Ageing While Female

(The following is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the the “Better With Age” ‘zine that we created for the 4th Sapphic Slumber Party in the Fall of 2018.)

“Can I borrow your tweezers?” I ask no one in particular. I’m backstage in the dressing room with all of the other women in the show. Our stage call is in 20 minutes but we’ve been carefully eating cheetos in full faces of make up for a while. We are crammed into the tiny dressing room, bright lights, bobby pins everywhere, hairspray and high voltage adrenaline as we preen and primp.

Sometimes I liked being in the dressing room more than being on stage. I liked to watch the other girls faces as they studied themselves and slipped into character.

Someone passed me tweezers and I leaned towards the mirror to pluck the stray hair I noticed between my eyebrows. As I get close enough I gasp, frozen for a moment. It wasn’t a stray hair, it was a wrinkle. The same one my brother, mother, grandfather and uncles all have, deep in the middle of their forehead. Theirs were deep and severe, from years of furrowing their brow, years of worry and concentration. Mine was just beginning, but here it was. Officially, this tiny crease. Baby’s first wrinkle.

The other women in the show jumped to cushion the blow, they fawned over me while deriding the anti-aging industry, which apparently spends more than 250 billion a year trying to make me feel like this is a big fucking deal. I was glad to have their angry voices of wisdom. I was only 23, the youngest in the cast, and they liked to tuck me under their wings protectively. I felt blessed to have been with them for that moment.

There have been more moments like this, moments that have pushed at this sore spot created by a culture that fetishizes youth. Frustration with having wrinkles and acne simultaneously. Watching the stress of an accident and PTSD change my face permanently. Realizing the summer I went without sunglasses (because I lost my prescription pair) permanently etched crinkles around my eyes. Staring into one of those UV-damage mirrors at the dermatologists office. I feel my pulse quicken and remember that old conservative white capitalist men want me to feel shitty about all of these things. Embracing these moments is an act of rebellion. I try to reclaim some of these words. Crows feet and bunny lines sound so sweet. How dare an entire industry make me feel sad about them. Laugh lines are trophies. Each grey hair gets me closer to my true witch form.

One of my friends gets Botox. She’s beautiful with and without it. She’s open about her experiences and tries to get me to go with her. I eye the now-deepened furrow of my brow. I consider it from time to time. It’s hard getting used to this face. I look at my children’s faces, their poreless perfect skin. There is no story there yet, just possibility. I remember my great grandmother getting new glasses for the first time in a decade and crying when she looked in the mirror. “When did I get so old?” she asked her reflection. Her story (immigrant mother of many, battered wife, devout and graceful in every way) is told in those lines. I thought she was beautiful.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with altering your appearance to feel more at home in your body and your face. But I know this disdain for the signs time makes on my skin is something I have learned. I want to be the kind of woman who ages naturally and puts both middle fingers up to this culture that says older women are unimportant and unremarkable. This face and body are lived in and well loved. I want that to show.