Wednesday 25th June

I suppose that once upon a time I really cared what I looked like.  As a teenager you wanted to be cool, to wear the right clothes, to grow your hair just that bit longer than school or parents thought was respectable.  But I think that this was more to be accepted as part of the crowd than vanity; I never really cared what I looked like.  I used to paint and draw myself quite often, but this was because I had no other faces to draw – in any case I always thought I was ugly, squinty eyes, thin lips and a ridiculous dimple in my chin.  I relied on my witty repartee to get girls interested, I knew I was no match for the handsome cool dudes who stood silently at the back of the village hall.  Mind you I did okay, or so I thought.

Ever since then I have bumbled along, getting haircuts that were acceptable, wearing what I thought were nice clothes, but too often they were rumpled or tired looking.  I was a bloke, and blokes didn’t worry about all that appearance nonsense.  But now it seems that even guys are infected with this modern malaise of caring so much about what they look like.  Apparently men’s cosmetics are selling like, well – women’s cosmetics I suppose.  Lotions and potions are flying off the shelves, everyone, boys and girls eager to look perfect.  And soul-less too in my opinion, like a row of pretty dolls they sit neatly on the tube, without a hair out of place; painted-on nails, painted-on lipstick, painted-on eyeshadow, brushed-on mascara so that their eyelashes are half an inch long, painted-on eyebrows even.  And all of them as boring as fuck.

I really wonder if any of them has a single thought in their heads except “How do I look?”  and at every opportunity they take ‘selfies’ of themselves to post on Facebook.  If someone puts up a photo of me I cringe…do I really look that awful..but then again…who gives a fuck.   I am what I am and who I am.  Take me as I am or lose out by not getting to know me. Hahaha