Beauty in a Box

From the television, a commercial boasts a gorgeous 40-something woman caressing her face and flashing her eyes in a sultry, seductive manner suggesting that she is the ultimate embodiment of “looking 10 years younger”. Her vivaciously youthful visage not only implies that she looks younger than her years, but that I can too, if I will just buy a jar of X-brand skin rejuvenating formula. (Excuse my short aside, but why are these products no longer called face creams? They are now therapies, solutions, and serums.  I’ll tell you why… face cream called Face Cream, $9, a dollar a letter… face cream called Ultra-Intense Deep-Cellular Restorative Therapy, but is still really just face cream, $44. Still a dollar a letter, just more letters. Logical.)

Aaaanywhooo… after this commercial fades out, my son pipes up out of nowhere and comments with all the 11-year old wisdom he can muster, “Why are people so obsessed with looking younger? Get over it and accept your age.”

This makes me laugh out loud, not because he is concerned about other people’s vanity so early in his own life — but because it is the straight-up, naked, unabashed truth.

Why are people so obsessed with looking younger? Nothing short of death stops the aging process, so why kick against the goads so desperately?

I look at photographs of famous women (yeah, and men) in their 40s-60s and beyond, trying appear timeless through plastic surgery, Botox, and liposuction, and I feel nothing but pity. Thousands of dollars wasted, only to find themselves looking like monsters in their golden years.

I’m not trying to be mean, but I wonder how some of these folks would have looked without the multiple-injections, surgically overstretched skin, and chemical enhancements. Probably not nearly as bad as they do now. At least they would look real.

This past year, I became painfully aware of two deep wrinkles in a high-profile face-place, smack between my eyes. Yes, I admit that Vanity popped in to say hello, and I sampled a few expensive brand-name serums and formulas, but then my money bid me a sweet adieu, so I had to kick Vanity to the curb and deal with my new best friends.

I had already plunked down some hard cash on my beauty in a box, so I figured I’d at least put the stuff to good use. I have to admit that I did end up looking younger… but not 10 years. Try 25!  Yeah, Baby! 25 years! Woooo! Uh Huh! 14 again!

Jealous? Don’t be. I’ll take the wrinkles over pimples any day!

My minute is up. Thanks for spending yours with me.

Just a Minute Now

Picture Perfect

It’s funny how you look in the mirror and see what you want to see. Most of the time I think my hair is not too bad, and that my makeup (the little that I do wear) is fine, and that my clothes are presentable. Then, someone takes a picture. Why is there such disparity?

I remember when my husband I and were newly married, we decided to take advantage of a promotional photo shoot at a new portrait studio. The deal was a free sitting and an 11×17 (11×17, no joke) print of whatever pose we liked best. I thought it would be so cool to have a big, formal portrait of us to hang on the wall (certainly not in our teensy-tiny apartment, but later when we upgraded to a house with a long wall, or a living room mantle).

I shined up in a nice dress, and my husband got into his best suit. Each of us looked the other over, approved of our appearance together, and then made our way to the portrait studio. This was some time before digital proofs, so when the photographer was finished snapping all his shots, he thanked us and we headed home. In the car, I looked at my husband and saw nothing but handsome and smart, and he looked over and appreciated me in all my loveliness. We had no idea what the results of the portrait sitting would be, but there was no reason to believe they wouldn’t be perfect.

A couple of weeks passed, and we eagerly attended our appointment to view the portraits. The studio attendant led us to a velvety room with several elegant, but empty, frames. As we waited for the sales representative to join us, my husband and I chatted and our mood was high. A woman came into the room and greeted us as she began inserting our various portrait poses into the fancy, golden frames. As she did so, my husband and I shot each other confused glances. Was that me?

My face was unusually elongated, and I was kind of yellow. My head was angled in an odd direction, and because of that my smile appeared creepy and eerie.  If you have ever followed the comic strip “The Far Side”, you might be able to envision what I saw in the images before me.

We complained to the sales representative that we were not satisfied with the way the pictures turned out and because of that we would not be making a purchase. Obviously not feeling my pain and deciding that we were just another waste-of-time in her day, she looked me straight in the eye and said, “Isn’t that how you always look?”

I’m pretty sure I coughed out loud, and to avoid being more rude than that, requested my freebie (although I can’t imagine why, probably on principle). At this, and looking back I really believe she did it on purpose, the sales rep removed the largest portrait from the center frame and transferred it to an equally-enormous envelope — that brute had to be 24×30 at the very least.

“Here you go.”

We said we thought the deal was for an 11×17, and she replied, turning slightly away, “No, that’s the one you get.”

We returned home strangely defeated, but then had a riotous laugh over our new pest control device. I think it also had the ability to repel vampires and most monsters that had a habit of hiding under the bed at night.  At least we never saw any after we shoved the portrait under there, permanently.

So what’s my moral?  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder? No.  Inner beauty is better than outer beauty? No.  Oh, never mind, there isn’t a moral. I just truly hated that picture.

So, my minute is up. Thanks for spending yours with me.

Just a Minute Now

It’s Just Hair! Or, is It?

What are the makings of a Good Hair Day? Things go exactly as planned. No one crosses you in any way. Your coffee is hot, tastes great, and you don’t spill it on yourself. You feel fantastic, and absolutely nothing can faze you.

Some people just don’t understand how all this hangs in the balance of how your hair looks. It does.

Let’s look at a hypothetical situation:

You wake up and start the day by doing everything within your capacity to arrange your hair as attractively as possible. You apply various styling products and use such-and-such curling / flattening / teasing / taming apparatus, alternately heating and hydrating your tresses until not even Vidal Sassoon, Paul Mitchell, and John Frieda combined could do any good with the battlefield that crowns your head.

Giving up and pulling the entire mess back into a clip, that for some reason keeps popping open, you grab your stuff and run out the door… late, since you just spent an extra 20 minutes in front of the mirror trying to make yourself presentable to the world.

Half-way to the office, you realize you have inconveniently forgotten the bag containing a carefully packed breakfast and lunch, which was going to save you ten smackeroos in take-out. And, because the bag is not insulated, not only will you need to buy breakfast and lunch, you will also have to throw out most of what you packed, and therefore will have wasted an additional $6.95.

Arriving at work, your favorite parking space is taken, and you search around helplessly for an alternate. Finally settling on one in the “South Forty”, you hoof it to the main building in your new stilettos (which you put on, hoping this might prevent a certain percentage of people from paying any attention to your hair), but the heel of your left shoe catches in a crack in the pavement, breaks off, and you twist your ankle. Limping in, your co-worker sympathetically lends an arm and helps you to a chair. She says, “Oh my gosh, you poor thing, you must have taken a horrible spill out there. Just look at your hair!”

The rest of the day follows in kind.

Emotionally drained, you arrive home that evening, toss the rotting food you left on the table earlier in the day, and get into bed, falling into a fitful sleep — only to wake up in the middle of the night needing to tinkle. You stumble to the bathroom and turn on the light, noticing that your hair has magically fallen perfectly into place. Aside from a few strays this way and that, which you smooth down in wonderment, it looks completely amazing!

Not wanting to spoil the dream, you lie back down in bed in a really weird position, so your hair won’t get all messed up.

Sadly, you are unable to fall back asleep. When the alarm clock screams 5:45 AM, you are elated to find that your hair still looks fabulous, but you are exhausted and have a nasty kink in your neck.  You know, though, this is totally OK… because no one’s ever said they had a bad neck day, right?

My minute is up. Thanks for spending yours with me.

Just a Minute Now