Embrace Your Beautiful Aging!
Don’t piss on my head and tell me it’s liquid sunshine
I was watching a movie on my iPad on a flight back from my grandpa-in-law’s 100th birthday celebration when the kid across the aisle opened his window shade.
Daylight created a reflection of myself — but mostly of my increasingly hideous neck — on the screen.
I’d just spent two days feeling like a child among adults, so seeing that emerging waddle was — as it always is — a mini existential crisis. I raised my chin, which reduced but didn’t eliminate, the shadows.
The only way to get rid of them entirely was to stretch my legs down the row of empty seats and prop my iPad way down on my ankles so I couldn’t see myself anymore.
I do. not. want. to be this woman
It’s disappointing, humiliating to be the kind of woman who cares about physical evidence of “maturity.” You’re a feminist, I berate myself. Age is ‘just a number.’ You are better than this!
Conditioning whispers back, 40 Ways to Look Younger After 40. 25 Easy Ways to Look Younger Now. 18 Little Ways to Look Younger on a Budget. 40 Beauty Expert-Recommended Secrets to Looking Younger. Etc. ad nauseam.
