself for doing so - it can just be fun and part of your normal expressivity.
A
female
reader, aunt honesty  +, writes (5 November 2011):
 There are plenty of girls out there who use all the things that you have listed. It doesn't mean they are fake it is just it makes them feel good about themselves and that is why they use it. Lots of girls like to dress up and do there make up to make themselves feel good. Am sure this guy knew that plenty of girls use these things and that is why it never bothered him the next day. I think this is all to do with your confidence and not these things individually. If they make you feel fake well then get rid of them and see how you feel. But you need to learn to love yourself deep down without all of these accessories. I think your issues run deeper than these objects you use. I think you are trying to cover yourself up and change yourself because you are not happy. You need to learn to love yourself either with these objects or not.
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