Frankly, I’m fed up with faux.  I voiced my opinion recently about the world becoming more faux every day and a woman said, “You’re not from around here, are you? I never hear that word before.” 

I said could not understand why the word is used as a commendation rather than a pejorative which it really is.  She looked stunned and asked me if I was from Europe.

There is great faux fascination especially in the world of interior design.  Every item known to man is manufactured and advertised with great pride as being faux something.  I am fundamentally opposed to everything faux.  Have you noticed on television and in magazine ad that everything is faux?  Faux flowers, walls, fabric, marble, wood, finish and even faux food.

As for me, I want real walls, fabric, marble, wood and especially real food.  For that matter, real everything else.  If I can’t have real I don’t want it.

I don’t want faux flowers.  I’d much rather have bunches of green leaves than anything faux in a vase. I find faux dried flowers depressing. I suffered rolled eyes from friend and family when I said so.  I discovered recently that I have been right all along.  According to Feng Shui, an Asian theory of decorating, dried flowers are dead and therefore bad luck to have in your house.

Conversely, I do like pressed flowers.  My great aunts used to gather flowers and ferns and press them in heavy books.  Later they would arrange them on silk and frame them.  They always had a few beautiful arrangements on hand for birthday gifts. It could be I like pressed flowers because they retained their color – or because my great aunts trimmed the arrangements with lace, pearls, ribbons and beads.

Decorators are ferocious about faux things.  Especially faux marble.  “Just use a feather and umber paint to make fine lines on an ivory background and you will have a surface that looks just like Italian marble.”  You don’t.  What you have is ivory wood with umber lines all over it.  They also take perfectly beautiful pine wood and attempt to make faux mahogany.  All they end up with is dark pine wood.

To be fair, artists can paint beautiful restorations on marble and wood to repair small areas that have been damaged.  But the key word here is small.  It is when entire walls and pieces of furniture are painted to look like marble that the room takes on the ambiance of a mausoleum.

Faux has fostered other descriptive adjectives for a wide range of articles.  In addition to faux you must steer clear of anything that says it is “eque”. Pronounced “eek”.

For instance, in the jewelry trade a favorite word is “diamondeque” – meaning a false diamond.  “Astound your friends with our 25 caret diamondeque ring!”  About all it would be good for is a door stop.

It is clear to me that faux is false and anything false means not genuine and can’t be something anyone with a lick of sense would want.  I began to think of how many words there are in the English language that denote faux – or false. False arrest, false alarm, falsehood, false positive, false friend, false front, false start, and false drawer.  Is there anything here worth having?.

Faux/false/ and fake somehow call to mind movie and television stars.  I say this because it is always a rude surprise for me to discover they are created to act, talk and look like something else. – hence faux.  They are never as tall, as beautiful or as  handsome as they appear in movies.  My friend who was a makeup artist in Hollywood said they could take anyone’s Aunt Nellie and make her look like Elizabeth Taylor.  In fact, he told me she was not nearly as beautiful as she photographed and was short, had large hands and feet and her eyes were not even purple.  They were a shade of blue.  I was excessively disappointed to have been so deceived.

Another thing movies cover up is that most male movie starts are short and have big heads.  The movie moguls subscribe to the prevailing theory that big-headed people are more popular and well-liked than little-headed people.  It seems that psychologically we are drawn to big heads.  (I am glad about that because I have one.)  I was profoundly shocked to learn that Sylvester Stalone who appeared to be at least ten feet tall is only 5’8” and Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise and Robert Redford are short, but at least they do have big heads. Let us not forget Paul Newman who was short, and had a big head with remarkable blue eyes.

The only reference to faux I heard when I was a child was in the phase faux pas – meaning a social blunder.  And then it was whispered as though it was in some way scandalous.  Mama would shake her head slowly and say, “Heavens, what a faux pas.  Poor thing.” 

As far as faux foods are concerned - they are beyond disgusting.  When I hear the words “ imitation/in place of/substitute” I know they are whipping up another batch of faux food.  “Just blend cottage cheese until it is of a smooth consistency and add the ingredients to make a delicious cheese cake.”  Not true.  It tastes like cottage cheese cake. Ugh!

“Just place Ritz crackers in a piecrust and cover with apple juice and bake.  You will have a scrumptious pie without all the sugar and fat.”  What you have is a Ritz cracker pie which is about as sickening a use of a perfectly good Ritz cracker as I have ever heard.  Forget faux food.

My mother loved to cook, was an exceptionally great cook and had a real Southern appreciation for well-prepared and beautifully served food.  Considering how shocked she was to learn of a plain faux pas I can’t even image her reaction to a faux pie.