A Referral and a Reflection

This evening’s blog is more for my girlfriends out there. Of course you boys can read too, but I think my gal peeps can identify more with this.

I read my friend LA’s blog Waking Up On The Wrong Side of 50 called  My Secret Obsession. It is a delightful blog about her reasoning for buying creams and delicacies for her saggy eyes. 

The reason this blog stuck in my mind is because LA hit upon a nerve most — if not all — of us women suffer from that same affliction. Self Worth.

From a very early age, women are brought up to be pretty. Attractive. Lovely. The way we were…some say still are…brought up is dictated by men who design everything for us from dresses to shoes to underwear. Beauty is defined by how thin you are, how few (if any) laugh lines, or lines at all. Our hair is supposed to be thick and wild, our lips full, and our temperament gentle and understanding.

Now, of course, there are more and more women in the designing field, designing clothes that make sense, fit well, and wrap us in colorful colors. 

But face the truth. Society still sets the beauty bar with models and TV stars and movie stars.  We are expected to be thin (or thinish) as we age, no wrinkles, no limps, no waddles. 

We judge by our eyes first, and are judged the same way.

Now most of us are way past the need to be that perfect model. We have aged according to our lives; birthing babies, running marathons, sitting at a desk all day, all contribute to how we look and feel. 

We are beautiful inside, and most of us know that. If I were to gauge my inner beauty and love I would be off the scale. Truly. But my looks put me more at the lower end of the scale. Truly.

Which leads me to LA’s great blog. 

Not knowing her age (but somewhere, as she states, past 50), she is concerned about bags under her beautiful eyes. And knowing her, that is only the beginning of her concerns. 

I have always said that if I came into a bunch of money the first thing I’d do is have these big hereditary bags under my eyes removed. I have pretty green eyes too, but you can’t really focus on them because of these puffs beneath them.

Why are women so concerned about their looks? Who are we trying to impress? The men who dictate how we should look? Not our husbands and friends, but corporate and young hip designers?

We all want to be presentable We want to be clean and smooth and bright. The sad thing is that those traits are controlled by our inside self, not our outside self. Outside we need to use makeup or spanks or curlers to make our outside as pretty as our inside. Which is a losing cause from the beginning, for nothing can be as brilliant and cosmic as our inner self.

I am the first to admit it’s hard to let go of old habits. Heaven forbid I don’t curl my hair or try and soften those circles every day. I know many of you have left that sort of vanity behind, but you still buy clothes that look good and feel good, and perhaps shower with scented soap or brush your hair so it falls just so.

I know LA is a beautiful person just from her writing. And her discoveries about herself are normal for any woman who ages from day to day. 

What we need to do is stop judging ourselves. Stop comparing ourselves to movie stars and pop singers and all those distant points of light we’ll never reach. 

We are pretty just the way we are. No problem if we want to cover up a bit or dress up a bit. That’s the fun part of being a girl. But we can’t spend our time trying to change things we can’t change. 

Aging does a number to us all. We just balance it out with the amazing things we’ve experienced and have yet to experience.