Can't groom? Won't groom!

When I was younger, I was the ugly duckling; my sister and brothers were relatively alright so beautiful, spectacle-free and didn't look like oil had been withheld from their diets. And I knew it. I really don't know which is worse, being an unattractive kid and not knowing it( a bit like those people on American idol who claim everybody in their community thinks they have the voice of an angel and Simon Cowell just goes ' that was the worst rendition of Celine Dion I ever heard and I'm just pressing O on my speed dial for my Otologist)or being an unattractive kid and there being no doubt about it, being reminded of it by the whispered comments around me and being confronted by it in the mirror on a daily basis.To compound matters I was an NSK you know, a non-smiling kid who was nicknamed 'serious baby'- the prefix has been dropped and I now go by the name Baby within my family- because I never laughed. According to my mother there was nothing anyone could do that could evoke the sound of laughter from my throat, all I did was read and not eat.
Don't worry this was 15 years ago.

As a result of getting my fair wear of the invisibility cloak quite early, I was forced to develop other traits to get noticed or seem interesting.I never made too much of an effort with my appearance because I didn't think you could hide the obvious. My now-legendary sarcastic tongue developed to keep critics of my lanky frame at bay. My quick tongue also ensured that before you asked me whether I could count how many fingers you had up with my four-eyes I already had you in stitches of laughter and gasping for breath. Ask my sister, I'm the funniest one. I did not pluck, tweeze, shave or do anthing to tame the forest I had above my eyes until my first year at university when one of my good friends referred to in my 'friends stop you from making friends..' post positively manhandled me onto her bed and deployed her arsenal of eyebrow care products to give me the natural arch that I currently sport.

I bought my first compact powder in 2005, not because I did not know what it was or where to get it but because I will just never be that girl who wears a full face of make-up, day in, day out and whips out a mirror to double-check that the war paint is still on at the traffic lights, during lectures and even in the darkened cinema with their camera flash as light.My friends say to me: E, you look the same wearing make-up as you do not wearing make up and I choose to take it as a compliment even though I know that what they mean is a bit more blush and lipgloss would make you look better!I will just never be that girl who spends hours and hours curling her hair before she goes to bed or hundreds of thousands of naira buying Brazillian or Italian hair or hundreds of pounds waxing my whole body or sheds buckets of tears whilst affixing fake eyelashes or hours and hours in the shower doing God-knows-what-and-can-someone-please-tell-me-what-girls-do-in-the-shower-for-upwards-of-10-minutes?!My make-up regime during the day is simple: no make up and brush my eyebrows. Especially under the unforgiving Nigerian sun and since I can never really locate my oil-blotting sheets for my face so its easier to just run my palm over my make up free nose when it gets oily.
Guys say they like the au naturel look but we all know men lie and are secretely intimidated by the high-maintenance chic. Yes?No?

I do admire my friends when they spend hours doing their hair and make up and come out looking a million bucks for their effort and the Brazillian hair sways to the beat of the music when they dance and their skin glows under the flash of a 10 mega pixel camera and I do wish I could be bothered to get nail extensions because they look so good on my cousin but I have come to accept that sadly, that will never be me. I have always been the quickest to get ready on any night out with my friends and almost always end up waiting at least 30 minutes for the next person to be even remotely close to being ready but that only means they can pass the curling irons or MAC eyeshadow to the next person on the queue and the wait begins all over. I just really tend to think it's not that serious and besides I'd rather know that on my off days when I'm just popping out to visit a friend or to get take away chicken and chips I dont look like an extra from Animal farm and I can sleep and wake up next to 'The One' without my make up bag under my pillow.