Loretta and I met last year at Panera Bread to do our
interview for the Boomer Babes survey that I authored. Having never met her
before, we had a brief phone call just to confirm our appointment. I told her
she could recognize me because I was wearing a leopard print scarf. She laughed
and exclaimed “So am I!”
Indeed she swept into Panera just as elegantly as Loretta
Young swept through that door on her early 50’s TV show. Her hair was
beautifully coiffed, face flawlessly made up, style was oozing from her glowing
aura. We laughed when we saw our similar outfits.
Please don’t think I’m comparing myself to this gracious
wise woman. I may try to pull off the
look she had, but confess I’m a little too industrial strength for that kind of
graciousness. However, I have to admit, even though I don’t consider myself a
“vain” person, I prescribe to the dress for success school of appearance.
I remember being about eight years old, standing at the side
of the bathroom sink looking up at my mother applying makeup as she prepared to
go to her card club. Mom was even more industrial strength than I am, so
cosmetics were just not part of her daily regime. But, oh, how beautiful she
was on card club night! She would powder her face, put on rouge (they didn’t
call it blusher then), and her mascara was a black cake with a little brush.
She would wet the brush and swoosh it around in the blackness, then sweep it
onto her eyelashes. A glossy red coating of Max Factor lipstick got the
finishing touch with a piece of toilet paper pressed between her lips to blot.
I wanted some of that cosmetic action too. I swore that as
soon as I was old enough I would wear makeup every day. I started at 13
and have never looked back. Not a day goes by that I don’t “put on my face”, as
I like to call it. It makes me feel
whole and ready to literally face the day. No one but my husband and my pillow
see me without my eyeliner!
So I was curious about the women who agreed to interview for
the survey just how vain they were about their appearance, so I included some
vanity-related questions. Here was
something interesting: It’s not just me that puts on her face every day; 83% of
those interviewed do, indeed, use cosmetics most often on a regular basis.
Hair color got the same response. Eighty-three percent of
respondents color their hair. I found it
worthy of note that the few who did not color their hair were the ones that
have that glorious silver hair that I envy. At 65 years of age, I wish I was
either silver or not. My silver doesn’t glow and sparkle as theirs does. It
just makes me look dusty.
How do you decide when to stop coloring your hair? One of my favorite interviewees, Winnie, says
she stopped coloring at 70. I can see that as the possible cutoff point. After
all, who are we trying to kid? The odds of being 80 years old and still being a
natural ginger or a platinum blond are slim to none.
One of my other vanity questions was regarding cosmetic
surgery. Surprisingly, 25% of those interviewed have had cosmetic surgery, but
not all for vanity.
Tina is 57 years old. I consider her fashion sense “edgy”
and wish I could pull together the great looks I see on her. Hair, face,
jewelry, glam. I would think that if someone would undergo surgery for vanity,
it might be her. She did have surgery, but only out of necessity. Her eyelids
began to droop sufficiently so that she needed to have them lifted for better
vision range.
Rose is another interviewee blessed with that stunning
silver hair, but she too had the eyelid lift out of necessity.
Two women had breast reduction surgery deemed necessary for
their comfort and health. Vera lost 35 pounds and had a tummy tuck to remedy her new weight to body proportion.
Loretta admits to having a little help over the years too,
clocking in the most procedures with a nose job and breast implants. It was worth
it as far as I’m concerned. We both confessed to doing that little thing many
women do every morning when we look in the mirror: we wrap our hands around our jaw line, and
pull back our chin/s to our ears? Holy cow!
I’m 30 years old again when I do that!
On a story done by ABC News on 20/20, according to the 1American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, over 50% of Americans would like to have their appearance
enhanced through cosmetic medicine. In 2011 alone, the American
Society for Plastic Surgeons reports fourteen million cosmetic procedures
were completed. Fortunately, there are lots of new and (no pun intended)
cutting-edge procedures that don’t really require surgery, but use lasers and
fillers instead to help erase signs of aging. I’m just saying that when I hit
the mega-million lottery, I’m heading straight out to my local Quick Lift location
to get this face looking younger.
I believe that we wise women can be proud of life-earned
wrinkles, but still be vain enough to appreciate how we can enhance our beauty.
Jane Austen wrote in Pride and Prejudice, “Vanity and pride are different
things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud
without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to
what we would have others think of us.”
In the meantime, as Margaret Atwood writes in her novel Cat’s Eye, “Vanity is becoming a
nuisance. I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I’m not ready for
that yet.”
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Through compassion, you will find that all human beings are just like you. - Dalai Lama
donna.doutt@gmail.com
Your column reminded me of what my 92 year old mother says, "At this age, it's just one damn thing after another." Which is a bit of a hoot because she doesn't swear, usually. Mother is not what I would call a pretty woman but she has made the best of what she was given by watching her diet, exercising, and has a God-given talent for wardrobe. My sister inherited that gene. I completely missed all the above. Perhaps because she is only 17 years older than I. I've always felt like the older of the two of us. I write, reflect, wear comfy clothes and flat shoes, little jewelry and love adventures to foreign lands, meeting new people and sitting in the quiet. Mother is a a small hurricane of perpetual projects looking for a task to do and involving those around her. So she lives in Illinois and I live in PA. I just thought I was lazy and indifferent to fashion but not so. I'm just moving at a different warp speed than my mother who was my role model for how a woman should be...and I wasn't. So my self image took a pretty good beating for a time but now I think that the 'beauty' of my life comes from a more internal source and from the wondrous love of my children, grandchilden and new and old friends. Having meaningful work means much more to me than what I have on m body or how my face appears. As long as people respond to me warmly, which they usually do, I'm good to go.
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