You might be inclined to think of this post as a pity party, and if so, consider this your invitation. Pull up a chair and get yourself a drink from the punchbowl. It's been spiked.
Apparently I'm supposed to be doing this ageing thing with some modicum of grace and a dash of dignity. Well, there's another thing I've fucked up. Add it to the list. There should be a seminar or workshop with practical tools and advice on how to lose your looks properly. I don't mean those crackpot self-help classes where they teach you to look at your vagina in a mirror and appreciate your grey pubic hair. Nor do I need someone to tell me I need to do some Louise L. Hay style daily affirmation. Each day when I look in the mirror, I get all the affirmation that I'm losing my looks that I need. Louise can keep her warm fuzzy feel good about yourself affirmations and stick them. I want a bootcamp style, fast paced, hands on course that gets me through this phase with a shred of self-respect left intact, and without gun play.
I realized the other day that I've become one of those women I've longed pitied. You know the ones you look at and think "I'll never let myself go like that." They are thick around the middle and their hair is decades past the Breck Girl phase. You look at them and think, we'll I'd at least wax my lip if I were her. You wonder if she knows she's started to go to seed, but you're too polite to ask. Well, no need to ask here friends, I can tell you definitively that I'm well aware that this has started to happen. And I'm none too pleased about it either.
Like a lot of women, I've spent most of my life struggling with my weight. It's one of those ongoing wars where you think each time you win a small victory, like losing 10 lbs, that you'll never gain them back again. You swear to yourself up and down. Yet, 2 years later you're back up and have added another 10 to boot. This time, though, it's different. This time I've lost my cheekbones somewhere in the last 10lbs, and I can't seem to find them. No amount of waving a magic blush brush around my face can carve out even the merest hint that they were once there. Without them, my face is like a big round circle highlighted by rosacea and the hair on my upper lip. I've offered Dave the option to wear a blindfold when he kisses me. I think he's starting to consider taking me up on that offer.
I've written in the past about losing my eyebrows. They're pretty much gone now. Maybe a dozen hairs in each one, but they are light, so you can't really see them. I try to hide this behind a set of long bangs. It works pretty well most days, except now my hair is starting to fall out in the front, and I'm slowly starting to have to create my bangs a la Donald Trump, by pulling the hair from the back of my head forward. We're close to the point where this is starting to look silly. I live in complete envy and disdain of people who more eyebrows than they know what to do with. A few weeks back Dave and I met for drinks with a childhood friend of mine who has been battling breast cancer. She was wearing a wig because she'd lost her hair to the chemotherapy and has had a double mastectomy, and there I sat at the table actually jealous, and maybe a little bit bitter, that she still had her eyebrows! Yeah, I can see by the look on your face you're appalled at how screwed up my priorities are. See? This is why I need a workshop.
Now here's the thing. I'm not looking for sympathy and a pat on the back while you say "there, there." That kinda shit pisses me off. Same way it does when people say "Oh. You're not fat." when we both know better. Don't tell me you don't notice that I have no eyebrows. That just says you're so horrified you can't bear to look at me dead on for fear you'll turn to stone. It's all together possible and highly likely that I'm meta-morphing into a Gorgon. You should probably look away now.
Maybe what I'm looking for is a good set of books on tape that will teach me to speak Menopausal Hormone Havoc fluently in 21 days. I did get Rosetta Stone CDs for Spanish on Craig's List, maybe I should check there. I wonder what category that would fall under? Oh. No. Wait. I swore off Craig's List after the last time I got sidetracked in the Casual Encounters section. That's a bad place, and you shouldn't go there without a gallon size jug of Purell to clean yourself off with afterwards. Sorry, my bad for going down that path.
So, I'm pretty sure you're asking yourself, "What's your point Surly?" Don't really have one. It's my pity party and I'll bemoan my life if I want to. Oh, and next time bring a hostess gift, will ya?
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
crazypants
Boanerges1
Amy A
Mike Hunt
Sarah Eccleston
Emily Sussman
Salon.com
Comments
I took the "can't I do something self-destructive today mom?" approach to losing my looks. Scars from football, getting punched in the lip, hitting myself with a tennis racket (not as easy as it sounds), hitting myself with a potato rake (even harder, since the handle is longer).
See you in the remake of "Mask"!
If you've come not looking for sympathy, you've come to the right place!
You've given me an idea for a new product Surly, stick on eyebrows. I have my sparse crop colored at the hairdressers every few months just so I have a general target for brow penciling. Remember those ads for the nose pinchers that allow you to put one side of the glasses down to do close up facial work while peeking through the other lensed eye? That was brilliant. Maybe my brow pasties will spawn similar admiration.
BTW, one of my favorite blogs is this one: http://advancedstyle.blogspot.com/
I'm not there yet, but these inspiring older women make the last chapter look like a rocking good time.
the problem is probably all that sun. so it's a trade off I think. you might be baking your face or you might be just have growing older kind of harshly genes. Personally I wouldn't mind losing the eyebrows. Whats her name from the nation, has none and looks like a space queen from Star Wars. you need to put on a good sunscreen moisturizer and have a professional deal with your hair. that's about it.
because after that, you're fucked I'm afraid. aging TOTALLY sucks. yes, you're smart. yes, you can pretty much call it when a family member brings home a charming loser. or when someone decides to sell you on the wisdom of The Secret and a month later EST.
enjoy the thighs and ass. once you stop for a few weeks, they'll fall like rome.
::wiggling remaining eyebrows:::
Now if I could just ditch the dimples on my derriere...
-R-
Anyway, it's what's on the INSIDE that counts (although sludge-filled arteries, a fatty liver and an enlarged heart aren't going to win any beauty contests).
sorry about becoming a gargoyle
(tease)
but glad u still got your soul and mind.
never met a breck gal with those things.
I guess I understand why you're Surly.
yeah, fine, flame me for telling the truth, but you just finished saying you wanted to be told the truth by your friends. how about an anonymous stranger? is that any better?
wink
While my eyebrows are still intact (Italians tend to be born with fairly thick ones) and my hair is still naturally brown (Italian genes again; we get a few gray hairs in our 80s) I am feeling, as Nora Ephron wrote, "Unhappy about my neck." Even though I use serious "tightening" moisturizers and do facial exercises meant to "firm" my neck and jaw, there is some discernible looseness and it makes me depressed as hell every time I look in the mirror. Until about 5 years ago (I'm 49) I had a beautiful, sleek, dancer's neck. Now it's starting to "go" and there's nothing more I can do about it, short of surgery (which I can't afford). Just hoping the lotions and exercises slow the decline some.
I've always struggled with my weight, too, but am still, barely, managing to stay "voluptuous-not-fat." That with about 90 minutes of exercise, most days, and a very low-carb diet. I used to nosh pizza and danishes, and still stay thin. SIGH.
What can I say? The best tips I can give for staying "young-for-one's age" (people still seem to think I'm late 30s instead of late 40s) are the following:
1. Daily sunscreen
2. Daily exercise
3. Mositurizers with retinols and alpha hydroxy, the only anti-wrinke ingredients with science behind them. I can't afford a dermatologist either so I use over-the-counter versions. Neutrogena. They do make some difference.
4. Pretend sweets and fried foods don't even exist. Eat them half a dozen times per year, max. (In my case that means Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Easter and my birthday).
5. Drink wine. Preferably red. But in reasonable moderation. (I drink wine every day but never more than two glasses.) It's good for your heart, your metabolism, your digestion and your disposition (if not drunk to excess).
Drinking a virtual toast to you...
I'm off to the mirror to count my eyebrow hairs.
Of course, he was wrong. I have a dozen or so fine hairs on each brow, but I'm fair and they're blonde and barely show up. At least now, at fifty-five, I feel comfortable using a light brow pencil. After all, every other old broad I know has to do it:) It's about time I had some company here. You had me grinning and nodding throughout:)
Finally, I made a right decision in my life. The good thing is, as you lose your looks your eyesight goes, too, so you can't tell as much.
Congrats on the EP!
R
ok Ill venture out further here.
you talk about various stuff you have control over, and stuff you dont.
now what women think is attractive and what men do are totally different things, sometimes.
women think eyebrows are a big deal, and I bet a lot of guys just dont care and find a women without much eyebrow as no big deal.
losing hair is something you dont have control over, but waistline? c'mon. dont group that in with the other stuff. we have way more control over our weight than our passive, near-fatalistic, consumer-droid culture acknowledges.
next, for a guy, let me just say I think its pretty common that men are attracted to a combination of face and body. this usually works in your favor, because you can play to your strength. if you're not a real photogenic face person, try emphasizing your body. and let me just say, there are many women with average faces and knockout bodies, and the overall effect for me, and surely many other men, is still knockout. one makes up for the other!! to me thats the whole key to the cougar phenomenon. older women who take care of their bodies & even perfect them are *sexy*..... why? because *self-discipline* is always sexy.
For all the people to whom the eyebrow-loss, butt-and-thigh-collapse, middle-expansion thang is happening who never in their wildest dreams thought it would ... here's one on me that will cheer you up: Many years ago when I was 5 months pregnant and looked twice that far along, I found out by accident that my underwear fit better if I put it on backwards. Once I had recovered from the horror of that discovery, I managed to find some humor in the situation. But then my Shield of Denial arose once again and clamped itself stoutly in place. "At least," I told myself without the SLIGHTEST DOUBT in my mind, "It isn't going to get any worse."
Yeah, I was that dumb and unobservant. Didn't think the rules applied to me. I figure my current state of rapidly-accelerating physical decay is The Goddess's way of making sure I am finally paying attention.
I used to wish I was invisible and now I more or less am, and its oddly liberating. I want to get back in shape so I'll have more energy, but I'm fine with looking all of my hard won 56 years.
Somewhere there's a sasquatch with my feet!
Now I'm old and finally comfortable in my own skin. I can't explain how this happened. I'm still camera-phobic, but all I need to feel beautiful is even skin tone and warm coral-pink on my cheeks and lips (thanks, Bobbi Brown). Whether anyone else looks at me and sees a beautiful (if older) woman, I don't care. I know I'm 54. I know I look every year of it. I still don't care. I finally like the way I look.
I think of that often-quoted graduation speech telling young people that when they look at their photos years later they won't believe how beautiful they were. I figure that when I'm 74, I'll look back on when I was 54 and feel that way too.
I understand how you feel about losing your looks. Ten years ago, I felt the same way. But maybe 20 years from now, you'll see beauty in your current self that you are totally missing now. Why wait until it's past tense?
You have to have looks to lose them. As such, I have no worries.