Being Authentic

I’ll never forget the first time I came across a “men’s only” magazine.

I know I’ve mentioned that I grew up with two older brothers. Bo Derek and Farah Fawcett were all the rage at my house. There were many Playboy magazines under my brothers’ mattresses to prove it.

(Doesn’t everyone, especially the little sister know that’s the first place you look when trying to find something someone wants to hide, pre-internet?)

Now, I am told, you need to make sure you erase your internet history after any debaucherous search. If I am doing anything on the internet that I need to delete or hide a search, I either need to get a different first-mate for snooping or go to therapy which I fully support.

Back to being such an open book…

Finding a cartoon in one of these magazines would set the stage for the rest of my life going forward. Let me see if I can describe it the way I remember seeing it:

It was a two-panel cartoon. The first panel was of a man in a business suit, and he was talking to the most beautiful woman wearing a slinky dress at a bar (as sexy as it could possibly be drawn as a cartoon back then).

 

She had big, 70’s Brigette Bardot hair, a Pepsodent smile, and the largest breast I have ever seen.

 

Mind you, I was 12 or 13 years old and there were probably many interpretations by the viewer, but this is how I saw it.

The next cartoon panel was the morning after with the two of them in bed and on the nightstand were her false teeth in a glass and her wig, and on the floor was her dress, push-up bra as well as a girdle, which is now called Spanx.

The woman in bed was a very deflated and shriveled up version of herself from the night before. A total sham, yet she fooled the man. Maybe alcohol was involved, but that’s not the point?

You are a complete misrepresentation of who you are. This goes both ways, man or woman. How difficult to maintain that persona knowing that you’re not authentic?

Fast forward to the days when I was a model in my teenage years and early 20s. I spent some time in Paris, and I would walk all over the city. This was in the ’80s when colored contacts became popular in the United States.

I chose Aqua blue contacts (I have needed glasses since I was 10, but finally got clear contacts at the age of 12). Can anyone say, major dork sporting prescription glasses and the infamous Dorothy Hamill haircut?

Don’t get me wrong, I love to dress up even though I don’t do it nearly as often since I’ve gotten older and hopefully wiser. It already takes more time to get ready and actually get out of the house – much less add more accoutrements to the routine. Plus, it usually becomes an epic fail with fake eyelashes missing from one eye midway through the day or something along those lines.

I still have a drawer full of hair pieces, I have colored contacts somewhere in my bathroom (not sci-fi aqua), loads of false eyelashes of every length, and I have padded bras. I have made a lot of mistakes by caring way more about how I looked on the outside instead of how to be the best on the inside.

At 20 years old, back in France, people would stop me on the street to tell me how beautiful my eye color was. There was a lot of gesticulating and pointing to my eyes, “la couleur de tes yeux.” Some people actually gasped if I made eye contact with them, especially when using public transportation. I immediately freaked out remembering the cartoon. Oh no, I am not being authentic!

 

If you hate what you are wearing before you go out of the house, it is only going to get worse.

 

Long story short, it may be better to make your first impression as the person you have always been. What God gave you is quite amazing and uniquely ALL yours. Have you heard the saying that imitation is the best form of flattery? Kim Kardashian should be ecstatic. I have seen thousands of her or her likeness, all over the country.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in self-care and all ways to stop the hands of time…botox, fillers anyone?

The best example of that is by taking good care of yourself and to always try to look like you along the aging process. I messed up many times, thankfully my family and friends who I trust have given me constructive criticism, always letting me know that I’ve gone overboard. For a great laugh, rent the movie, The First Wives Club with Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton, and Bette Midler. It will have you in stitches and not the medical kind.

If my sign-off never made sense, I hope it will after this blog today:

Love and Live Who You Are,

Courtney