So much more than vanity is at stake!
Now and Then…It happens to all of us.
Accepting your aging/changing appearance is key to a good life. Neither is easy. I made peace with my changing body before I felt okay about my older face. That’s it above, a few months ago. It ain’t half bad. But it’s certainly not what I looked like at 50, about to trot off to the The Vault, an S & M club in the West Village (now a footnote in outlaw night life). Lest you draw the wrong conclusion, I was on assignment for what would become a New York magazine cover story in 1994.
I suspect that if you’re still reading, you identify (not with the S & M story — that’s your business). No one looks like they once did, not even a teenager!
And yet, appearance angst is everywhere. Propelled by social media, it punctuates conversations with my peers — even the most stunningly still beautiful. Some of my daughter’s friends had “work done” as early as their 40s. Even worse are the horrifying stories about cosmetic surgery for teens. Sure, I grew up in the nose-job generation and even knew a guy who had his ears fixed, but Botox and other injectables were not given to kids afraid of looking old.
I assume I don’t have to reiterate the story, written and retold since forever, about how the youth industry — hawking miracle formulas and procedures — makes billions from our appearance/aging anxiety. But below I share a surprising antidote: make the mirror your friend.
The point is, you always have a choice about how you talk to, think about and even see yourself. You can dread aging as a losing battle and continue to worry because you look different from your younger self, or you can consider a better approach.
Reckoning with the Body
At 68, my face was still getting me through doors, and I knew how to dress my body. But one day, I caught myself in front of a full-length bathroom mirror, naked, just out of the tub. Nothing concealed the extra rolls and strange configurations of skin draped here and there. Could an alien have come in the middle of the night and replaced my flawless thirty-something torso with this? (Clearly, I’d watched too many years of X-Files.)
Luckily, I was already developing relationships with several women who happened to be years older than me. Henrietta was 75 when we met, to my 46, Betty, 71 to my 59, and Zelda, 92 to my 66— my growing posse of much-older women. I was just starting to understand the benefits of having friends further along the path. If I was lucky enough to live that long, I wanted to be like them when I got to my 90s and 100s — engaged, active, and grateful for every day. So I started observing, asking questions.
Through “my old ladies,” as I began to call them, I learned, among other precious lessons of life lived, that cursing change is a slippery slope. Aging is a process we cannot and should not want to stop.
Indeed, to rail against “becoming old” leads to a miserable existence that only keeps getting worse. My much-older friends wore their wrinkles and sags proudly. They had their priorities straight. Bodies change from birth as we age. The trick is to just keep going.
So that day in front of the bathroom mirror, I stopped myself from body-shaming. “Not bad for sixty-eight,” I said, instead of blaming the aliens. Yes, I had new belly fat and imperfections that weren’t there a decade ago, but I had a waist! Not bad for 68. It was a good thing to say.
I had already lived five years longer than my mother. From that day on, I told myself that whatever I see in the mirror is a gift. I’m here.
And then I started watching my face change….
Accepting Reality
One of my favorite Buddhist sayings is, “Don’t argue with reality.” It covers so much, especially as we get into our 70s and beyond. One reality, for example, is that a 30-year-old looks very little like his six-year-old self. And yet, we grownups somehow expect at 70 to look like we did at 50. That is arguing with reality.
It doesn’t matter whether you’ve had “work” done or intend to sail into your later years with no or only minor tweaks — I dye my hair, and my teeth are capped. Most of us are burdened to some degree by the soul-crushing cultural mandate: YOUNG forever!
Really? I think we need to talk about it and help each other. To wit, when a dear friend feeling not so great about turning 80 asked each of her friends to tell her “what you wish for me,” I knew just what to say:
I hope when you look in the mirror, you see what I see, not what your ageist brain tells you you’re seeing.
I’ve known her since college — and have watched her become more of the well-loved, engaging, and capable woman she has always been. Now she’s just better at life. Oh, and by the way, she is also beautiful. At Thanksgiving this year, my grandsons couldn’t believe her age!
I turned 81 this month. The number is incomprehensible; I still feel like me, as I know my friend still feels like the college coed we both remember. Turns out many of are younger inside — we feel our subjective age.
My friend Marge, who lived past 104, put it this way as we made our way down Park Avenue, her hands firmly planted on her rollator for support: “I walk down the street and see through 25-year-old eyes, but my body feels like it’s 110!”
Unlike my body-shape epiphany, accepting my changing face happened over time. It took many conversations with myself in front of the mirror, but I eventually vowed to make the mirror my friend and to look at my face with wonder. This is what physical change looks like. I see what’s there, but I’m no longer upset that I don’t look 40, the age I feel inside.
This is you at 81. The mirror always tells me the truth if I’m willing to listen. You still look good, just different.
My face is different. It has spots of many colors and shapes that I’d rather conceal and sometimes do with makeup. But the bottom line is I’m okay. No, I’m more than okay. I am fine. I am lucky.
Reinforcement
This lesson banged on my door a few months ago, when I contracted West Nile disease and spent eight days in the hospital and months since then recovering. Pain and uncertainty easily trump vanity and set priorities straight. Ironically, in the hospital or when friends later visited and heard the harrowing story (which if you follow my writing, you eventually will), everyone said, “But you look great.”
The first photo above was taken last August, before West Nile and at one of the happiest times of my life: a party for the publication of my 16th book, completed a few weeks after I turned 80. Reason to celebrate on so many levels.
The photographer, Susan Kravitz, is a master at cajoling even uncomfortable subjects like me. Somehow, she captures more than face or body. This photo conveys how I feel inside—my presence. It reveals the joy and other essential parts of me that I put out into the world.
Presence is more important than appearance. We don’t engage at our edges; we connect as whole beings. We go beyond the surface to the substance inside — our temperaments, our histories, all the relationships we’ve forged, and the conclusions we’ve drawn about life. It’s a mingling of many factors, which is why we call it “chemistry.”
Here is the bottom line:
The ability to attract is far more important than any degree of attractiveness.
— Melinda Blau, The Wisdom Whisperers, Chapter 5.
It’s important to remember, even as your looks change, the essential you will come through in 3D color. It comes from inside, not from cosmetic changes outside. So, when you find yourself fretting about looking older, seek out others so you don’t feel so alone and remember: Your spirit will be felt, not your face.
You might look different now, but you have not disappeared.
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