I wake up in the morning and just have to look in the mirror. I'm drawn to it like shoes to a wad of newly spit bubble gum.
I check for a new wrinkle and search for a sag. Why can't I wake up like girls who've been chased by Freddie Kruger all night but still arise with lipstick and no raccoon eyes? I preen, pretending that I'm 'OOooOooOoo this dress is dangerous' a la the Special K commercial.
Then I realize the only thing dangerous about me is my morning breath.
I can't open my medicine cabinet without first making ready to catch what
falls out from its overstuffed interior. I deign to call it that, for
the only thing akin to medicine in there is contact lens solution. At least it's the only thing with a warning.
I wonder as I stare at the pretty pink and white bottles elegantly inscribed with promises, why do I bother to bother? Why do I consistently toss good money after bad in a vain attempt at vanity?
I've got them all, if they promise to 'reduce the signs of aging', to
'eliminate those fine lines', to 'firm, tighten, rejuvenate, or
'de-justaboutanything', I've bought it. They don't work, but I've sucked into them just the same! As soon as a new one hits the market, I take the beta beauty bait. I'm a wrinkle-cream junkie! I'll dab it, slather it, inject it, heck, I'll even eat it.
There's a product, spottily packaged like a Gateway computer, called 'udder cream', exactly what dairy farmers use to sooth the savage teat on poor overmilked Bossie. This super cream is worthy of the finest cosmetics counters. We won't discuss WHERE I use it. Does it work? Ask my significant other if I've mooooved him lately.
Another company markets their wares with the spiel that their ingredients are those used to tan leather...to rub over the hides of animals to make them soft and pliable, to bring them back to a gleaming glistening glow! If it can do that for dead skin, think what it can do for the living breathing largest organ of my body. Just don't make a coat out of me!
Touted as the best for silkiest hair is actual horse shampoo, attractively packaged in bottles that look exactly like horse shampoo. If it's good enough for Mr. Ed, it's corraled in my cabinet for my mini-mane. So far all it's done is attract flies.
Let's see; udder cream, tanned hides, and stallion stuff, I should at the
very least be possessed with animal magnetism or a desire to walk on all fours.
But I don't stop there.
I have creams to banish cellulite, to trim and tone my 'godforsaken
where did THEY come from' thighs. I'm only 100 pounds, but in my mirror half of it is prime Kentucky Fried Chicken pickings.
Undereye creams are GUARANTEED to eliminate those fine stress and age lines,
and for one split second, I think I saw one disappear. Then I was a split second older and another one came.
I've got neck cream, promising to keep firm that prone to sag area that threatens to make your chin seem to meet your chest. That's pretty much inherited so if your momma has it, cream all you want but then stay out of the woods in November when they're hunting fresh turkeys.
Beauty catalogs offer a myriad of straps, wraps, and mini torture devices you can use 'unnoticed' in the checkout line at the supermarket. As if a blind man can't tell who's kegeling while they're flipping through their coupons. I've become quite adept at this, I know how many sets of ten counts I can do with one full grocery cart.
If the creams and the gizmos don't work, flaws can be hidden with every form of highlighting, diffusing, enhancing, covering, natural looking makeup ever lab-tested on a poor innocent bunny rabbit.
Why bother? Why fight nature's progression of time as it marches through, across and over my face and body? I have creams for the morning and creams for the evening. How does it know? If I stay awake all night and sleep during the day do I reverse them?
Why do I put myself through this time, effort and expense? Do I equate the look with the worth?
While the sentiment is nice and I'd like it to be consistently so, there's a lot of malarkey in being beautiful on the inside. About 95% of the male population can say all they want about loving me for my mind and sense of humor. But when it gets right down to the nitty gritty, they want soft, sweet and firm body parts attached to creamy complexioned faces framed by luxurious tresses! Based on the number of balding pot-bellied men who leave their wives because they 'let themselves go', marriage vows need to be revised to include "in wrinkles blah blah..."
Then again it's deliciously fun to look at my 'old' classmates and see them as exactly that. Call it crass and superficial, but it feels SO good! When Sally Ann has her hair dyed asphalt black and sports an excessively nipped and tucked smile, it's nice to smile back at her with my 'natural' look. So, I bother; I cream and pluck and kegel.
It's an indisputable truth that if you feel like you look good, you'll feel better about yourself. There's nothing more prophetic than a bad hair day or a zit eruption, either will guarantee the demise of the entire day.
None of us wants to get older, but when we do, we want to do it gracefully.
BULL!
I'm going to fight dirty every step of the way, kicking and screaming. I'll be digging my nails, buffed to a glimmery shine, into the door of Betty's Beauty Barn to be first in line for 'sure it costs more, but I'm worth it'. Whatever my motivation, despite the fact that I try to keep my insides pretty too, my outsides are something I feel rightfully compelled to care about. Aging bothers me and I don't see why I shouldn't try to offend it as much as it offends me, even if it sends me digging in the barn for something innovative. Come to think of it, have you EVER seen a wrinkle on Bossie?
I'm gonna bother til the cows come home!