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Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age

“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” (Frank Lloyd Wright) Non-fiction pieces, personal essays and occasional poems that explore how we feel about how we age and offer tips for getting the most out of life.

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Crow’s Feet: A Wrinkle is Worth a Thousand Smiles

6 min readSep 24, 2023

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How a Crow’s Feet-inducing moment looks like | 2014 | Photo courtesy of the author

“Here comes her fake smile,” my parents would tease when it was time for picture-taking. They were talking about me.

As a little girl then, I didn’t understand what they meant. As far as I knew, I was smiling the way all the adults did: with my mouth stretched wide, lips parted, and my teeth — at least the ones I had — flashing. That is how you do it, right?

But as I grew up, I began to see it. Sure, my mouth was in a grin, but you couldn’t see my supposed joy across my face. My childhood pictures, cute as I was back then, looked as if I had been forced to be in that moment, forced to smile for the photo.

I’m sure that wasn’t the case! I just didn’t know then that smiling with your lips is only half of it. I had not yet learned that what makes a genuine smile is one’s eyes.

Recently, I noticed in my selfies that there’s a short, fine line extending from the outer corner of my eyes. The crease is subtle in some photos, and deeper in others. At first, I thought, cool, I look like I have winged eyeliners! So, whilst stuck in traffic like every other car-owning Filipino in Metro Manila, I thought I’d share my amusement on Instagram. (Well, with my Close Friends, at least.)

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Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age
Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age

Published in Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age

“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” (Frank Lloyd Wright) Non-fiction pieces, personal essays and occasional poems that explore how we feel about how we age and offer tips for getting the most out of life.

Ria Tagulinao
Ria Tagulinao

Written by Ria Tagulinao

Fun-sized Filipina Writer | To stay up-to-date with my work, here's my Sunday newsletter: http://riatagulinao.substack.com