VANITY, THY NAME IS WOMAN

It’s a shame we worry so much about ourselves. I know that men have the same problems, but they don’t seem to agonize over them the way we women do. With so much going on in the world, a few wrinkles on the neck should be riding low on the totem pole.

A little tuck here and there on the face and body gets you back in the race, but there doesn’t seem to be much to be done about the poor neck. Audrey Hepburn simply wore a turtle neck sweater, which worked for me as well for awhile. A nice scarf covers up a multitude of crevasses too.

Men seem to grow nice flabby turkey wattles under the chin, which takes the attention away from all the dips and creases which surely lie underneath. It really isn’t fair either, because while women simply look old, men become more interesting. Just look at Tony Bennett or Cesar Romero. They started out looking like greasy mafiosi and turned out in their senior years to be pretty sexy. It’s quite noticeable now that Tony is singing duets with Lady Gaga.

The mother in law of a friend was a frequent visitor to her plastic surgeon and actually looked quite striking. While sitting at a cocktail party and passing more than the time of day with a decidedly younger man, she stood and walked away. The surprise and disgust on his face was primal. She could do wonders with her body and hair, but nothing could hide the fact that she was no spring chicken.

The thing which really grabs my attention though, are the clothes some women wear trying to recapture a lost youth. The amount of money they spend could be saved if only they had saved their college clothes for 30 or 40 years. The styles keep returning if you are patient. Men don’t have that problem either, because their basic wardrobe never changed.

Women used to watch the skirt length from year to year to see what was in and what was out. I did it religiously each year. If they got shorter, you simply cut off the surplus; if they got longer you were in trouble. I understand they are going longer this year, which is a really good idea. I have worried about all the cute TV personalities with crossed legs in case they went shorter.

Some clever fashion maven some years ago solved the problem of skirt length by advocating pants for women. Some years ago my husband’s boss said to tell one trouser-clad woman to change into a skirt. Dr. A cautioned him to take note that it was then the 1960’s. I was once told that my boss did not approve of jeans. Since my job was teaching a sculpture and pottery class, and since my boss was a good friend, I simply went in and taught my class.

No one seems to have come up with a solution the craggy neck. I’m sure it has puzzled the plastic surgeon business for years. I have begun trying to guess the age of each of the TV women. The hair may be a bright halo on their head, and the makeup has certainly been applied according to the direction which came with it, but you can’t hide the neck.

I roamed through the stores yesterday, looking for the perfect scarf to hide my crags. After an hour or so, I bought two pair of socks and came home.

WOULDN’T YOU KNOW IT?

I woke up a month or so ago and took a good look at my thinning hair and its effect on the wrinkles on my face. It was clearly a cry for help; namely another wig/hairpiece/style. There seems to be some sort of stigma attached to the wearing of a wig, so we will refer to it as a “style”. I have no idea why this disturbs some people. Celebrities obviously would never be caught dead in their own scraggly locks. Watching an old Lucille Ball show, Dr. Advice chirped “There! You can see she isn’t wearing a wig!” Really?! I don’t think his poor old eyes were twirling in the right direction. Not only is she wearing a wig, it isn’t even the right shade of red.

Anyway, I ordered one from a reputable place in whom I placed great trust that they would choose a complimentary shade of grey from their 50 choices. Wen it came, I thought it must be wrong, because my hair is blonde-ish, not silver. Well, Dr. A. liked it anyway, so I wore it to Seattle, and first cracker out of the barrel—my daughter did not. I hung it over a door knob during my visit and vowed to try again.

This time I bought from a catalogue with a picture of my hair color. The trick to ordering from the catalogue is to cover up the faces because they use adorable young women as models, who probably don’t need a wig anyway. You have to imagine yourself wearing it and flipping it about as you would something actually attached to your head. You don’t want it to scream “WIG” do you?

I loved it immediately and plopped it on my head to show Dr. A. I got a thumbs up, so I wore it to Southern California to visit my other daughter. She loved it too, so we went out to lunch at a favorite Mexican place in Camarillo, which is conveniently next door to a wig shoppe. ( I spell it that old fashioned way because it is just on the verge of being posh.) We had with us that day our eight year old great granddaughter Savanna, who flipped out when she saw all the plastic heads staring at us from the window dressed in varying lengths and shades of blonde, brown, black and even one with purple strands throughout, (it was Halloween). Naturally we went in, and since I was wearing the new style, I asked the lady behind the desk if she thought it could use some touches. She played around with it, gave it a spritz of hair spray and off I went, pleased as a puppy with a new bone.

That evening my friend Greg said he wouldn’t have known it was a ‘you-know-what’ and I choose to believe him. Now it sits alongside all my other hair styles, some of which really are not my color anymore; there may even be a strawberry blonde one because I always wanted to be a redhead. They probably have more fun than blondes. Vanity, thy name is woman. (I read that somewhere years ago when I was first married. It obviously made no impression.) This will now give Savanna something more to dwell on along with what she calls my fake teeth and fake shoulder. The rest of her family is perking along on all fours.

Forgive the idiocy, I simply had to tell you.

THE ELIXIR OF LIFE

I have just discovered my latest beauty secret from a small 75 year old lady who works at McDonalds.  It was her birthday and I complimented her on having such smooth wrinkle free skin.  She sat right down and said it was due to olive oil.  That’s right; pure extra virgin olive oil.  I remembered my grandmother’s skin as being free of wrinkles also, and that she too used olive oil.  Oh, why does it take me so long to realize that other people know more than I do?

My bathroom counter and cupboard is filled with expensive jars of stuff that assured me the skin of a 20 something.  None of which worked I should mention.  But I am a sucker for a pretty young saleswoman who says she actually uses her product and see what it does for her?  So I reach for my credit card and add another jar to my collection.

Anyway, seeing is believing and I don’t believe such a nice old lady would lie to me about such a serious matter.  So I came home and poured olive oil into a small container to place in my bathroom.  I have used it for two days, and you know, I think I see a difference already.  Of course, it would have been better if I had started earlier—like maybe 40 years ago, but better late than never.

I’m going to tell my friend Cheri because she just planted a whole olive orchard, and it’s just the right time for her to use it and  in a couple of years I will be able to get all the olive oil I need and my skin will continue to look radient.