Pinky on Middle-Age Mania

My dear friend Dianne from Mississippi sent me an update email that included a reference to new hail damage on her hindquarters as being a sign of aging. (Dianne was also present at one of my most humiliating Victoria Secret visits where I was told that they really didn’t carry anything in my size.) She knows things about me. This phrase contributed to a recent downward spiral in my own body image and the obvious, seemingly overnight signs of age for me. Get ready for full exposure here, it’s R-rated and inappropriate for those who are not middle-aged.
Hail damage: I have been slender, fit (running), and pretty toned my entire life. Dianne’s comment about hail pockmarks and the constant barrage of “Get rid of the cellulite” advertising inspired a couple of more detailed self-inspections recently. Here’s the R-rated part: Picture a naked 44 year old woman, trying out various combinations of contacts/reading glasses/bifocals and mirrors attempting to get an accurate assessment of the landscape of her own rear. It is next to impossible, results in tears, and very bizarre, raised eyebrow looks from the dog. No wonder the various creams are so successful. We can’t really assess what’s going on so as a security measure, we are willing to invest a small fortune in rubbing some bizarre smelling dehydrator on ourselves.
Facial landscaping: I have never been a fan of any kind of waxing. We’ll start at the eyebrows and perhaps stop there. I have been a self-maintainer most of adult life with the periodic visits to the torture chamber of hot wax. The issue now is that some of the little baby eyebrow hairs are white or translucent. First, refer to previous paragraph regarding the contacts/reading glasses/bifocals and mirrors exercise and you may glean the first layer of difficulty. Second, if I take the vitamins I am supposed to, the little baby whites and translucents grow like they’re on steroids and I still can’t see them so I run around with a low-grade paranoia that to others I might be looking like a Geico cavewoman. Third, this is exhausting.
Memory: The clichéd joke would be I can’t remember what I was going to write about this. Um.
I guess the more serious point would be that I think that most women of my age have some level of body dismorphic dysfunction. (Spell check tells me I muffed that one, but I’m told that it is a real disorder….get with it Microsoft, women need your new psychological dilemma support) Speaking for myself, I don’t think I really have any kind of appropriate view of how I look and I have found it is dangerous to rely on the opinions of others (except Dianne who has always been absolutely yet lovingly honest)