When I was in my early 30s and my now ex-husband was working in a dermatology practice, a stacked Russian blonde newly on the clinical staff began making suggestive comments to him during the workday. “You know Jennifer Aniston’s character in Horrible Bosses?” she asked him . “That’s gonna be me, with you.” She was pretty awful.
A few months after she got her sea legs, she hosted a Botox party at the clinic. Such parties were a new fad at the time, but as a young and new mom, I was busily creating wrinkles, not fixing them. What an awkward moment when I swung by the clinic to drop something to my husband days later, and she blocked me in the hall to say, “Why did you not come to my Botox party? You need it!”
Remembering how she scrutinized my face, I suppose I should have punched hers, but her remarks were so misplaced that I couldn’t think straight. It was as though she’d asked why I didn’t come to the bris and wasn’t getting rid of my foreskin. Stunned, I kind of sharply joked to her that she was no billboard for Botox, then went on my merry way, arms cradling my juicy little baby.
Now, at 51, I would not be so stunned if interrogated that way. I’m definitely sporting wrinkles, including one long, deep one that extends away from my left eye almost to my hairline. I tend to think it looks like I’m scarred from a knife fight, but I suppose you wouldn’t really notice it unless I’ve slept with my face smashed on that side. Truth be told, I’ve thrown some Botox at that bitch more than once.
Which is all to say I haven’t fallen in love with my wrinkles like some wrinkled women say they do. These creases make me feel, unsurprisingly, old and sometimes as if I don’t count anymore. Because of them, am I easier to dismiss as some old “Karen” who could at any given moment start screaming about inadequate foam on her Starbucks latte?
Well, that thinking has begun to shift lately, and it started with a lunch invitation from a colleague I was friendly with at my last job. I haven’t seen this woman in more than four years. Close to me in age, she and I used to commiserate about cellulite, menorrhagia, sudden food sensitivies, and other joys of aging. On work breaks, we shared super-plus tampons, keto recipes, and hysterectomy plans. We also compared exercise notes, and I remember vividly the day she walked into the office on crutches: She’d jump-roped so much, for so many weeks, that a bunch of bones in one foot simply shattered.
What a delight to meet up with her after these past four crazy years, our daughters both out of the nest, our lives still tracking a vaguely parallel trajectory. She came into the restaurant glowing in all her 6-foot glory, eyes bright and icy blue, toehead hair cut into a flattering new style around her beaming face. She was wearing a crop top, no eye makeup, and, as it turned out, the pride of training for her first triathlon.
“That’s where you and I part!” I said. “I wouldn’t be caught dead running a triathlon.” (More accurately, that’s exactly how I’d be caught if I tried one.)
She laughed so hard at a story I then shared about me peeing my pants every time I, a former gymnast, try to turn a cartwheel in my living room — which is kind of often.
As we talked, I began to see the extra crinkles and wrinkles she’s accumulated around her eyes and, in a flash of clarity, realized what a truly stunning addition they are to her face. Making them even prettier was the fact that she wasn’t trying to cover them up. Suddenly, they seemed like any other thing we put on our faces to make ourselves look nice: darker, longer eyelashes, a touch of pink on the cheeks, a glimmer under the brow. But her wrinkles were somehow prettier, better, because they are natural. And they made her look like someone good to be around, someone who’s smiled and laughed a lot, an ever-evolving woman who will wear a crop top at any age she freaking feels like it, thank you very much.
It’s been a week since I saw her, and the shift she created in my brain has been interesting: Suddenly, I’m seeing the beauty of wrinkled faces everywhere, including in the mirror. I mean, just look at those lines! Think of the stories they tell — of life lived, of the length and depth of life itself, and of being human and vulnerable and durable. With wrinkles, our faces are quite literally decorated with evidence of our own ability to emote. Could it be that wrinkles themselves now make me smile, which means seeing wrinkles is officially causing me wrinkles?
It appears so. And there’s certainly some strange joy in that.
P.S. If you are the one person on earth who’s not yet seen the Barbie movie, go see it if only to watch the scene between Barbie and an old woman on a park bench (a behind-the-scenes star in her own right, by the way). It’ll get you right in the tear ducts and is very much in line with this post.
The Second Magpie 