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| The chin at rest. |
My strategy for combating wrinkles, to the degree I have one, is to harness the face-plumping power of ice cream. Even the enormous Estee Lauder wrinkle lifting serum ads that I studied for seven hours in LAX did nothing to persuade me to set aside any of my beer money for a potion. But in the eighth hour, the wrinkle between where my eyebrows used to be had deepened enough to be in danger of silting up. By the time we had trudged off to go sit stark upright in an airborne can for the next twelve hours, I could slip my boarding pass in there and keep both hands free for the carry-on.
But efforts to turn back the spotted hands of time are never successful. Most of them manage to emphasize the very signs of age we’re trying to hide. Worse, people who wear makeup are doomed to wear it always, because without it they look drawn and sick and there will be no shortage of people to point it out. Whereas I, who have not worn makeup since age 16, look like shit all the time and everyone’s good and used to it. Plus, I’ve gotten an extra fifteen minutes of sleep my whole life.
It’s when people try to combat something as inevitable as wrinkling that they really start to get into trouble. Lipstick begins to migrate up the wrinkles until your upper lip looks like a river delta. By the second face-lift, everything you need to smile with is behind your ears. By the fifth, all your former faces need to be done up in a snood behind your head. People, this is silly. What we need to understand is that we need wrinkles. Wrinkles are our friends.
Because, honey? Your skin is retired. You may still have to put on a PowerPoint presentation but your skin is down at the Legion Hall swapping tall tales. Your skin can’t remember if it’s Tuesday or Saturday and it’s not planning to get out of its pajamas all day. Your chin is now lying in its own hammock and it’s never been more comfortable. Your skin used to cling to your skeleton and follow its every move, but now it’s free. It’s going places. Your bones are only there to offer suggestions.
No longer are you at the mercy of overbearing collagen. If someone taped your elbow skin to the bathroom sink, you could still take a shower and use the toity and be halfway down the hall before having to turn back. Your skin is free, and so are you.
But this is why you need your wrinkles. You’re lying there on your side, relaxed, nearly asleep, and your upper lip has just begun to mosey over the pillow. You begin to register the idea that you can actually feel your upper lip wrinkles folding in place. Yes: your lip is pleating up like an accordion. It is. Don’t be a hater. Your skin is retired. If you didn’t have wrinkles to tuck it in place, your lip would puddle over the pillow and head for the edge of the mattress. Without your gathering stitches, you would have to hoist your upper lip every time you wanted to poke in a Cheeto. Without your wrinkles, your face would billow in the wind. Your ass would flap. Your upper arms would take out a whole row during a standing ovation.
You don’t need a serum to lift your wrinkles. You need to lift your attitude. Before it’s fallen, and it can’t get up.
Well, I don't need the wrinkle reminder 2 days away from my birthday. I've had that reminder for a great number of years now. Some days it's even pleasant to indulge in a reminiscence of the days I could bounce a quarter off my butt. But I think I've done the bathroom thing with my arm stuck to the sink. Good humor.
Last word…. don't give up. It'll get worse.
Ha
If someone is bouncing quarters off your butt, you are grossly underpaid.
Well, I don't like to brag, but I'm seventy-(mumble), and I still have a smooth face. Um…so did my mother. Ice cream isn't a bad solution, I gues.
To anything! My heritage is not smooth. I can expect the Barbara Bush waffle-face. Mmm, waffles.
This is wonderful.It should be part of every country's constitution. I'm 99% serious. The other 1% is still chuckling, way after I'm done reading 🙂
You know, they've put worse things in the Constitution. Which reminds me: my parents used to call their after-dinner walk a "constitutional."
"Spotted hands of time"…….LOVE IT!
I used to wonder about the "shelves" above some women's upper lips and ponder how odd that feature was. Then my LA daughter told me it was injections of some type to get rid of the wrinkles. The wrinkles look better.
I think I've seen a very few cosmetic procedures that were sort of an improvement, but by the time they get repeated, nah-ah. And NEVER a good nose job. People take the best part of their faces and shave it down to a nubbin!
Heck, I have wrinkles and my ass still flaps… only thing is, it almost smacks me in the back of my knees now.
This vision will stay with me all day, and for that I thank you.
Beautiful – I'm still laughing! I figure my face is everybody else's problem. I look in the mirror to make sure it's (relatively) clean, and the rest of the time I can't see it. And my near vision is so blurry I can't see the wrinkles anyway. My ass is behind me, so it's not my problem, either. And by the time my lips migrate over the pillow, I've got my eyes closed so I can't see 'em wandering. It's all good.
When my neck-chin thing first started happening for real, I thought about it a lot. Repositioned my head, paid attention to angles, jutted my chin forward, etc. Now I use your method. I can't see it. Must be fine.
You've definitely given the term 'hang-out' a whole new meaning! Well done…
Hangout, hangover, flopabout…
Interesting that no men have commented so far. Maybe there are men terrified of the first wrinkle but I guess most of us couldn't care less. After all, wrinkles on men are meant to be a sign of wisdom and maturity, aren't they? To which most women will no doubt laugh like a drain….
You know, judging by the nonchalance with which some men display their planet-sized bellies, I'd say that they have a pretty healthy sense of what's important in life. (In many cases, beer.)
All Praise Murr!
I want to tattoo this entire post all over bodies of every last Housewife of Every Last City on the television. This celebrity-driven business of "fighting age" exhausts me more than 45 years of good living ever did. All that fake plumping and toxing and rejuvederming is ultimately sad to the point of pathetic.
I'll take the laugh lines induced by your posts any day.
As usual, you use exactly the right word. It's exhausting. I need to go take a nap just thinking about it. I wonder if beautiful people struggle with this more than Reg'lar folk? After all, some of us have had to rely on something other than our looks for a long time now.
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! With all the cosmetic surgery available and programmes on TV about looking 'Ten Years Younger' etc, it's hard to look in the mirror and love what you see! My defence against the worst saggy facial bits is smiling – inanely – all the time! Recently, my boss told me I 'always have a lovely expression on my face' (it wasn't flirty – she's a woman and I'm a teaching assistant working with special needs children)which made me feel great. Smile lines are fab! As for the rest, let it do what it does – we're never going to stop it anyway!
The view from inside is still the same, at least until my eyelids get ambitious. And if I were ten years younger, I'd still be having PERIODS.
Hello Murr,
I will try the ice cram moisturiser on Sundae, sorry Sunday. If not, maybe a banana slug might just do the trick. Or, maybe to heck with it all and just give into gravity. I blame gravity on Sir Isaac Newton…
Thank and I'm outta' here….
Gary
It is Newton's fault, indeed, along with the fact that a body in a recliner tends to stay in a recliner.
Sure…great advice from someone with very few wrinkles….easy for you to say "embrace them"! Soon they will embrace me—and I will suffocate.
You know, I do have a lot of little ones that especially show up in the morning (and that's why I sleep in), so my grandma's legacy of Major Waffledom is still in the pipeline. I'm ready for it though.
I'd like to think I've earned my face(and other!) lines. A lot of this is genetic and I am supremely glad that, while I may have inherited the tendency to dry skin and wrinkles, I missed that genes that have seen quite a few of the line come to an early end.
Not too crazy about the hormonal heatwaves, though!
I've got one weird horizontal one above my lip. I don't know WHERE that one came from. Horizontal. I mean, WTF.
Don't know about you but I have great stories behind these wrinklies! There are kids hanging from their bedroom window wrinkles and sliding down icy roads sideways wrinklies, and laughing so hard one just stayed there forever wrinklies…. My gosh, they are like the dents in my truck! Really great stories there too and why I never had it fixed!
Embrace, smile and move on 🙂
I've got sliding down icy roads sideways wrinkles. I wish I had the laughing so hard one. Theoretically, I should have good abs from that too, but…
I have earned my wrinkles (both of them) and my grey hairs too. And, as Diane Hendes so wisely said – I can see it/them and it is not my problem. It is probably the only thing in this house which isn't so I am grateful. Very grateful. As I am for another wonderful post. Thank you.
Looks more like you have Stripes, best beloved.
Perhaps – but you see them, not me.
No really. Tell me about the tiger.
Just a puddy cat. Really. I know how the leopard changed his spots, but am not at all sure how the stripey puddy cat got that way. Perhaps you could tell me. I am sure you could tell me.
Pretty sure it was a tie-dye sort of operation. Cat got scrunched up and baked in the sun and when she woke up and stretched out, the foldy bits were underdone. She gets them on her face from squinting.
I knew I was right to long for autumn. Less underdone foldy bits. Thank you – that makes sense.
You too should take this show on the road. There is some real magic here!
I'm reading this on what would have been my grandmother's 110th birthday—she had some of the most beautiful wrinkles ever when she was in her sixties (which is when I knew her best, i.e. paid the most attention). I'm still waiting to be as lovely as she was at my age. And you are too funny to read with a fresh cup of very hot coffee in hand, btw.
I agree. You need to put down a caveat at the beginning of each post "Put down the coffee or equivalent before reading. The management is not responsible for spills and / or burns caused by guffaws, chuckles, belly laughs or other symptoms of Murrth, "
But the management IS responsible! Except in the sense of being irresponsible.
After I finished laughing and changed my underwear, I must tell you this was the best. You hit a winner here, Murr. Every reader feels your pain deep in their rolls and undulating skin. More please, lots more please.
What pain? No pain. My only regret is I didn't own a rubber mask that I could tie up in a snood to take a picture. That would've been COOL.
Bravo! Well said!
Some encouraging words as I enter into the nether regions of age. I like to think this is character that's developing. That wrinkle is from not getting any sleep while my babe was in the hospital. That one wondering if my son was going to be able to turn his life around. That one scared to death to answer the 3 AM phone call—who died?
And that one for caring for those in my life…the smile lines? When something good happened to those I love.
Bought a paid for with love and loss and surviving it all. So why don't I celebrate those lines? Because, essentially everything inside me still thinks I'm a kid…any one else feeling like that?
Thanks, Murr. You are not alone.
You bet–an eight-year-old with a trick knee. All I know is the view from inside is just about the same.
Oh Murr, as always a great laugh over the facts of life, and you have such benign wrinkles to boot. May I and my wrinkles age with as much grace and good humor as you.
So far the most dastardly thing is what happened to my neck, but what're you going to do? Maybe it will keep my head above water.
Lifting your attitude is the single most important thing in life. You are what you think! Or, is it, you can lead a whore to water but you can't make her think? Something like that.
Keep working on it. You've almost got it, Mister!
Yahoo News thought I would be interested in the fact that one of those Kardashian folks had her face injected with her own blood, posting the picture so I had to see it before I could get to my mail. If I felt anything, it was only a stab of pure pity for someone with those values. Give me laugh crinkles around a person's eyes over that malarky any day. Those lines tell the rest of us that we're face to face with someone who faces life the way it should be faced, someone with some substance to them. Thanks for adding to my collection of 'em, Murr. Most appreciative.
Well as long as we're at it, I appreciate you chiming in here all these years, Tiffin.
I hate the wrinkles, the sagging boobs, the chicken wattle neck, the arms that hang like a deflated inner tube,…well, not a pretty sight. Now how I see myself within my mind is totally different than what the mirror displays!! I say we ban mirrors and reflective surfaces!!
Except, if you look at them with the proper attitude, there's a lot of entertainment value there.
Oh God! I'm laughing and crying here. Being a gal who wears make up I hurriedly snatch at a mirror to check if my lipstick is bleeding……ahhhhhh…..I think it is!!!! My dreams shall be haunted tonight!!!xxxxx
Wear flesh-colored lipstick.
Hah! Great post. To name just a few things I imagined would improve my looks when I was very young were an elegant nose, wider eyes, larger breasts, and naturally curly hair. Then I went to a modeling school where the lovely young women I met were also dissatisfied with their looks. It turned out the best lesson I got from my time learning to apply pancake makeup and all the rest was that it wasn't necessary to do so. It's fine being young but youthful beauty is nothing in itself to be proud about nor something to be pursued beyond its time.
"Pursued beyond its time." Well put. Sounds like at least you learned how to apply a proper foundation.
I am slightly lactose intolerant, which is good news. It means that if "the pipes are plugged," a good dose of ice cream will get them moving.
Medicinal ice cream! Right up there with Medicalmarijuana.
My knees are complaining about lifting the rest of my body. My flab and wrinkles will just have to look after themselves.
One side of my body is heavier than the other, and never mind why, and I have one squawky knee. I wonder if there's a connection. Although it did not start squawking until I fell on it during the face-plant episode.