The signs of aging are already there. Some just a whisper of what is to come. Some marching in with vicious progression.
I tell myself I am young at heart. My mind is understanding but my body must not have got the memo.
When with my older sister, we joked about what work we would have done if we could. While nursing two kids at a time, her chest is one woman would pay for. I told her she should have them photographed or immortalized in a bronzed sculpture. She'll need the reminder when they soon deflate after the suckling years are over and she is reduced to rolling up the sagging remnants and pin and tucking them into her Victoria Secret prosthetics commissioned to give the illusion of having had work done. I speak from experience so she laughs at the Grim Reaper foretelling such news.
Personally, I'd get implants a little lower. Not the front, but the back side. No, literally, the backside. I can't blame this one on pregnancies or engorgements, just terrible genetics that leave it slipping and sliding into the future without the desired perkiness. I've heard tell that Victoria has a secret for this too so that may be edging it's way up my grocery list soon. To buy: veggies, fruit, bread, hummus, diet coke, a lift for the booty. I'll sneak it in subtly so when hubster does the shopping it will seem a very ordinary addition to the cart. He'll thank me later, oh yes he will. He'll wonder if I splurged on those $200 pair of jeans. Nope, it'll still be my clearance rack specials, just a little more filled out.
We talked about altering our appearances, whether through cosmetic camouflage or surgical alterations, my sister and I did. While I am all for painting the outside and embellishing natural beauty, I am mindful of the message our beauty obsession is sending my children. When I look at them, I see nothing but flawless perfection. Not because they are flawlessly perfect, but because that is the way I view them. Created by an Artist so skilled, so precise in His sculpting and so exact with His brush that I, a complete illiterate in the world of art, seem ill authorized to question His masterpiece in each of them. The only credentials I hold in beauty are the ones that came hard drived into me through the images of the culture around me. Had I been born a few hundreds year sooner or in certain tribes in Africa, my natural slimness would be frowned upon and would give me little hope for survival in time of famine. My understanding reminds me that what I consider beautiful is temporary, evidenced by the sudden and constant march of change in fashion and cosmetics across the short time line of my life.
What I do with my body and my face is contributing to the hard drive of my children's understanding of beauty. While I may yet spring for that series of special dermabrasion, I may not. If certain scars and age marks are removed will I then be content, finally happy with my external beauty? By fixing just this and just that and only spending a thousand here and a thousand there, will I finally be finished? Or will my pursuits only gain rapid momentum as new procedures and miraculous claims continue to bombard me?
When will I learn to accept the masterpiece that He created instead of altering it to fit my finite and amateur idea of what I'd rather it were?
Will this be the year? I'm turning thirty, you know. With every increase in age, I'd rather see a decrease in complaints against the One who put me together. I'd like to hope that with increase of age, my wisdom too is increasing. That I'd be all the more wiser to know that it'd be just plain stupid of me to suggest to Monet, "Your artistic approach is a little fuzzy to me. I'd rather know the precise details of each person and every fragrant bloom. Your little dabs of spotted paint seem rather dull and drab to me."
Because everyone knows that if you were but to take a few steps back to gaze upon the masterpiece, you would see more than random, imperfect splotches. You would see the beauty as the artist intended to be viewed.
Stepping away from the mirror and the speckled blotches and indentations, perhaps maybe I too could see the beauty in me, the masterpiece the Artist prepared with an eye for detail and a timeless and infinite understanding of what true beauty is.
