Aging is such a sag
I must have stared at those photos of Renee Zellweger for 20 minutes last week, and I still could not find her in them. Maybe she looks different because she’s older now, and maybe she had surgery (and most likely it’s a combination of the two), but who cares? She’s allowed to look whatever way she wants.
Those photos did get me thinking about my own face and what I’m willing to do about it – and not. Somewhere around 50, we come to a fork in the road where we have to choose: go down the road of plastic surgery and needles, or veer in the other direction – the road where gravity will take us on a bumpy, bumpy ride.
I always thought I could have the best of both, by tiptoeing down a path between the two extremes. Around 50, I decided I would get little touch-ups, teensy spritzes of Botox in my forehead to lift my brows. I’d climb onto the table reciting my mantra, “Just a little bit,” which I continued chanting even as the needle was in my head.
The nurse would put in a quarter of what most women got, just enough to turn the “11” between my brows into something closer to an “ii.” The results were never dramatic, but I could tell a difference.
But now, I’m reaching the point where the spritz is not enough. If I’m going to do something more, now’s the time.
Looking around, I’ve noticed we age in two different ways. Some of us are wrinklers and some of us are saggers. I am a member of the sagging sorority. My skin is still smooth and wrinkle-free, but my nose will soon be under my chin.
Normal wrinkle creams can’t help me. What’s called for, sadly, is a facelift. And I’ve decided I’m probably never going to do that. My Botox nurse suggested fillers, special goop that’s injected under the skin to pull up the slack. I’m drooping around my mouth, and the nurse said she would inject filler into the places where my cheeks used to be, thus pulling up the skin and making me look happy and rested.
But that’s the problem. I am not constantly happy and rested, and to look like I am doesn’t make me look younger. It just makes me look different – like I had some work done.
There’s a national commercial airing now for a new filler product. It shows a woman prancing around an apple orchard, smiling because the filler gave her back the apples in her cheeks. She looks like she is storing two big Honey Crisps in them. I don’t think that’s the look I’m going for.
Sometimes, when I’m waiting at a red light, I look in the rearview mirror and pull the skin up at my temples. That’s how I looked 15 years go, before the sagging started.
I Googled “sagging skin” once and found a YouTube video demonstrating a surgery-free remedy. It involved making very tight, very small braids at the temples, which are then pulled back and pinned to the scalp with many, many bobby pins. For that to work for me, I would need at least 30 bobby pins, and also a staple gun. My cheeks might be a little higher, but my head would look like a thatched roof.
It almost makes me wish I were a wrinkler. But then I’d be spending all my money on wrinkle creams. I hear they don’t really work, which might be why some wrinklers wish they were saggers.
Maybe there’s a plan C: covering the sags with, perhaps, a beard. At my age, that’s becoming a distinct possibility.
Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.