In Praise of Worn Faces

When I was a kid, my family used to ride the Bonanza Bus from Southbury, CT to Manhattan to visit my grandfather. There was a huge magazine stand in the middle of the Port Authority terminal and when I was eleven, I picked up a Cosmo. I bought it with my own money. I sat away from my parents and sister and I read it in secret. I remember staring at my profile in the side of the bus window, illuminated by a tiny overhead light. This was the beginning of a very forbidden, very exciting practice for me: hating my body. 

I was like Eve with the apple. I didn’t know I had pimples until Cosmo told me. And for several years I became fixated on treatments: I would buy all the face washes, spot creams and astringents my allowance would permit. Remember the smell of Sea Breeze? Later, when my skin cleared because I was pumped full of Yaz, I became fixated on the width of my thighs. This obsession persisted until I was sent for a bone scan by a concerned OB. It turns out that going hungry for ten years had resulted in severe osteopenia. “Oops,” I remember thinking when the radiologist told me the results. “I’ve gone too far.” 

From then until now I’ve had a wonderful respite from body image obsession, and it’s because I’ve been bearing children. The utility of my body has translated into self-worth. It’s no surprise that as I contemplate the end of my reproductive life, I also find myself considering certain enhancements. Changing my face or body is a seductive way to move on from the existential angst of being through with this ripe, glorious period of life. I see why the Mommy Makeover is big business. 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought let’s have another baby; nah, I’ll make a Botox appointment instead. But I just can’t get to the dermatologist. It feels precariously like my other dysmorphias. I’ve already spent years beholden to someone else’s definition of my inadequacy. But the fix never came from Neutrogena, Light N Fit yogurt or from the Precor elliptical machine. It only ever came from me, changing the way I valued myself. Current life expectancies suggest I’m going to live another forty to fifty years. Am I supposed to feel old that whole time?

In June, I read an article in Maybe Baby, Haley Nahman’s newsletter. It was relatable and chilling. I highly recommend it. In the piece, Jessica DeFino, who writes often about the beauty matrix, tells Haley: “Botox superficially eases age anxiety for the user but compounds the issue for the collective.” Listen, I pass no judgment: people who get plastic surgery and Botox often look bangin’. Kudos! But they never make me feel good. And since this essay is all about me, I think that matters. 

On the other hand, when I see a woman walking through life with her face and body unchanged, I feel WONDERFUL. I’m looking at the summers she spent laughing in the sunshine; the years spent furrowing her brow over books or worries about her unruly children. A woman with wrinkles reminds me that a life already lived is as valuable as a life with everything ahead. I search for women who give me that message just as I searched for women who ate intuitively when I was anorexic. I want to be sane; but I need reminders.

Last week I re-read a book that impacted me deeply as a teenager. It’s called Man’s Search for Meaning and it’s by a psychoanalyst named Viktor Frankl. In it, Frankl details his experience in Auchwitz and Dachau. His work focuses on how certain prisoners survived the death camps by holding fast to an inner sense of self worth, dignity and hope.

In 1959, Frankl wrote about our confused sense of aging—our affirmation of the young and our disinterest with the old. “There is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them…. Instead of possibilities in the future they have realities in the past—the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized—and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets...” (151) He continues: “Today’s society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness.” (152) 

Frankl reminds me that how I live matters. For me, the practice of acceptance, patience and delight in myself are the measures of time well spent. I never cultivated those qualities in front of a magnifying mirror or scale. Obsessing about my appearance only made me more obsessive about my appearance. 

If I sidestep the evolution of my body, what kind of acceptance—what kind of self-embrace—might I miss? I have seen my face at seventeen; I have seen it at twenty-seven and I see it at thirty-seven. I don’t want one face forever. Curiosity is a playful, open position; it implies a willingness to go along with the changes. I realize, as I write this, that I’m essentially wrinkle-free: maybe I feel differently about all of this in ten years. But for now, I’m happily fascinated by the way I’m changing. That is a choice. 

Also, I want to express myself with my face. (!!) Bessel Van Der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score writes: “Emotions (from the Latin emovere—to move out) give shape and direction to whatever we do, and their primary expression is through the muscles of the face…. These movements communicate our mental state and intention to others [in ways] we instinctively read…” (75) It’s generous for me to show the world how I feel; it’s an offering that the world respond. Just yesterday, Amanda Hess wrote in The New York Times: “It strikes me that wrinkles on women are not only stigmatized because they make then seem old, but because they make them look angry, sad, surprised, distressed—they make them look alive.” Or, as my friend Whitney put it on our Monday walk: “Our hearts show up on our faces.” I don’t mean to be glib, but how are we supposed to communicate love fully if we can’t move?

So, to the women with the tiny or saggy boobs or the stomach rolls, or the faces with deep, expressive lines: I LOVE THE WAY YOU LOOK. You look fucking amazing. You are soft and powerful. Your face tells me your story: not just the things you’ve lived, but your rebellion into self-worth. You are walking, in dignity, towards what is coming and you give me permission to do the same. Thank you. 

We’re all getting older (God willing). We’ll all eventually cease to be ‘productive.’ And—argh!— someday we’ll die. But in the meantime, we can own our faces. We can say a lot with them. 

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Also, a bit of housekeeping: no post next week. I’ll be traveling for Thanksgiving. After that, pub day will be Thursdays—I tend to start writing these on Monday morning and the turnover is too tight. So stay tuned for 12/2. Thanks!!