The Skin We're In
Aging is a privilege...and it's expensive
I leaned over my bathroom sink to brush my teeth, just like I do twice every day. This time, though, I glanced in the mirror in front of me. What I saw sucked the breath out of me.
There, in the V of my worn, threadbare, washed-till-it’s-almost-transparent sleep T was wrinkled cleavage. I spit the foam out of my mouth and stared at my flesh. I instantly disconnected from this reality of mine. This can’t be my chest, I thought.
But my reflection wasn’t lying. I now had bubbie* boobs, just like my grandmother did.
My grandmother never worried about this droopy, wrinkly flesh. My mother tried to hide it. One of her 60+ friends smeared it glitter gel. Needless to say, I loved her (and still do).
For most of my adult life, I wasn’t overly concerned about my cosmetic appearance. I didn’t start wearing makeup until I was in my 20s, and I never used foundation. I hated the smell and the feeling of wearing a sticky mask. For a short period of time, I dabbled with Chanel foundation for special events. It was barely affordable for me at the time, so I had to make the bottle last. The first time I went to a family gathering with my face caked on, one of my cousins told me my face looked like a porcelain doll. That made me feel good, but not great enough to keep wearing the goop.
Fast forward a quarter of a century. Examining this new (but old) skin I’m in, my brain went wild. I considered what kind of surgery would fix that (botox, btw). Maybe it was time for a boob lift. I cradled my face in my hands, pulling the skin tighter, remembering what it was like when my complexion didn’t announce my age.
As I stared at this cracked and crinkled landscape on my chest, I thought about all the women who would never get to see this on their own bodies. Aging is privilege and I should be grateful for every line, scar, spot and pore. That doesn’t mean I can’t put up a fight. I actually feel obliged.
I’d be a big liar if I said I shrugged my shoulders and moved on. I spent hours falling deep into the anti-aging rabbit hole, searching for a solution. It’s a predatory environment, designed to make you feel shitty about the things you never worried about before. In the midst of my search, I decided what I really wanted was something to make my face look less porous, minimize the redness, and cover some age spots. This magic cream cannot feel like I’ve smeared poster paint on my face, cannot have a foul smell, must have sunscreen, hyaluronic acid, and some moisturizing qualities. I got lost in a sea of creams.
But being the savvy woman of a certain age, I knew that I didn’t have to dig too deep. I put my faith in the internet algorithms, trusting that social media would deliver.
I was not let down. In less than an hour, ads started appearing in my feed.
In my surfing, for some weird reason, an article turned up about actress Lauren Bacall. Of course I followed the link. As a student of film (UofT class of 92), I had watched more golden age of Hollywood movies than my parents did. Bacall was is one of my favourites. For me, she embodies the word “Jewess”. On-and-off screen, Bacall was a force. Hollywood asked her to pluck her eyebrows, she said no. They told her to get her teeth straightened, she said no. She was defiant in an era when actresses were a homogenous pool of sameness and compliance.
She carried this resistance into her old age (she died in 2014 at the age of 89), refusing to nip and tuck like so many of her contemporaries.
She refused to give up her beloved cigarettes, despite their visible effect on her skin, famously saying: "I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that." Her mature face, no less beautiful than her young one, looked like a road map of a life lived to the fullest – every crow's-foot, the sign of a laugh at a dirty joke; every sunspot, a footprint of an amazing holiday with Bogart; each wrinkle, an indelible marker of extraordinary experience. She wore her white hair defiantly long, steered clear of facelifts and Botox and at 83, attended an event in a low cut jacket, causing tabloids to criticise "the ageing actress's deflated cleavage".
- Sali Hughes, The Guardian article, August 13th, 2014
In 2008, she was ridiculed for showing her 83-year-old cleavage in that low cut jacket but Bacall did not give a damn.
Neither should we. We should be able to not give a damn what other people think. Get the cream, book the surgery, buy the dress. If you want a face lift, do it. If you want to let your skin tell your life story, let it happen.
Did I buy the cream that appeared over and over in my Facebook feed? You bet I did. From the reviews, it checked all my boxes. In the bathroom, it did what I wanted it to do. I still have wrinkly cleavage, but I’ve learned how to lean so I don’t see it.
*Bubbie is the Yiddish word for grandmother. Bubby, on the other hand, is British slang for a woman’s breast (according to Collins dictionary).
What I’m reading
The only other book I read by Barbara Kingsolver was The Poisonwood Bible. I did not enjoy it. But, I was 29, and the complexity of that novel was likely lost on me. Demon Copperhead has been labelled as an Appalachian retelling of David Copperfield and I seriously hope this delivers. I LOVED David Copperfield (I’m a Dickens fan) and I adore Appalachian lit for it’s grit (listen to my podcast episode with Kelly J. Ford, author of Real Bad Things or read Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby).
Do you want a signed copy of one of my books? Order directly from me.
