In the Keenen Ivory Wayans movie I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, there’s a scene where Keenen Ivory’s character brings a data back to his place and they’re going to get down to business, As he runs his fingers through her hair, her wig comes off, and she’s as bald as a cue ball. Next thing he knows, she whips off her bra, and her curvy chest comes off with it, and then she strips off her panties to reveal that her bubble butt is plastic, too! He begins to back out of the room in horror when he tears off her prosthetic leg, and starts hopping after him, shrieking for him to come back.

It’s a very funny scene in the movie, but in real life, all these false parts can be horrifying. I bring this up because this week I was out with some friends, and seated at the next table was a man with grey hair–and a massive inky black bouffant toupee on top. Several times, he leaned over and spoke to us, and it was difficult to look in his eyes; our eyes kept wanting to wander up to his absurd hairline, which was completely false-looking and, well, riotously funny. I kept wanting to reach over with my thumb to push it back to where it belonged, higher on his head. We all have good manners and know not to laugh at people in front of them (we wait until either they or we have left!), but it was difficult suppressing at least a smile.

He did, eventually, leave before we did, and all we could talk about was why no one who loves and cares about him would tell him that he looks silly and isn’t pulling the wool (the hair?) over anyone’s eyes with his hilarious wig. Then again, I have an uncle I love like my father who has a wig even worse than that man’s (it frequently tips, tilts, and flops into his eyes), and I can’t bring myself to tell him that he’d look less silly without it. I’m afraid that’s the entire problem right there: love prevents us from telling the men in our lives that their bad toupees are making them the butt of jokes.

The problem could be solved if someone created a public service announcement to be run during all sporting events and any TV shows that skew male that tells men that women are laughing at their hairpieces and that they should do the “Willis”: shave your heads! You’ll be surprised at how sexy women find a shaved head, and we certainly don’t laugh at shaved heads! We will, however, ALWAYS laugh at a bad toupee!

Ladies, You’re Not Getting Off That Easy

We’re not any better, though our fakeness may not be as obvious as a crooked toupee that’s the wrong color. I’ve always wondered about real-life scenes like the one that happened in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. What happens if you get lucky and your date is removing your clothes only to discover that your lovely chest is the result of silicone “cutlets,” your curvy waistline is thanks to Spanx (he’ll be swearing trying to get you out of them), your lustrous hair comes off in his hands, and your eyelashes are on your cheeks? What awkwardness occurs when he discovers it’s all an illusion?

I asked some of my friends who rely on some of this artifice. My friend, Marie, whose gigantic chest was sewn in by a surgeon, wears Spanx both to lift her fanny and nip her waist, and she says that to avoid the embarrassment of having to be wrestled out of the tight-fitting undergarments, she excuses herself to the bathroom where she removes them herself and hides them and either retrieves them later, or else puts them in her bag if they fit. My friend Laurie does likewise when she’s augmented her boobs with little silicone cutlets, though she does it before arriving at her destination: she’ll use the ladies’ room at the restaurant, lounge, party, etc., meaning that her cleavage is deflated well before things begin to heat up. She admits she’s seen some looks of disappointment in the eyes of her paramours, though no one’s ever flat out (tee hee!) changed his mind on the spot.

And then there’s my friend Elsa, who’s fond of wearing wigs. For the most part, she enjoys wearing ones which pass for real hair, though every now and then, she’ll wear a hot pink or blue bob which obviously isn’t real hair. She has a horror story about the time she went home with a guy when she was wearing a long blonde wig and they were getting hot and heavy and her wig came off, revealing her gorgeous curly, auburn hair. As luck would have it, this creep had a thing for redheads: he hated them. He couldn’t get her out of there fast enough. Elsa was mortified, and now when she wears wigs out and meets someone, one of the first sentences out of her mouth is “I’m wearing a wig!”

We all want to put our best faces (and heads, and chests, and fannies, and so on) on around the opposite sex, but we need to be careful that we don’t instead end up being laughed at (that’s the last thing we want!) and that we aren’t erecting an illusion that doesn’t exist. We don’t want to be like the car dealer who shows us a Jaguar and we’re salivating but as we get closer, we see it’s a piece of cardboard, and he lifts the cardboard away and behind it, there’s a Ford Escort. Do what you feel you need to do to make yourself feel good, but don’t hide yourself behind too much artifice, because how will anyone find you?