Feminism and Beauty: Aging Partners

It's hard to harumph out of one side of your face, while squirming with the other. Read a post by Vivian Diller this morning titled The Beauty Paradox: When Feminism and Vanity Collide. Diller has a new book, Face It: What Women Really Feel as Their Looks Change. We have stuff to grapple with as we age, but the beauty part seemed the least troublesome bit to me. "When you reach 50 or 60, feminism can feel like a directive to let looks go, while caring about one's looks can feel narcissistic or anti-feminist - a dilemma many Boomers were not prepared to face." Oh, dear. I feel dragging feminism in to portray an artificial devil's advocate against beauty is incendiary. The message of the gargantuan beauty industry is that we are never to be happy with our looks at any age. Does this book contribute to our well-being, or poke the disharmony drummed into our psyches? Diller uses the phrase "unshaven, aggressive women." The author calling that phrase a cliched perception does not forgive using it. In order to recapture balance and harmony and unclench my jaw, I contemplated what my true feelings are. I cropped a photo of me close up to see if I can face it. Maybe it was a sideways blessing to have multiple face surgeries: after the big one to get all the cancer, when I expected to lose my nose, my eye and maxillary plane, every concern about beauty vanished in the recovery room. A coworker said "that scar tissue, you know, one side of your face is going to sag faster than the other." It has. Swell. I have a nose. Maybe it's made of my thigh, lower abdomen and cartilage from my ear, and hikes up to chat with my eyebrow; but my smile works, my twinkling eyes are my own, and I can store spare change in the lines in my forehead. Though I am surprised by my reflection occasionally, I do really love the feminist I see. Feminism is a life companion, a strong and resilient partner in my overall beauty.

Beauty Wisdom from My Sister

My youngest sister, the wildest kid in our crew, grew into the adult with most of the common sense. There's a big dose of yin:yang in this dichotomy, which is true for all of us I suppose, but it's black/white for Carol, and taupe/slate for the rest. Carol is a professional cosmetologist, working for a famous intergalacticly huge beauty company. She has eerie color sense, can pick a lipstick shade for you that will be your favorite forever, until you see her again and she recommends another. Mine is MAC Lipglass Viva Glam VI, which I carry in my handbag and paddling survival kit right next to matches. She can match towels to shower curtains without taking the entire bathroom with her to the store. I am incapable of that. (On her instructions I am not allowed to shop without supervision to match anything; or to Cabbage Patch in public either.) We could talk for hours about Carol's many skills and attributes, but this is about sharing her beauty rules and tips. Rule Number One: don't pull, push, scrub - or in any way whatsoever - maul your face. I didn't listen and well, here I am. Rule Number Two: soap is for washing clothes and dishes and small children, not skin. Rule Number Three: petrolatum is a petroleum byproduct and is designed to get you addicted to reapplying. Gee, petroleum companies and addictions? Who knew? Petrolatum is NOT moisturizing, is in fact, drying, and also is noncosmodecious, or some such big word which means it clogs your pores. Rule #4: if alcohol is the second ingredient in anything you're about to pour on your body, it's going to dry your skin. Alcohol is drying. Alcohol + petrolatum is desert. If you're buying products with these two in close proximity on the ingredient list, you're dehydrating yourself into prunedom. These cover the basics. I'm adding stay out of the sun - even if you get through a few decades without evidence of skin damage, overexposure will show up with a vengeance some day. Did you notice Carol has one green eye and one blue eye? Another example of her fabulous color sense.