The past few weeks were marked by wedding ceremonies all over the country. This period of the year (April and May in particular) are periods during which weddings traditionally take place. The amount of expenses outlaid to make weddings special can sometimes be enough to get your life started with a solid financial ground. Nevertheless, the amount of money people spend to make their wedding days special is totally a personal choice and they should not be judged for their decision. Sometimes, when we hear about Ethiopian celebrities who spent more than a million Birr for their weddings, we think how can one spend so much in a country where so many go about their lives without basic needs such as food and shelter. Personally, I am of the opinion that the extravagant amount of money spent on weddings could have been better spent elsewhere. But who am I to judge anyway? People are free to do whatever they like with their money and it is not up to anyone else to judge.
What I would like to talk about in this article is not the amount of money spent on weddings. It is rather the increasing pressure on brides to be as fake as possible on their wedding days. What has always amazed me is the amount of make-up a woman has to wear on her special day. Some women go out on their weddings looking completely different than their true looks even to the extent that you would not be able to recognize them if you saw them on the streets. If people hear you arguing against so much make-up on your wedding day, they would say ‘but this is your special day, and you have to look beautiful. And without make-up, that won’t be possible!’ And the other typical argument is ‘it will look good on pictures!’ And of course, there is the question ‘Are you getting married in a church?’ It seems to me that the general rule for brides is “the farther you look from your true looks, the much more beautiful you become!’ What I cannot understand even more is the attitudes of the hair dresser who is doing your hair on your wedding day. If you say NO to whatever he or she wants to put on your face, their feelings get easily hurt and get angry at you. If you say NO to the loads of hair extensions they want to put on your hair, you are simply preparing yourself for trouble. It makes you then wonder whose special day it is – theirs or the brides? So, at the end of the day, simply because you want to avoid trouble and because you won’t in any way find a hair dresser who will listen to your requirements, you end up surrendering to their pressure and leaving the beauty salon like a Russian doll!
Is fake the new trend? It seems to me that it is. And everyone seems to be in style! These days the range of means to become who you are not is widely available. Several parts of a woman’s body can be “corrected” to have what the society defines “the ideal look”. In all this process, I always wonder, ‘what do our men think about this new trend of being as fake as you can?’’. Do the men like it when their women wear long hair extensions (which you can easily identify it is not real hair), loads of make-up (which by the way might run-off if exposed to too much moisture or water/rain), and other body extensions (which I won’t mention here)? The amount of fakeness out there makes me think that our men do actually like this new trend.
I say, let’s be real. Because sustaining fake is not easy. Whether we like it or not, we cannot avoid our true looks. And if we prefer fake, each time we face our true looks, we end up hating ourselves.
