I am aging. I have fears about old age.
As I look around me, youth wins the day while older people obsess over wrinkle creams, anti-aging products and Viagra working to “keep up appearances” … and other things.
Aging in America is tough.
It’s not that I thought I would outrun aging (the alternative is…) I did think it would look better, kinder and have hidden virtues that I would grow to cherish and value as the things of youth were replaced with the wisdom of age.
Last week I tried on this very cute shapely dress. Lifting the dress over my head I felt it fall over my shoulders, I turned around and looked into the horrid dressing room mirror only to discover an alien had snatched my body.
I looked for the empty pod; remember “Invasions of the Body Snatchers”?! Surely the body in the mirror was not me!
I was shocked. In my mind’s eye I saw youth, I felt youth, I felt vibrant, clear-skinned and taut. In the mirror, I am grey, wrinkled, shrinking and have (heaven forbid) liver spots!
In America, a woman who grows old in herself and honors her aging body deserves a medal, for she has won the war -- overcoming the lie that we can look youthful forever.
She loves who she is as she is. She ages on her own terms.
Look! That’s her in the mirror: a woman who is real, wrinkled and wise.
Yah!!
I’m Lou Ness, and that’s my perspective.
