Monday, October 18, 2010

Aging Disgracefully

While comfortably relaxing with Sparkly Dude the other night, watching Foxtel with glass of wine in hand, I discovered the joys of Four Weddings. Celebrity Four Weddings, no less. That was it - we were hooked. The celebrities in question were people I had never heard of, however they were all of, shall we say... a certain age?


One of them in particular, Katie something or other (the blond in the photo) I thought looked older than I am. I'm quite harsh on myself in judging age, and was confident that she had to be of more advanced years than me.

Apparently not. Sparkly Dude disagreed. "Sorry, babe, but she's in her mid 30's at most, and you, well, you're not."

"Yes, yes, ok,", sez I, determined to be right. Again. "But she *looks* older than me, doesn't she?".

*sound of chirping crickets*

*if despair and despondency has a sound effect, then imagine it here*

He reckons the 2 brunettes are much older than I am, however their publicists have done their jobs very well, and Google has so far failed to reveal their ages to me, so I'll just agree with him. The amount of plastic surgery going on also makes it tough to assess them in terms of normal human aging.

I know I shouldn't have let it get to me, but it really has made me take a close look at myself and how old I look. Inside I honestly still feel about 21 years old and still undecided as to what I want to be when I grow up, so to have to reconcile that sort of self-image with the face in the mirror - grey hair, wrinkles, beginnings of the dreaded double chin, drooping eyelids - is not an easy task.

I do what I can - I colour the hair, I moisturise and am getting pretty damned good with the concealer, but I'm losing this battle - gravity and age are slowly but surely winning.

Am I going to reach a stage where the me inside feels so little like the me in the mirror that I'm going to resort to more drastic measures, or will it happen the other way around? Will my aging face finally convince my inner-kidsRus that it's time to grow up? I think not, somehow.

I remember about 10 years ago proudly announcing that I would never EVER go in for cosmetic surgery of any kind, and that Botox was for insecure women who couldn't accept themselves as they were.

HAH! An admirable sentiment, and words easily said when you look in the mirror and still see an image that feels like you. 10 years down the track, after catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and wondering who that old chick is, it's all to easy to want to fight back with whatever tools you can get hold of.

Sparkly Dude loves me as I am, and thinks I'm gorgeous. That's all very well and good, but what about when I don't think I'm gorgeous? I've either got to accept this whole aging thing and learn to love my new look, or I've got to fight it tooth and nail.

I haven't decided which I'm going to go with yet. How about you?

STxxx

4 comments:

Lee said...

Those women would each be at least 45, probably closer to 50, is my guess.

And mostly plastic.

Its a really tough issue, because everywhere we go we get dumped with images of young, photoshopped, impossibly perfect chicks.

When I was young I was never as sophisticated as them. Now I'm too old to be them. Either way, I failed to make the grade too. The whole thing is designed to keep you feeling insecure, so you'll go buy stuff to make yourself feel better - or at least like you're doing your best to look as close to that surreality as possible.

If magazines dealt with making women feel happy with ourselves as we are, why would we go and buy that $200 face cream? We'd know it was a rip off idiots buy!

Hey, if Sparkly Dude thinks you're okay, then you are. I don't think you need plastic bits inserted to look good, but if it makes you feel better about yourself, go for it. For me, I just stopped watching TV (ours isn't connected) and reading mags so I don't see so much of that rubbish to make myself feel bad any more. And seeing less of it makes me feel so much better!

Madeline said...

I am 34 and I am already trying to save up a little $$$$ to save it! I reckon I need about $250 - $300 for my first round of Botox, and that is only if I am focusing on my crows feet.

Sparkly Tiara said...

It's not as though I want to look like them - god no! I just want to look like how I feel, if that makes sense.

I wonder if they could suck out my double chin flab and inject it into my boobs... Win Win!

Voluptacon said...

I'm just going to wait until I'm about 80 and then go all Jocelyn Wildenstien. Who gives a shit? I'm going to be old and craggy anyway, may as well make myself old, craggy and freaky.

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