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There are masses of orange people running about on our planet but those shades of orange overly fake-tanned people among us just kill me. It’s becoming more and more difficult for me to refrain from laughing every time I see one but these days there are usually clusters of them about. Clowns be darned, who knew you’d have such stiff competition from the so-called “normal” corner.

reality television

reality television (Photo credit: the|G|™)

Now, admittedly, I caved and had my face and shoulders done. Once. And only lightly. It wasn’t worth it. It went from yellowish brown to orange-ish brown (yes, high-end salon, too) and only lasted about a week. Thank the tanning Gods that be. I also admit to using bronzing cream on my legs in summer when I wear dresses bare-legged but you’d never know it, it’s the lightest shade of pantyhose ever (but don’t get me started on another thing I don’t care for: pantyhose, – itchy, scratchy, hot, shiny, plastic net against soft human skin… see what I mean… lol)

For years, I have been ridiculed for having fair skin and “orange” (red) hair in school and by family members who claimed they were “just teasing.”  I used to hate my fair skin until a first boyfriend told me that I was like a fragile, china doll, he loved my pale skin and my hair against it. I do, too, now. But it took me until my thirties to really like what I saw in the mirror.

The other day I wondered what my old boyfriend would think if he were standing where I was. In a big name department store with beautiful must-have clothing, furnishings and ornaments no end. Amid all these orange women who looked like a leftover image of some bad cartoon on a 70′s TV set with their normal looking (unstained skin) families, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, children, and others in tow. Orange staff and shoppers alike. A couple of orange staffers in white jackets at the cosmetics counter looked, to me, like a colorized episode of the Twilight Zone gone wrong just to make a valid point as that clever Rod Serling was always wont to do.

Two very orange women became so engaged in conversation about my pale skin, either they thought I couldn’t hear them or they didn’t care. They looked and sounded like “wanna-be”  interior designers, had the perfectly slanted hair cuts, requisite fake french manicure nails and, heels, jeans and snazzy adornments over oh so trendy little jackets with handbags large enough to stuff them into. Should one so desire, I mean, lol. Me, being the kindly soul I am had no such inclination, I merely observed that they would likely fit which is kind of a compliment, all things considered, don’t you think…

Orange woman number 1: Doesn’t she look awful? I think she must be sick or something. She looks so washed out.

Orange woman number 2: Somebody should tell her to use a good foundation and get that wild hair straightened.

Orange woman number 1:  I know, she doesn’t know how good she could look.

Orange woman number 2: I’m just glad I look natural.

Orange woman number 1: I still think she’s sick.

Yes, I am sick but I am not Orange, lalalalala!

What sickens me is this new definition of “natural.” Hellooooooo. What the heck did we do here, go from the too-common vanity of an age-old obsession of chasing beauty to an obsession with manufactured, phony ugliness… in droves? I did not say any of this to these women. Silent I was, feigning precoccupation with other things around me while they and their voices faded away. But I was tempted to ask: Have either of you looked in a mirror in daylight lately? Orange skinned mannequin clones for hanging luggage handbags on is way worse than looking real any day, even on my worst one which that was not. Yes, I said REAL.

Too Many Nightmares on Hollywoodized Street everywhere in the form of swollen fish-lipped, overly botoxed, Hallowe’en scarily made-up, orange women with the fashion sense of assembly line clones acting like this is ”reality.” Well, I guess it is reality for some. If it ain’t how you entered the world, it ain’t really you and it certainly ain’t the way you’ll be going out if you live as long as the average human used to before all this oranging obsession began.

Imagine witnessing the dozing and drooling poor dears in their latter days,  those gargantuan  blubber lips on wizened, balding orange stained masses of flesh seems so bizarre to me, even just to envision, I see orange aliens, multitudes of aliens before me. Is this what senior care homes will look like in a couple of decades? Shudders.

Some days in the city and suburbania both, I could swear I’ve just been plopped into the centre of a takeover by those orange aliens whose glassy straight salon slick hair and blinding white beyond arctic snow teeth serve only to make them appear all the oranger and their assembly line reality just seems so… well… darn sad. But it must be making someone, somewhere happy or it wouldn’t be happening. I think. Maybe.

Did you hear that sound?  It was me, clicking my walkable heels three times, heading home to reality every single day. While I understand some may have greater internal  issues preventing them from feeling good about how they look externally, my heart genuinely goes out to those people and I wish them all the best on just being the best person they can be amid a society that can easily make us doubt ourselves, a society so rampant with messages of looking younger, thinner, prettier so relentlessly that it’s hard to simply “be.”

I believe the effects of (un)reality shows and advertising blatantly opposed to embracing who we really are for each and every unique petal among the flower contribute daily to the mindthink of just not good enough. Just as one of my sisters said last year,”Mom loved us, that little woman taught us how to love, by Jesus, but she didn’t have the best parenting skills, she should have said, Listen, you are the most beautiful pink flower in the world, and you are the most beautiful blue flower in the world and you are the most beautiful yellow flower in the world and you are the most beautiful purple flower in the world…” I think my sister is right. Mom didn’t have the skill set but that’s no surprise in that generation, many of our parents were simply unaware and did the best they knew how. Still, with all the communication tools and masses of information out there in our world today, how is it that we are, clearly missing such important messages? Why aren’t we shouting daily that each of us is absolutely perfect, just the way we are?

Did you hear that other sound? It was me shouting: “YOU ARE PERFECT JUST THE WAY YOU ARE!!!”  I shout it to myself every single day.

Orange

It’s not nice to fool with mother nature because some things, as we too well know already from climate and crop issues which I’ll save for another blog, can’t be reversed. Who knows what the future effects of the clamour for glamour may be?  Oranges are good enough just the way they are, aren’t they? Well, they are to me. Going to get one now while I think about this some more. Have a pretty day everyone,  just the way you are.

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