About FACE

May 25, Wednesday, noon 2022

Yesterday I met a friend for lunch. She had just come from the hair salon the day before and spent $400 on her hair. She was lamenting the high cost but she had been going to the same salon for so many years, they knew her and they knew her hair. Two or three weeks ago, I had all my hair cut off, all 14 inches of it, and I have a perpetually dishevelled short hair cut now. I don't care. Most of the people who know me have avoided commenting on the hair cut due to the perpetual dishevelment of it and the fact that it doesn't conform to any of the conventional hair styles for my age group which I think of as modified helmets.

Everyone my age, 70's, is sporting some version of what is known as the "bob" which is straight, close to the head, smooth, with bangs or bangs brushed to the side, and hair is jaw length. Most everyone I know also has eye make-up still and foundation, and blush and lipstick. I have given over with all that. These days I demand that the world accept me as I am - I don't blush and my eyes are wrinkled and my skin isn't a smooth unvarnished surface. Some of my friends even have injections in their faces to plump up lines and wrinkles. One recently had her upper lip done. She claimed to have lines going down over her upper lip. Now her upper lip is plumped up with a deep groove in the center for that furrow that goes from the center of the nose to the lip. It looks vaguely goatish.

It should be noted that I have diminishing eyesight along with all the other dimishments time extracts from those who survive to old-age. I can't see her lines or wrinkles. I probably have them too but I can't see mine either. First, I gave up eye-makeup. No more using a little liquid felt tip eye pen to outline my eyes in black. What for? Not only that, but I couldn't help noticing that in older women, the lines are squiggly and tend to run into the surrounding estuaries that surround their eyes. They can't see it. They can't even really see how they are putting on their eye liner because most people my age, though they may not have my eyesight disability, still can't see very well.

We do talk about these things, we older women. I spoke of it just a few days ago with a woman at the waiting room to my 2nd booster appointment at Cooper Health. She looked very pretty in a turquoise swirling design blouse, matching turquoise button earrings, dyed hair and the modest make-up of the older woman, foundation, mascara, lipstick. She told me she doesn't bother with rings or bracelets anymore. I gave all that up even before I stopped the rest of the masquerade. The first thing to go for me was the eye makeup - no more liner. I never bothered with foundation. Next I gave up blush and jewelry. It is just too much trouble and the rings get in the way of everything, most essentially washing your hands. Also I tended to lose the rights places where i took them off to wash my hands.

All the accoutrement of women's masquerade are CRIPPlING - they all hinder your progress from hair that can't cope with the wind, to rings that get caught in things and get lost, to bracelets, the same problems, and for younger women in the professional world, those crippling painful high heeled shoes. They throw you off balance and hurt your feet. They are awful. So are skirts, especially tight ones. You can't sit down without squeezing your thighs together and crossing your ankles. You are forced to constrain yourself! Bad enough being constrained by circumstance.

I don't even need to go into the topic of finger nails because I never went down that road - getting fake nails glued to your fingers with paint and decorations on them - essentially crippling use of your fingers for most everything.

I think about the word FACE - 'Facing up to your problems,' 'Putting on a good face,' 'About face,' the part of you that you put forward to the world and what it means. My current face is, "This is how I really look, this is the real me, face it.!" People don't care. It is your behavior that matters. I am obviously, by my uncolored white hair, an old lady and we get certain freedoms and respects at the same time that we are invisible and pushed to the outer spheres of most people's lives. We are the grandmoms even if we have no granchildren. We are everyone's grandmoms.

My grandmoms Lavinia and Mabel, were plain faced women. Lavinia wore no masquerade paraphernalia at all - plain long wispy white hair she coiled in a bun at her neck, plain sad, falling face. I loved her. I could see her beauty, the beauty of her soft wrinkled aging face. Grandmom Mabel took more pains for the public and she wore those snap on terribly painful earrings, had her hair cut and permed and wore lipstick, broaches, scarves, things like that. Lavinia was sad, Mabel was jolly. Mabel had been widowed in her 30's and got used to freedom, but Lavinia had been widowed in age and was permanently plunged into grief. Both wore rayon like dresses, narrow belts around their middles (no waists left here) and Cuban heeled lace up black shoes and stockings. Grandmom Lavinia wore faded cotten housedresses and house slippers at home, because she didn't go out much. I have a photo of the two of them that I keep within view everywhere in my house because they remind me of survival and resilience. Grandmom Lavinia has just allowed her middle aged daughters to take her to a hair salon where she had her long wispy white hair cut short and permed. She has a cap of white curls now, and even a rayon like pantsuit insted of the dress and crossed legs. Frankly, it is apparent that she doesnt' really care, like a baby or a doll, she simply permitted them to move her from place to place decking her out. They wanted to do it and she complied.

All that masquerade is about "attractiveness" as my friend and I were discussing at lunch yesterday. My friend would like to not be compelled to spend all that money for "roots, highlights, trim, glaze and blow-out. But she has a stronger desire to retain what she feels makes her attractive. She has a boyfriend, too, so that counts. She must maintain the appearance she had when she met him through on-line dating. It goes without saying he has always expected to be accepted as his natural self, with maybe the only nod to attractiveness being a neat haircut and neatly trimmed mustach. Also he keeeps clean and wears clean clothes. Giving up in old age can too far, when people give up on basic cleanliness - easy to do when taking a shower becomes a dangerous activity involving slippery surfaces and closed eyes uner running water. It's a whole big deal taking a shower and shampooing your hair - part of the reson I got mine cut off, the longer and heavier your hair the harder it is to shampoo safely in the shower (those hair products make the tube even slipperier) and then blow dry it. Short hair is safer and easier.

STATURE - I noticed the other day in the 7-11 convenience store, that when you are bigger, and I am 5 feet 7 the average height of a man, people give you more room and more respect. Also along with my height, I have some sturdy bulk. There were two or three men in the 7-11 behind me in line, and the two Middle Eastern counter workers. They notice you and how you are different and they even have thoughts you can almost see as cartoon bubbles. I had on jeans, a hooded sweatshirt over a black long sleeved tee shirt and my short hair and natural face. I could see one or two of the men kind of studying me discreetly, as animals will do when encountering one another, trying to figure out where I belong in the gender spectrum and I think they thought I was a lesbian, the careful studying way they observed me until I finished my purchase and left. The countermen struggled with conflicting emotions: they wanted to be brusk and rude and dismissive, as they usually are with second class women, but I was an American and so large, they had to maintain a basic level of store-keeper courtesy though there was definitely suspicion fighting its way into their expressions and mannerisms.

Women have been fighting the crippling effects of the female masquerade for hundreds of years and we have made significant progress but there is far far more to be done. From Amelia Bloomer fighting for pants and away from hoops and corsets, to the stripped down costumes of the roaring 20's the opening salvo in the twentieth century women's fashion revolution, and the origin of the bob, to the battle for comfortable walking shoes on the part of city workers slogging from the bus to the train to the airport and refusing the do it in high heels. They wore their sneakers and toted the awful high heels to work. Why do they wear them? Someone has convinced them it makes their legs more attractive but I think it makes them more attractive because it cripples them and shows they are willing to martyr themselves for the male gaze. Those shoes seem to say, "Sure, I'll give up my comfort, my welfare, my true self to please you! Choose me!"

One of the many things I like about this stage toward my final curtain, is the release from the trap of romance. I am free, on my own, and have no more torture of desire or wishful effort toward companionship of the romantic kind. I don't want a man in my house or the gravitational pull of companionship with a male/female parnership wihere what he wants and needs always comes before what she wants or needs. I don't want to cook or worry about meals or his moods, or changing the bed, or indulging in his sexual satisfaction. It is breathtakingly open spaces without all that encumbrance in your life. Same for parenthood. I didn't need to climb dangerous high mountains to get a big view, I just had to get old and free of all encumbrances, except for those I still manage - the dog and the cats. In fact, I have to stop writing immediately and get back to work on my mountain of laundrey from the traumatized big fat old cat I rescued who pisses on the furntiture covers regularly creating big piles of stinking laundry. Even though everything is covered, all the covers get pissed on and musth be washed and air dried to be used after the next boy-cat battle for territory leaves the furniture with large wet shadows of stinky cat urine.

Putting your best face forward (I know it is foot, but I am adapting.) Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com