Real

 I spent eleven full days in the middle of Minnesota with her. One of those days I dressed up (slightly) for a party we had at the house. I didn't bother putting on makeup, but I did do my hair. For the rest of the vacation I showered, put on deodorant, pulled my hair back into a ponytail holder, and then wore Cutters Deep Woods Repellant as perfume.

Ok -- so two things happened which I think coincide with my somewhat random introduction up there.

1. Jay forwards me this video of this makeup artist on youtube. I've seen her before -- she's a pretty girl without makeup but when she puts on makeup she totally is transformed. It's something to behold -- the power of makeup. But I love makeup so I'm not even shocked that a girl can go from average to goddess in a matter of minutes. And yes, I said minutes. Any girl knows that "putting on a face" (when practiced for more than half of your life) doesn't take long at all. The title of this video is something about femmes and how they (we) can't be trusted. The comments on this video are filled with men mostly saying how they would never wait that long for this girl to get ready (not the girl pictured in my pictures above, by the way -- just using the picture as an example of a before and after makeup illustration) and the other comments are women who brag about how they don't have to wear makeup because they are gorgeous without it.

2. Jay posts a picture of the two of us on the pontoon in Minnesota. Perfectly adorable picture but my hair is a living nightmare. I laughed and then quickly removed it. Some pictures aren't for everyone. And then I posted a message to her telling her to quit posting pictures at my least adorable.

No one complains when a woman looks like the woman in the video. No one says her makeup is over the top. Her application was flawless, and even though she looked different she was still beautiful. If her picture was posted on the singles page, she would have gotten hundreds of likes and comments. No one would have made an issue of the time she spent putting on makeup. It would have been a non-issue for 99.9 percent of the people. The problem arose when people saw what she looked like before and realized that there was a chance they might have been "duped."

Do people really think that kind of pretty happens naturally? There are beautiful people without makeup, nails, weaves, and special lighting, of course. I consider myself to be one of them. But the beauty that the majority of the people respond to daily is not effortless.

I chose to completely go to the opposite extreme with Jay. I didn't primp even the tiniest bit. I made sure I was clean and my teeth were brushed, but despite the makeup I packed, my face was naked with barely a stitch of moisturizer on it. Maybe I wanted to make sure she was okay with my "before" before I gave her my "after." Maybe I wanted her to actually see me -- the real naked me -- before I gave her the made up me. Maybe my subconscious was testing her.

My point is -- hmmm. What is my point?

Some women primp and powder and twist and gloss for the men and women who admire them. Before talking about how gross and unnatural it is for girls to spend time painting on their faces, perhaps spend eleven days on a pontoon with the girl of your dreams without any help from any cosmetics and see if you're still "on board" when it comes to believing she is beautiful. Instead of complaining about weaves and how girls are afraid to be seen without them, maybe spend more time praising girls with naturally curly hair. Maybe take "nappy" out of your vocabulary and embrace her curls and kinks.

If you want real then embrace her when she shows it to you: uneven skin tone, nonexistant eyebrows, wimpy eyelashes, unruly edges and all.