Building Self Appeal
Through the Years
In February I met a woman whose skin was clear and smooth, her smile infectious. When she informed me her fortieth birthday was coming soon, I was surprised. She told me she was changing careers and had just finished esthetician’s school so I gushed, “Perhaps you can help me with skin care and makeup. I’m getting married in three months and want to look perfect.”
I thought about this over the next few weeks and I realized that I not only wanted to look perfect, I wanted to look twenty-one again. At that age my body was naturally toned without exercising or eating properly, and my skin was wrinkle free.
When I finally connected with my new friend, Lani, she let me know that antioxidants, the buzzword for food, was now present in face products and essential for my skin. She told me I needed to apply face primer to fill in pores and lines before applying makeup and Joe joked that he had a whole bucket full of the stuff in the garage that probably cost the same amount as my teeny tiny, but cute, bottle. Lani and I spent hours at cosmetic counters matching makeup shades with my skin tone and testing products with provocative names like ‘sexy sweep’.
“Brighten, tighten and lighten. A BLT without the calories.” The fresh-faced specialist said decisively as she demonstrated an under-eye repair product. We burst into laughter. It was charming, just like the heavily made up twenty-year-old standing in front of me, and a little ridiculous which made it more fun.
“Brighten, tighten and lighten,” I repeated for the first time, but certainly not the last.
I felt ‘girly’ and to my surprise, in contrast to the jealousy and insecurity I anticipated feeling surrounded by tight undamaged skin that dominated the cosmetics section of Macys, I enjoyed myself.
And I realized something. These girls who I thought I would feel self-conscious around and envy because of my aging skin and body, didn’t have any advantage over me. They were inexperienced and naïve. They had hard life lessons to learn and hearts that would be broken. By the very nature of their youth they had an unconsciousness that motivated their actions and reactions like mine had at their age. My twenties and thirties were fraught with mistakes in relationships, poor financial decisions and downright difficult times. I had a core belief then that I wasn’t good enough and though I’ve always been naturally slim, I had body dysmorphia and bulimic tendencies. I lived in a restrictive/consumptive self-destructive cycle and was self-sabotaging.
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Just three weeks after our wedding, my husband and I moved into our new home. It’s older, built in 1957, and one of the reasons we chose it over newer homes is because we like the established neighborhood with massive trees that provide shade in the summer yet obligingly lose their leaves in the winter to let the warmth of the sun in. They offer texture to the neighborhood, a strong safe foundation of roots deep within the earth and when looking at them I feel grounded. And our home has charming quirks and character like the original light fixture in the kitchen, faux brick on one of the dining nook walls and an angled fireplace in the living room that a few have commented keep it from looking “boxy”.
Similarly, the bodies we are born with and live in are our homes. We will be in them always and we have experiences that define our lives and grow our character. And though basically similar, they are all unique. But many of us abandon, neglect, disrespect and even punish ourselves because our brains tell us our bodies and experiences are not what they “should” be. We want newer, different, better. We admire in nature what we do not admire in our own nature – growth and maturity.
Like long ago carved letters in a tree trunk that exist for the life of the tree, we too have marks, some visible, some not, that mold, shape and stay with us our entire life. They’ll either make us stronger or weaker depending how we choose to view them. I have a scar on my lower lip that is a physical reminder of dancing to Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild in thigh high leather boots and a motorcycle jacket on a stage, losing my balance, then careening off and hitting my face on the cement floor. This scar not only reminds me of this accident but also my first and only riding lesson the weekend previous when I crashed the bike and hurt my leg and the very cute but emotionally disturbed man I was dating at the time. Because I chose to explore the chain of events and circumstances of my life after being rushed to the hospital that night, this mark has become not only the texture of my body but also the weave of my life that I grew stronger from; facts I could explore and use to begin to grow roots of my own understanding and self knowledge. Similarly, our bodies compensate. I have a misshapen pinky finger that was dislocated from a baseball accident when I was eighteen. The nail on that finger grows stronger than all my other nails.
Remodeling
On our initial look at this house for sale we saw worn outdated carpeting in the kitchen and bathroom and bumpy blue carpet throughout the res
