The same goes for the rest of us. We do need to stop allowing our looks and age to define us! We need to step up and face the mirror! Ageing is a tough deal I get it. You do what you need to do to feel good, but remember:
if you have done things, (unnatural, scary things) to your face and body, involving fat sucking pumps, and one-foot long needles, and scalpels and botulism;
if you have spent every extra minute of your free time exercising as if you are a decathlete;
if you have willingly paralysed your face in order to stop being able to smile or show any emotion other than open-eyed bewilderment;
if you now have the kind of lips that render you unable to drink from a glass or kiss properly, the kind of lips that make people want to ask in alarm if you have an EpiPen on you;
if you have stuffed your cheeks with God knows what, in order to have that bee-stang “glow” that belongs in the Madam Tussaud’s Museum;
if your eye-brows are so high up on your forehead that you look like you are wearing a Demon Kabuki mask;
if it’ s been years since you’ve enjoyed a meal without hating and / or punishing yourself by starving for weeks afterwards;
if you have become so thin that you look like a walking X-Ray plate and one can clearly see the makings of your actual skeleton;
if you have had implants and as a result you have lost all feeling to your breasts, (which surely defeats the whole point…), and you now look like you are hiding bowing balls in your blouse;
if you also have not just fake boobs but also fake ass and cheekbones and lips and tan and hair and eye colour and eyelashes and eyebrows and nails and God knows what else;
and if you only remaining goals in this life concern your age and weight,
how about you just admit it?
And if you are dieting (and chances are, you ARE), how about you stop lying that you “eat a lot”? How about you stop claiming: “I LOVE food! You wouldn’ t believe how much I eat!” every time you go out to a restaurant with friends, (even when all you eat all night comes in a glass…) as if being thin because you are dieting is not special enough, and you feel the need to declare that it is effortless too, because it then renders you more worthy of your friends’ s envy…Which is, lets face it, kind of fucked up… Mind you, people who really eat a lot, don’ t feel the need to make big, public announcements about it. Eating, believe it or not, is a natural thing, much like breathing. You wouldn’ t go around publicly announcing that you “breath a lot”, right? Not unless you had a serious breathing condition and the breathing easily thing was an event!(ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR TURBULENT RELATIONSHIP WITH PLEASURE, IS WHAT I’ M SAYING!)
And if you are walking around with the kind of high heels that render you literally unable to walk properly and you need the help of a man to get in and out of cars or walk up a couple of steps (which is again, symbolic!) , like you are an invalid, or Blanche DuBois in constant need of “kind strangers”, how about you stop claiming that you “love yourself”? How about you stop pretending to be “confident” and not at all “afraid of ageing!” or losing some random horny man’s gaze? And how about you stop being condescending towards women who are actually cool with how they look even in their worst of days, while you are at it? How about you stop acting superior in the company of women who are ageing naturally (meaning without all of the above) and so still look like their own damn self? Only kind of older. And kind of uglier. And possibly kind of fatter too. Like Nature intended all along. AND FROM THE DAWN OF FUCKING TIME!
In short, each and every one of us wants to live in a world that does not reject us, just because we are no longer twenty. How about we stop doing it to our own selves too? How about we stop being so scared? How about we all become the change we want to see in the world?
The point is not that we don’t age, but that we ALL do. (Eventually) The point is not that ageing is “good”, (it is on many accounts crap actually…) but that is both natural AND inevitable. The point is that we should be allowed to age and we shouldn’t have to compromise our choices because of ageing. And the point is that we shouldn’t be ashamed of it! And we should stop pretending like it doesn’t happen…
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“Ageing is Not For Sissies” – Part II” – 30th of September, 2018. Art & Words Copyright © Fanitsa Petrou. All Rights Reserved. Any unauthorized use – copying, publishing, printing, reselling, etc – will lead to legal implications. Feel free to share on Social media
READ ALSO: “Ageing is Not For Sissies”, Part II –The Woman in the Mirror
ART & words by Fanitsa Petrou: http://www.fanitsa-petrou.com
