Walking with a friend recently, she recounted a tale that made my blood boil. Beyond the heat of a hot Santa Ana wind in Los Angeles, I was steaming with upset about what her friend endured at the hands of some women who have swallowed the Kool Aid from the fountain of youth, and are spreading the poison every which way they can.
Seems that this friend of hers lives in the heart-(less)-land of Stepford Wife-dumb. My friend says her friend is BEAUTIFUL. I trust my friend. She says her friend suffered a back injury recently, rendering her incapable of walking two steps without pain, so she has put on a few pounds. She is still beautiful.
At a recent social gathering, one of this gal’s “friends” handed her a card from her own plastic surgeon, saying, “You really could use a thigh tuck.”
Mortified, the friend took the card and ran to the women’s room and burst into tears.
In explaining the whole episode to my friend, my friend’s friend went all out defending the rationale of the plastic surgeon card-toting woman, saying she only had her best interests at heart... or at least in mind. She only wanted to be helpful and thought if the gal LOOKED better (in whose eyes, I want to know), then she’d FEEL better.
Re-wind to my experience last week at the mall - a seldom used resource for me because they sell dumb stuff there. Walking by one of the kiosks where really dumb and expensive stuff is sold, a young and gorgeously coiffed man of about 22 pressed a sample foil packet in to my hand, saying,
“You look beautiful, but you could look even MORE beautiful, if only you’d try this Merlot Collection Resverotrol Moisture Day Cream!”
He asked what I use now on my eyes. I was genuinely confused.
“Besides water?” I asked.
His turn to look confused. “What do you mean, water?”
“You know, WATER... “ I mimed drinking, “when I wash my face.”
Truly, I saw him roll his eyes. I looked at the ingredients on the packet. The list included propylene glycol, petrolatum, and a bunch of other unpronounceable chemicals - many of which are derived from petroleum. I said out loud,
“This stuff comes from petroleum! Why would I put petroleum based products on my face?”
Mr. Smooth knew he wasn’t going to make a sale. Flushed and flustered, he said,
“This stuff is really expensive! It costs over $400 an ounce!” As if that would make me want to buy it.
“Thank you,” I smiled, and walked away.
What are we so afraid of in this culture? Aging and death are parts of life. No one gets outa here alive.
The truth is each of us earns every wrinkle, every white hair, every “character line” carved with care by the artist called Experience. Why would I want to revert to my twenty-something putty face to be just another putty face?
A colleague of mine, I’ll call him B, had a near death experience while attempting to hike Mount Everest. He and a group of would be ascenders were flown in at 14,000 feet. Too high an elevation for most folks to acclimate to in the forty eight hours the guides allotted for acclimatizing. B felt more and more woozely of head and gut, as the hours wore on. Going higher, it got progressively worse. Hiking down mountain and back up again, didn’t help. The other eight guys AND the guides, too, who wanted to earn their money for the whole climb, all went into denial. They refused to see how compromised B was.
He described that it took him twenty minutes to tie one boot, he was so weak and disoriented. He could not eat, drink, or breathe well. Later he found out that he had brain edema, and would have died had he stayed a few more hours on the mountain. It took him two years to reclaim memory and much of his brain function.
Not one of the climbers was willing to acknowledge his own personal worst nightmare unfolding before his eyes. Altitude sickness can kill.
Life IS terminal, as my beloved says. We just don’t know which terminal and when! None of us is born with a guarantee.
Where I see beauty of experience etched in the elder faces I love, others may see their worst nightmare - that of superficial beauty fading. Enter Jacky O’Shaughnessy, model for American Apparel’s line called Advanced Basics. Her BOYFRIEND said he couldn’t be seen with her in public any more because she looked too old. Here’s a link to her interview on the “What’s Underneath Project.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBZQpsXUsfw
Who would I be, if I didn’t have one of my faculties? One of my senses? One of my familiar body gestures? My hair? I think I would still be me. Would you still talk to me? Or would you hand me the card of a plastic surgeon and walk away?
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