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All things that are born, that live, age and die. It's the natural order of things, the way of life. No one, nothing stays young forever and since aging is inevitable it is best that we accept it gracefully. Youth is not where true beauty lies anyway and trying to hold on to our youthful looks out of vanity is sad really. There's nothing wrong with using products to keep our skin healthy but it will lose it's tone and elasticity, it will develop age spots and scaly spots, old scars will reappear. It will wrinkle and become crepey, our lives will be writ large on our faces and hands and we should embrace that. I know, those of us that are well past our youthful looks, we don't feel different inside and we look in the mirror and wonder who is that old person looking back at us. That is us, that is who we are after living and playing and loving and crying and laughing and mourning and dancing and losing and winning and working and resting and all of it, all of it, and we should not let a culture drunk on youth or family or friends or enemies tell us we are not still beautiful. Our worth is not derived from smooth skin.
Last Saturday we learned that an attractive woman we know is in the ICU. She had decided to get a face lift for her 50th birthday and things went terribly horribly wrong. I don't know the details, just that blood was running down her throat from the bottom of her face and they had to poke a hole in her throat and insert a tube so she could breathe.
Women, we are goddesses, please do not succumb to the haters, do not go under the knife to keep a smooth face beyond its time. Age with grace and dignity. Stretched skin looks exactly like what it is.
I hold no animosity towards her in my heart for her choice but it saddens me that she made that choice and that it turned out to be so disastrous for her. Any anger I feel is solely directed at our culture that only celebrates women in our youth and ignores us, or worse, denigrates us, as we age and come into our power. If you can look at another older woman with wrinkles and creases and droopy eyelids and mouths that start to turn down and lips that thin and hair that has grayed and see that she has lived and see her beauty and power, then look in your mirror and give yourself the same compassion.
So true! Better to look at your lovely old body in the mirror and thank her for all her adventures. We outlive a lot of machinery!
ReplyDeleteawesome, yes, i will do a post on this too. I love it.
ReplyDeleteI'm working on it, still a struggle. I do miss the smooth younger me, particularly how strong I was.
ReplyDeleteI admit it was tough for me which is what spurred the year of the selfie when I was 64. I took a selfie every Friday and published it and by the end of the year I had let go of any vanity I had been hoarding. it's very freeing, really. this is my face. like it or not. if you judge me by the smoothness of my skin and not my intellect/being then I have no use for you. get out of my way. as for strength, I'm not as strong as I was when I could hold my half of a 150 piece of heavy glass if even for the few moments it took to transfer it from rack to table. At soon to be 73, I think I'm good for 40 - 50 pounds of dirt in bags and I can still haul around a concrete cinder block though I use the hand cart for long distances and moving pots around. I did notice a year...maybe middle to late 60s when I felt a definite loss of strength, not a lot but noticeable.
DeleteWOW that is a terrible thing to have happen- Ah, "all is vanity and vexation of spirit", I hope that she will be right as rain soon- a lesson for all! I am fine with this old self of mine, ravaged, fat, wrinkled, stiff- a ten watt bulb...really I am more free than ever and can still stand up unassisted... Blessed!! All about attitude and you know we have plenty of that!! Stay strong , woman, You are rocking it.
ReplyDeleteLinda Sue not anonymous.
DeleteBeautifully expressed. Thank you, Ellen.
ReplyDeleteThank you, well said!
ReplyDeleteI usually get at least one fashion catalogue in the post every day. (I tried cancelling the stuff but that resulted in even more.) I buy clothes second hand so I just look through them for entertainment while waiting for the kettle to boil. And amazingly, the models have become increasingly older, much less slim and even have white hair. But then it's me they want as a customer not teenage girls.
This quest to look eternally young has always been a bit of a puzzle to me, because it's a battle that is lost before it begins. It does fuel a multi-billion dollar industry, however.
ReplyDeleteGod, what a tragedy. And I've heard this story more than once- a "simple" cosmetic procedure gone very, very wrong. Sometimes resulting in death.
ReplyDeleteI will freely admit that losing my looks has made me far unhappier than I thought it would. I suppose I had no idea how vain I was. But I will not choose to try and fix something that in reality is not broken.
That's terrible! I do get startled seeing my mother's face in the mirror, but what really saddens me is how weak I am. That's something I can and should work on.
ReplyDeleteI remember being so happy when my mom stopped dying her hair. It was that moment of acceptance of our beautiful aging bodies. My sister who will be 70 has been dying her hair black for a decade now. It's crazy. Let's embrace the beauty of age.
ReplyDeleteCome August, I will turn 80 ... what I regret the most is the thinning of my hair from a thick, full mane to this sparsly coverage I now have! I have 3 wigs now ... so, sometimes I do have more hair then other times!
ReplyDeleteSometimes I do see the young, thin, pretty girl I use to be ... sigh! I attempt to maintain a healthy weight even though I am carrying way too much weight on a frame 2-1\2 inches shorter ... ugh!
Ah me ... life goes on!
I stopped wearing makeup years ago and my favorite retirement outfit is a sweatshirt and sweatpants! I can just be comfortable and am glad I don't have to worry about my looks. No one's looking at me and I am fine with that!
ReplyDeleteWe have a tendency to moan about getting older, foolishly ignoring the distinct disadvantages of the alternative. Worse still, we look backwards, re-treading the worn path of Nostalgia. Are there any old-age benefits other than not having shuffled off this mortal coil (a modified quote from you-know-who)? I'm not sure but there may be opportunities. If we work hard at it we continue to develop intellectually. To the point where we are able to identify the self-hypnosis that Nostalgia imposes. And the discovery that there were fewer Golden Eras than we supposed. Knowledge is always worth having.
ReplyDeleteWell said, Ellen. We all age, it is part of life. Great post.
ReplyDeleteWow. What a horrible story. I've never understood people who feel the need to have plastic surgery, but then, I've never been considered all that attractive, so I'm not really losing anything as I age, if that makes sense. I think it must be harder for people who are considered knockouts when they're young, and part of their identity becomes tied to that. Know what I mean?
ReplyDeleteI hope that woman recovers. Sheesh.
I didn't realize how much my appearand had changed until people of every age began holding doors for me at the post office and asking if I needed help with my groceries. When I mentioned it to a friend, she laughed and said, "Have you not seen that head of white hair you're toting around?" I both knew and didn't know that I'd turned white; at least it's not gray. Health and strength are far more important than 'looks.' I badly need to lose some weight, and that's going well. It's not that I'm obese, but I know that my knees and back will enjoy ten or fifteen fewer pounds to haul around. Prevention, cure, and all that.
ReplyDeleteI have a wrinkled face but at almost 73 my hair has stayed stubbornly dark. not that I don't have gray, I do and it's increasing every year, but most people just assume I color my hair. that's my big joke...when all the other girls were standing in line for boobs, pre-birth, I was in line for no gray. I think my dark hair makes people think I'm not as old as I am.
DeleteI'm all in to prevention. it's why I stay active, yoga 3 times a week and a home practice, walk the dog every day (almost), gardening. My mother declared at 60 that she was old now and didn't have to do anything anymore and then before long she couldn't. of course she had dementia creeping in at the time that no one knew. still, you stop using stuff, the body no longer uses resources to support that.