Aging Awkwardly, But Grateful

As my 50th birthday looms, I am determined to not fret over the evidence of history etched on my face more and more each year and instead try to adjust my attitude.

I don't want my wrinkles injected with cow's collagen or my frown muscles subjected to bacterium toxin or my eyebrows lifted into perfect crescent moons via a surgeon's scalpel.

Of course, all people should be able to do what they want with their faces and their bodies without others criticizing them. So let me say here that I am not criticizing anyone.  I am simply venting, because I'm afraid.

I'm afraid that beauty will be founded eventually on the homogenized look of plastic surgeons, instead of on individuality--and something even more troubling, that because I want to opt out of these procedures, I will be discounted because of it.

And left to fly my wrinkled-woman flag alone.

At least in the past we all looked old together. We comforted each other through our common shared experience.

But now, I see myself in 30 years, one of the last few old female faces left and, consequently, compelled to explain myself to curious little children who don't understand why I am so different from others my age. Why I look 80 at 80.

Still, I can't get passed this feeling that tells me not to interfere with something that isn't broken. And when I ever begin to doubt that, our Jeep provides me reassurance.

Each time this old girl goes in for an oil change, someone invariably comes up to me, holding some grimy part of her, and tells me how wrecked it is. I then call my husband on my cell phone, and he always tells me some version of this: When you go under the hood to fix something, which probably doesn't need fixing, you're only asking for trouble.

And I know he's right, because the time I did let someone fix something, which probably didn't need fixing, somehow another thing mysteriously got broken. So now I leave well enough alone.

I'm trying to do the same with myself.  Although, three years ago, I decided to get braces.

A year or so after I'd gotten them, I teasingly asked my husband what he thought, certain he'd agree I looked like a wrinkled teenager. But instead he said he didn't like them.

It took a few days for me to finally eke out why, because he kept saying he didn't know.

It wasn't the cost, he said, or that I more or less up and did it without much discussion. It also wasn't because I looked a little ridiculous, although I think I did.

The reason he didn't like the braces, he said, was because he feared they were only the beginning, and that I would eventually do something more riskful, like injecting botulin into my face. Or worse.

I was glad he loves me enough to worry about such things--and that I was once again reminded that he doesn't need me to change my outsides.

And I'm grateful he's been that way for the entire 25 years that I've known him.

Once, when I whimpered about hating the way my face looked since I've gotten older, he said, "I don't like it when you talk that way about your face; I like your face the way it is."

And I cried then, because he told me what probably all wives want to hear.

If only it were enough.

But it isn't. I am the one who has to love my outsides just the way they are or I will never be satisfied. I will always be afraid of the next new wrinkle or gray hair--or lack thereof.

So I keep reminding myself how lucky I am to be aging at all. It means I'm still alive. When I do that, I can feel my attitude getting stronger.

I also eat more healthily than I used to and I exercise three times a week, so I know I'm on the right track.

Now, if I can only quit obsessing over whether or not to buy that cosmetic contraption on that shopping channel that superficially stimulates your facial muscles with baby electrical currents and thereby firms and smoothes the skin…

QUESTION: How accepting are you of your aging process and what, if anything, could you do to improve your attitude?

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Okay, So Maybe I'm Not That Chic

I really didn't intend to look like a bag lady at my friend's wedding. Naples was experiencing a cold snap that weekend and I knew the sunset ceremony would be outside on a terrace. My motive was to keep warm.

That is what living in a subtropical climate has done to me. As soon as the temperature dips below 70, while all the tourists frolic on the beach in swimsuits I bundle up in anything I can find with wool mentioned on the fabric label. Wool skirts and sweaters that in some cases I have had since high school and college in Pennsylvania, because they still look new from seldom being worn during the 26 years that I've lived here in Florida.

The cropped, wool cardigan seemed wedding-appropriate; it was black and sprinkled with faceted black beads. It was also as thick as a horse blanket, which fit my warmth agenda. I paired it with a slim, wool, black mid-calf skirt, and added black stockings and black pointy-toe shoes to further up the dressy quotient.

And since the bride had even suggested black, I was relieved to not have to think about it anymore.

But judging from how practically every other female at the wedding was clothed, even the groom's three-year-old granddaughter--in dresses and tops with bare arms and legs--I am guessing that looking like someone in Siberia isn't a popular style for weddings.

It's not that anyone actually said I looked like a bag lady. But the bride didn't exactly disagree with me either when I told her that I thought that's how I appeared in her wedding photographs.

So now I know and will not soon forget: A-line and midi length are not a flattering combination in a skirt. Particularly when that skirt is paired with low-heeled shoes and horse-blanket sweaters.

Lesson learned.

But if I were to believe everything that I think my friends imply about me--or what I see on television and in magazines--I could easily come to the conclusion that I never wear the right clothes or makeup or hairstyle, since I don't look like those models or movie stars. I don't look glamorous or sexy. I look sort of plain. Like the “before” photographs on those makeover television shows. To be honest, I often like the before shots better than the afters, so maybe I favor plain.

But some of my friends don't.

“I think you look better when you at least wear mascara,” a good friend told me over lunch last year. It wasn't surprising, considering she likes to wear eye makeup much of the time. Even to the gym.

That same friend also likes to pester me about my hair length. She says I would look better if I cut it much shorter. But when I did cut it much shorter years ago, another friend said it made me look older.

It's amazing what we all do to help ourselves look what we think is our best. A woman confessed to me that after several years of marriage her husband still thought her strawberry blonde hair was natural. It wasn't. And she had no intention of breaking his blissful bubble.

My own blonde hair is natural--naturally mouse-blonde at the roots. And there is gray there, too, these days. The “natural" sunny highlights I owe to my hair colorist, bless his talented fingers. And gratefully, even my friends seem to approve.

But even if they didn't, I have decided to focus on pleasing myself from now on when it comes to my style, since trying to please everyone else is impossible.

True style is about integrity anyway. It's about honestly articulating on the outside who we are on the inside.

I love seeing other women with that kind of courageous individual style. They are my mentors. They inspire me.

I know my own style isn't for everyone; it's certainly not cool or trendy. And I'm beginning to be okay with that.

I like comfort and simplicity.

And sweaters as thick as horse blankets.

Bag ladies unite.

QUESTION: Does your style reflect the true you?

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