Passport Pics

I went to get my some Passport pics I needed for some administrative stuff with a friend today. And after he took it I couldn’t help but worry when my friend laughed and said ‘I wonder whether they can reject my application based on how terrible I look?’ Honestly having a camera poked in my face is definitely on my list of top ten things that really fluster me. I don’t fret about it for long, but neither do I sit and look at the printed copies of my face in awe…

Anyway, while the photo guy (lets call him that for now) was smudging away my blemishes for what seemed like a life time – yes there were so many and it got me thinking of a conversation I had with my best friends a few days back…

I have a few friends who I love, but are annoyingly obsessed with their boy-friends – yes yes call me bitter and single if you like, but honestly the sad truth is that while to the rest of us mortals the world revolves around the sun, to them the world revolves around their better halves (puke). And sadly along with this disease that infects at least 2/3rd of the female population I know, the moment they start going out , along comes the obsession with appearance. All of sudden the girl who didn’t care whether she had tummy tires, would be eating rabbit food. And while expressing my exasperation, I realized I just couldn’t understand why?

The way I saw it, those girls already have someone to prop up their self –esteem, unlike the rest of us who have to rely on our parents and their small mercies to keep us feeling like a million bucks. But then, the bet friend opened my eyes to whole new world of insecurities that I had been blind to like…

1. You can no longer afford to wax your legs cuz you can no longer afford to let your leg hair grow EVER ( this applies regardless of whether you are magnanimous when showing skin or not cuz whether you like it or not HE IS GOING TO SEE THEM)
2. If you’ve caught your self a live one ( the type that hasn’t really been bated properly – basically the one with the wondering eye) you realize you have competition, and in this competition you always have to look your best
3. You can no longer afford to nurture your eyebrow hair growth into Sherwood forest, because even if you can keep everyone else at bay, HE WILL get a close up…

And for someone who likes to wax her legs and hide them behind jeans when the hair starts to grow, for someone who loves a good ol’ pair of jeans and an old t-shirt and never brushes her hair except just after a bath, and who has no problem sporting clumps of Sherwood forest on her forehead – I felt pretty exhausted after just those 3 points….

And that in turn got me thinking about another point a friend of mine made. He said – ‘giff, on a daily basis (no offence) you dress like a guy – the jeans, the tshirt, the back pack, the rubber slippers, and the ‘Adoh kohomada?’ pretty much sums you up, but when you take the effort to dress up, you clean up realllyy well’ – my response was ‘do you have any idea how much effort goes into looking like that?’ But then I realized he was right, in a dress and heels, its like I live a double life, I mean I could be a modern day Cinderella I guess.

But then that’s just it, isn’t it? Whether your single or not, in out own sad way – appearance really does count. To those of us who have found their better halves I guess it’ll take a long long time before they are comfortable enough to expose them selves as what they REALLY are, and for the rest of us we decide to dress up for those special occasions and not waltz in a pair of baggy jeans just so we can become further obsessed with our appearance … in a sense it seems like some sick cycle that can really damage us…

But then most of us like being admired, and obsessing pays off when we get compliments etc.. so maybe the sick cycle isn’t so bad after all…