GET
OFF MY FACE
Do
you think about your looks? I do. I try not to, but still I do. The
older I get, the less I like what I think about my looks. And what I
see. My looks have gone to hell in a handbasket. Hell isn't pretty.
The handbasket either.
I'll
be the first to admit: I've never been a pretty woman. Cute, maybe.
Interesting looking, probably. I had the unlucky genetic draw to be
dealt my dad's pronounced nose and chunky-knuckled, veiny man hands.
They look fine on him. On me? Not so much. But I'm okay with that.
Who needs the pressure of maintaining pretty anyway? It requires an
endless siege against that relentless flesh-wrecker Mother Nature and
her evil sidekick Dr. Gravity.* One night of drunken splurging on all the infomercial gadgets and
goos it would take to youth-anize the age spots, firm the flabs,
smooth the sags, and make my teeth Chiclet white would bankrupt me.
So I'm just fine with being an average-Jane.
But
there were times when I felt pretty good about my un-pretty self.
Take good hair days, for instance. Even though I have a Medusa mop
for hair – not curly enough for actual curls, not straight enough
to be tamed into an actual style, more like a cascade of cowslurps
than cowlicks – some days I got lucky (if there was 0% humidity and
I prayed hard enough while blow-drying) and it turned out just right.
Those were feel-good days. I felt like I could fly on those days no
matter what shape the rest of me was in. Except that flying would
have messed up my “do.”
My
arms are another example. Years ago when I was doing massage therapy
for a living, using my arms every day to muscle the knots and tension
of out my clients, these babies dangling at my sides were a work of
art. I was proud to don a sleeveless shirt and strut my toned
triceps, defined deltoids, and beefed-up biceps. I would even be so
bold as to say I was buff. Once. For a brief while.
Though
I didn't have six-packs abs, I did have a waist and a flat(er)
stomach. You never could bounce a quarter off my ass, but in my prime
you might get a respectable recoil with a dime. And when I sported a
tan to camouflage the cellulite, my legs looked damn fine. From a
distance. In the right light.
But
those feel-good days have gone bye-bye for good. Good hair now is
when I get my hair coloring timed perfectly so the white roots don't
show. My buff arms are covered in buff-colored crepey skin these
days, complete with butt-crack armpit creases and Jello jiggles when
they dangle at my sides. My closet has only three-quarter length or
longer-sleeved shirts, with anything arm revealing relegated to
workout duty in the privacy of home. My waist is wider, my stomach
squishy (and crepey, too, as if squishy wasn't bad enough), and the
only thing you'd get off my ass nowadays is a soft sploink and ripple
effect no matter what coin you use. I still tan once a week to relax
and treat myself to a hint of color, but unfortunately my “natural”
glow turns the veins fronting my calves a God-awful green and
highlights the hollows in my cottage-cheesy thighs. Ugh!
Nora
Ephron, in the sadly true but oh so humorous essay “I Feel Bad
About My Neck” from her book by the same name, says that for women
everything goes soft and south when they hit age 55 no matter what
they do. She is a damn fine writer (rest in peace, funny lady) and I
mean her no disrespect, but Nora, you got it way wrong. My downhill
slide toward the Savage “S”es (soft and south) started at 49, and
now that I am 49-Part Two – I refuse to say 50, I actually had to
write the number on a medical form the other day and nearly had a
stroke – the slide has snowballed into an avalanche. Practically
overnight I've become a breakfast cereal advertisement: waking up to
a noisy snap (my ankles), crackle (my feet), and pop (my knees) with
every step instead of every bite. I don't even daydream about being
young and spry anymore; I dream of wielding an oil can like Oz's Tin
Man to lubricate away the creaks and pains. Sometimes I even say it
out loud – “Oil can, oil can” – in a squeaky, lock-jawed
voice when my joints are loudly protesting my every movement, but so
far the magical motion potion hasn't materialized.
As
much as it hurts to acknowledge how everything south of my neck has
gone south with sags (and just plain old hurts some days), it's even
worse to face my face. Whenever I inadvertently catch a glimpse of
myself in the mirror – I never advertently
look in the wretched thing – it scares the bejesus out of me. If my
face is my window to the world, then I'm surprised children don't
actually scream when they see me on the street from thinking the
boogeywoman is alive and real and walking around in broad daylight.
Especially when I'm lost in thought (usually about my aching body or
whether Medicare will cover facelifts if it is still around when I
hit the jackpot age) or deep in one of my black funk doldrums (about
feeling old, no doubt), my face becomes a swamp of sad sags. I'm not
kidding. If I frown, which is unfortunately my natural facial state,
I've got a crevasse in my chin deep enough to carry an echo. I do my
best not too let my boyfriend, DMan, whisper sweet nothings near my
chin for fear the reverberating “I love you, I love you, I love
you” might frighten him off for good.
I
used to wear eye shadow on those feel-good days or for date night
with DMan. No more. Somehow the browns and grays I was partial to
migrated into the creases below my lashes, and next thing I knew it
people were asking me how I got the black eyes. Not what I want to
hear when I've taken extra time to glam up. And lipstick? I've given
it up, too. No amount of liner will keep the color from seeping into
the indentations spiking from my top lip and making my lipstick job
look like a three-year old's depiction of the stock market
fluctuations. So I've reverted to my junior high makeup repertoire:
mascara (waterproof so it doesn't creep into the creases),
moisturizer, and Bonne Bell Lip Smacker lip gloss (but in a more
sophisticated Berry Peach now instead of teenybopper Dr. Pepper). I
figured why try if the results are only going to make me cry anyway.
And I save money and time to boot.
I'm also conserving cash since
switching up my SJP NYC signature scent to MMR (Mentholatum Muscle
Rub). I do miss the sweet, sultry undertones of magnolia in the SJP,
but the zingy menthol both wakes me up and takes the edge off the
aches. I just have to warn DMan not to get close to the lubed-up
areas – neck, shoulders, low back, knees, feet – until the
eye-smarting smell dissipates. So pretty much no morning hugging or
kissing, another time saver.
Who
knows, maybe by the time I reach Medicare age I'll have saved enough
to pay for my own nip-and-tuck (and vacuum the gobbler neck and plump
the lips while you're at it, please!). If that doesn't work, maybe my
mind will go south along with the rest of me, carry away all unhappy
thoughts, and leave me with an instant wrinkle-lifting perma-grin.
They say the mind is a terrible thing to waste, but it might be worth
it if I get a free facelift out of the deal.
I joke about aging because I don't
need anything else making me frown, but I am really angry. It feels
like I am being punished for following the rules by attempting to age
naturally as a woman without turning myself into a waxified,
monster-like caricature of my youthful self in an era when looking
young is prized above all else and some people that are even older
than me (Cher, by 16 years) look younger and better now than I ever
did (Cher). It's just not fair (Cher!).
I'm
reminded of a gripping scene from the funny and poignant movie
classic “Guess Who's Coming To Dinner.” Sidney Poitier, playing
Dr. John Wade Prentice, is the “who” that's coming to dinner at
the home of the much younger white woman he wants to marry. Keep in
mind the film was made in 1967, when black + white = illegal in many
states, so her otherwise liberal white parents were shocked and his
conservative black parents were downright appalled. The scene that
keeps playing in my mind is when the doctor's father is berating him
for making the biggest mistake of his life for breaking the rules by
wanting to marry outside his color. Mr. Poitier angrily responds:
You
don't own me! You can't tell me when or where I'm out of line, or try
to get me to live my life according to your rules. You don't even
know what I am, Dad, you don't know who I am. You don't know how I
feel, what I think. And if I tried too explain it the rest of your
life you will never understand. You are 30 years older than I am. You
and your whole lousy generation believes the way it was for you is
the way it's got to be. And not until your whole generation has lain
down and died will the dead weight of you be off our backs! You
understand, you've got to get off my back!
What a wallop of a speech! When I'm
hearing it in my head, it becomes me blasting out those words at
society and the media for setting the impossible rule that while the
population is growing increasingly older, we women are expected to
look young forever or become an embarrassing eyesore blighting the
world of the beautiful rule-minding people. And I am lambasting
Mother Nature and Dr. Gravity to get their dead weight off my back.
Only I realize my back is one of the few parts on me that has held up
pretty well – at least what I can see of it in the dang mirror
without my glasses – so instead, you two GET OFF MY FACE! Just lay
down and die and leave me alone to age and ache in peace. Please?!
Until
my speech starts working or my facelift ship comes in, I'll carry on
with my mentho-masca-rizer routine with a side of lip gloss and the
occasional apricot scrub (I think of it like taking a chance on a
lottery scratch-off ticket and maybe one day I'll get lucky and all
that scrubbing will reveal a whole new face). Might be a good idea to
watch the movie again and then practice my spiel in the mirror to
give it an extra punch. Oh no, the mirror, the dreaded mirror. I
know, I'll practice by candlelight. Everything looks better in the
soft flicker of candles. Even my
face.
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