Forget reality, it's fantasy we want

Last week, I arrived – quite by surprise – in Las Vegas.

Having traversed the desolate Nevada desert, The Strip at 9pm came as quite a shock, not least because of the neon lights which make Blackpool illuminations look like a pair of ants’ romantic, candlelit supper.

I realised fifteen minutes in – while stuck in traffic because everyone else was rubber-necking like me – that my mouth was vastly agape and my eyes were sparkling with manic delight. In the rear-view mirror I barely recognised myself: a wild-eyed, gawping individual with an explicit belief in her ridiculous dreams and an overriding desire to bet everything.

Come, the casinos purred to me, You can be anything here. You can do ANYTHING. Naturally, I parked the car and headed inside.

There are, so far as I can tell, no clocks in a Vegas casino. You’re essentially abandoned in a vacuum of time and space with no obvious exit. In many ways, I believe that Las Vegas exists in order to prove that humans value illusion over reality.

But much of America – in my experience – has that vibe. Even on the plane across the Atlantic, the American air hostesses were overly zealous in their “You’re SO welcome” response to any of my increasingly bizarre requests. Their eyes may have been dead but their words were alive and loaded.

Yes, it seems that fantasy sells.

However, recent weeks have seen the glaze scraped from the illusionary cakes we deliver to the world: the no make-up selfies came along, infecting Facebook with their righteousness. And this week a CBS presenter removed her makeup live on air to convince women that cosmetics should not “own them”.

Society seems to have reached saturation point for false eyelashes and cake-faced pouts. Then again, I’m writing this on a sun-lounger in LA (sorry). Next to me two young females are dissecting the physical attributes of a mutual friend. One declares: “She’s got a hot body, her bootie rocks.”

The other retorts: “Yeh, but her face...”

“I know. But it don’t look bad with enough make-up though.”

Ah. I take it all back: we haven’t reached saturation point at all.

The TV presenters can keep scrubbing their faces clean live on-air and Facebook friends everywhere can dutifully share well-lit shots of their bravely naked faces but really – just like the Las Vegas strip – we want the fantasy.

Deep down, we know we should hate the painted lies, the bright lights and the bling draping our reality into illusionary wonderlands. But nevertheless we’re drawn to it like moths to a flame. Like gamblers to the table. Like me to this pina colada...