Gracefully?

What a drag it is getting old

From "Mother's Little Helper" by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

The other day, I made my usual bi-monthly salon visit. My hair stylist touched up the roots and did a very light trim. But I asked him for one more thing—curls. He's been bugging me for months, maybe years, to let him do that. And recently I saw some pictures of my friend Nadya on Facebook after she'd had her hair curled, and I thought it looked great. So I let my stylist hit me with the curling iron and a few tons of hairspray. It would only be temporary, but I'd get to see how it looked.

When I got home, I took some pictures, the usual at-arm's-length self portraits. Those aren't usually very good anyway. I hadn't redone my makeup. I hadn't worn much in the first place. I posted one of the only ones I liked on Facebook. I've been getting props ever since, which I appreciate. But I see a woman getting older.

I swear I look better in real life than in photos, but even if photos aren't always flattering, they don't lie either. My skin ain't what it used to be. I spent too much time in the sun when I was younger, being careless about sun damage. Even without any sun problems, collagen starts to break down. It's just the natural aging process. I have some rosacea. My eyelids are sagging a bit. I have those dear old marionnette lines, sometimes known as parentheses.

My generation always wanted to pretend we'd never get old. We had something known as Peter Pan Syndrome:

If growing up means it would be
Beneath my dignity to climb a tree,
I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up
Not me!

From "I Won't Grow Up," lyrics by Carolyn Leigh

I've always been pretty cautious about growing up. I never wanted to be the kind of adult who seemed to have forgotten what it was like to be young. I thought for sure that didn't have to happen. And it doesn't! I'm still pretty well connected to my inner teen, as Sweetie calls it.

It's good to maintain a youthful attitude. "You're only as old as you feel," goes the saying. The only trouble is, the outside doesn't always cooperate. The body doesn't know anything about this refusal to grow up thing. So things start to sag. And ache. And not work as well as they used to.

I can't let it get to me. I need to develop an attitude more like that of these women (scroll down to see the video).

My taste in fashion is a bit different than theirs, but I love their approach. I hope I never give up on myself. I hope I never get boring or turn into my grandmother. I can rock and I can roll and I can continue to find clothes that look good on me. I can get my ass back to the gym and make my body as healthy as possible while also finding my facial bone structure again.

I especially love the woman in the video who said this: "Young women, you're going to be old women one day. Don't worry about it. Don't sweat it. Don't worry about getting older. Every era, it builds character." Gotta work on that.

(Thanks to my friends Gisele for posting the link to that video on Facebook and Jonelle for finding the original video, which is much larger.)