The Normalization of Faking It
Lux Alptraum’s book “Faking It” is an all too true social commentary on sex, women, and the expectations that come with those things. Lux brings up a lot of good points that make you question why there is this taboo around sex and orgasms. In middle school, you couldn’t get through a sex ed lesson (if you even had one in school) without a few snickers. It might be just the hormone fluctuations in the average middle schooler’s mind, but you have to admit sex talk is not normalized in society. I think that is because we aren’t educated young on how it works because they preach abstinence—not safe sex. And with that lack of education, we are left confused with our bodies and are more vulnerable to articles aimed towards girls and women placing the blame on our bodies while providing home remedies to actually orgasm and no longer “fake it” in order to satisfy your partner (usually assumed it’s a man). The blame is placed on the woman, or anyone with a vagina, that we are the problem in the connection and haven’t fulfilled our part of the transaction. Reading about sex in media has built this idea that sex is this transactional thing, and not something to enjoy with someone else for your own pleasure. Certain outcomes are expected and if you don’t see those results, then you fucked up somewhere.
Another point in Lux’s book is we live in a “world that all too often equates ‘beautiful’ with ‘white’” (Alptraum 81). I find our fashion trends fascinating, especially with the Kardashians leading the way by perpetuating cultural appropriation. And somehow, they don’t see the consequences of their actions and instead get praised and become icons for girls and women to follow. After Kylie Jenner got lip injections to look more black by exploiting their natural features, we saw a trend of people getting lip injections, makeup products producing pouty lips, and even a lip challenge by bruising your lips with a shot glass. These expectations and normalizations of what is “pretty” is an awful environment for young girls to grow up in which endangers their mental health and how they view themselves. We try so hard to fit into society by buying the clothes, cutting our hair, braiding our hair, altering our face, and makeup. If you like those things and you like doing it for you, then you do you girl. I like wearing makeup and feeling cute. Braiding my hair in a French braid makes me feel powerful, almost Katniss Everdeen like. But doing those things from a place of societal pressure is not healthy. I know it’s hard to escape those norms and try to fit in. But one thing I realize, trends are so fluid. One thing can be scorned and then be a world trend that so many try to achieve. For instance, the thin tweezed eye brows penciled in was the trend and girls with thick eyebrows were the outcasts. But now look, thick eyebrows are the trend and those people with the thin eyebrows go lengths to microblade and fill in their eyebrows to get those prized thick eyebrows. You should love your features, because while it might not be in trend right now, a year or two they’ll be the ideal feature. But also, fuck conformity.
Where these expectations stem from come from media and the scorn of the male counterpart. Living in a patriarchal society, men dictate how we look and how we treat ourselves which all center around pleasing them. We alter ourselves for the pleasure of the male gaze. Lux makes a scary good point, “There are no real-life Snapchat filters to protect women from the come-ons, the catcalls, and propositions they frequently endure. But there is another strategy that a woman can employ when she wants an interested man to leave her alone. It’s just one that might involve being dishonest” (Alptraum 105). By dressing up and putting makeup on, even if you do it for yourself, the men you pass claim that confidence from you and take it for their own enjoyment. But sadly, you can also go unnoticed by not wearing makeup. This mentality takes away our confidence and freedom to do what we want to our bodies.












