A Mini Riff on Plastic Surgery

I’m married to a man who has absolutely no vanity, I mean none, which indicates either a healthy self esteem or cataracts, while I have stood in front of a mirror more than once pulling my facial skin back behind my head, tie it in a knot tie it in a bow, even though there’s a lot of evidence that smooth is never youth and often smooth is alien being.

Here’s something to ponder for a nanosecond: Why do celebrities with the world’s resources available to them go to quacks who stretch their eyes so oddly they can’t see how strange they look?  What do they see when they look in the mirror?  I know what I see in the mirror even if it takes me a second to recognize that old woman.  Are they like anorexics seeing fanciful illusions or do they ever say, Holy Cripes, I really messed up there, oh well, maybe nobody will notice.

It’s a free country (for the moment), what you do to your own body is your own business, and really, what will a facelift matter when we’re moldering in the ground?  Only this: We will never learn to love old people, love ourselves old, until enough of us let ourselves get flat out, unadulterated, unselfconsciously old.

I am going to be totally righteous about this just as soon as I stop dying my hair.