What a Wrinkle Represents

Rosy Cheeks

Since Covid, I’ve been using less heat on my hair. I’m trying to help my curl pattern bounce back from all the damage I’ve done to it in the last few years. All natural. Speaking of, I’ve been wearing a bra less as well. I have also stopped wearing foundation most days, so my rosy cheeks are vibrant and overwhelmingly pink.

Christian loves it.

On regular non-Covid mornings, I put on primer, foundation, powder, occasionally color corrector, all to hide my rosy cheeks. After a long day, the makeup fades and the pink shows through.

I don’t know why I hate it so much and it took me a long time to believe Christian was being serious when he commented on my cute rosy cheeks. I don’t know why I feel the need to paint over this part of my face. I don’t know why my blush makes me feel less beautiful.

All day long we tuck, suck, and cover-up the pieces of us that the world says are imperfect.

Wrinkles

Wrinkles have been on my mind recently and so I started researching. When I googled wrinkles the words that came up over and over again were reduce, combat, avoid, remove, and fight (New York Times). Like wrinkles are enemies we must conquer, like they are vermin we must exterminate. Why do we hate wrinkles? What does a wrinkle represent?

For some, it’s the loss of youth. Some women experience sadness about their aging faces. They mourn the loss of their youth and a time when they felt beautiful (Montemurro & Gillen). For others, a wrinkle is a sign that death is crawling ever closer (Montemurro & Gillen). Sorry, that got a little morbid.

Author and social worker Hilary Hendel thinks that our despise for wrinkles represents insecurities. She says,

“Self-esteem doesn’t improve [with Botox] because there are deeper insecurities that lie underneath... about inherent self-worth and lovability and they stem from past wounds, not aging... If you go through with the Botox, you might be filling your wrinkle when it is really your confidence that needs some filling. Botox may be great but I don’t think it can build confidence for you in the long haul. To me, that’s inside work” (Hendel).

Dang, girl. That is powerful stuff.

Our whole lives, we focus more on the flaws in our appearance than the beauty, and many women fail to see themselves objectively (Montemurro & Gillen). So it’s kind of unfortunate that as time goes on, our bodies only get worse and worse in the eyes of society.

Change is Good! Societal Ideals of Beauty

“It seems that women are always comparing themselves to societal ideals for sexual attractiveness and because those ideals are nearly impossible to achieve, feel as if they are inadequate. This feeling often causes women to resist the physical changes associated with aging” (Montemurro & Gillen).

I opened up an article in a beauty magazine called “Change is good!” I was expecting a feel good piece about how women fight aging but change happens to us all and growing old is a good thing, right?? Wrong. The change the article refers to is changes in your skin care routine. Under the headline, the article reads “Sure, our skin evolves as we clock birthdays. Instead of stressing about it, just tweak your skin care. If you've been using the same old cream for years, it's time to take a more targeted approach.” So ladies, instead of loving yourself the way you are, change yourself. The article suggests women should start Botox at just thirty years old (Maffei).

In a study done with middle school children, participants were asked to finish sentences like “you know you are old when...”. The majority of responses were negative and the top answer was wrinkles.

So this is the message we receive every day, that aging is bad, that it's something we have to stop or hide.

Hendel offers that if your mother had embraced aging, you might feel differently. If your parents emphasized character more than looks, you would probably feel more confident now (Hendel).

She says, “The point here is that the feelings we have about our looks are not objective, they are subliminally taught to us by our family’s values, our culture and the myriad of advertisements for cosmetic procedures and anti-aging products…

"These influences put insecurities into us and cause us to feel shame, both consciously and unconsciously, for what we look like” (Hendel).

Therapist ArLyne, age 69 said “I think we put an enormous amount of horrible, ugly pressure on women to meet some unattainable standard. It’s always been there…. As a therapist, it was so awful to see women view themselves as falling short” (Goldman).

So there’s this pressure to be beautiful, to be young, and you have to keep up, but it’s got to be subtle (Griffin).

"Natural" Beauty

A 59 year old woman explained, “It's vanity. You don't want people to think that you needed to have something done to you. You want people to think you're all natural — that you're naturally gorgeous” (Griffin).

In a study on older women and body image, Beth Montemurro and Meghan M. Gillen found that 70% of women agreed that a natural body is a body unaltered with chemicals or other substances used to change appearance (hair dye, makeup, wrinkle creme) (Griffin). However, the women noted the difference between natural aging and looking natural. Women use aging interventions to appear natural.

“Women aspire to convince others that their altered appearances are authentic and the product of good genes and effortless aging" (Griffin).

Can we just talk about how messed up this is? We all get old, but we don’t want to look old, so we use lotions and lip injections and eye creme and eyelash extensions and Botox so that we look younger. But we can’t let anyone know that we are trying so hard to look younger, we just want them to think that we naturally look young…?

One 71 year old woman said, “I'm really disgusted with it all. I really am. Because I think women have a natural urge to be attractive but this is upping the ante so that you're creating an extra burden. This is setting the bar too high. Not only do you have to undergo surgery and all this, you've got to keep redoing and retooling yourself. That kind of pressure is unforgivable because it makes you feel ugly if you haven't had about a dozen face lifts (Griffin).

Lets Talk About Sex, Baby

Okay so there is this interesting phenomenon with the female body. Montemurro and Gillen say, “Women's bodies can be perceived as partially public—they are objects to be viewed by others and must be maintained accordingly... There is an irony in the way that sexuality is deemed a private topic, a personal activity, while women's bodies are so publicly sexualized and scrutinized” (Montemurro & Gillen).

So an incredible amount of our body image - maybe all of our body image - comes not from how we see our own body but from how we think others see it (Montemurro & Gillen). They go on to say,

“As one's body is imagined from the perspective of others it is logical that it be viewed as a project to be worked on and improved for the benefit of others” (Montemurro & Gillen)

This is ingrained in us so much that it messes with our sex lives.

When asked how women express their sexuality, the majority of women said through appearance. They felt that their sexuality was not manifest in the way they felt, but instead, the way they looked (Montemurro & Gillen).

Even during intimate interaction, women continue to worry about the way they look and the vast majority of women said that if they did not feel attractive, they were not interested in sex. (Montemurro & Gillen).

Ladies, what the eff is up with this?

As a wise poet once put it,

“I don’t understand why you believe the lies that being a woman is simply learning how to disguise every sign that you are living." - Johannah Hogge

Are we really so wrapped up in the way we think other people see us that we are distracted during sexual experiences, or worse, that we turn them down? Why should we let a wrinkle, stretch mark, or stomach roll make our sex lives less satisfying? The media made up this idealized image of sex and for some reason, we all feel like that’s the last word, like there’s nothing we can do about it.

Good news girls. Positive body image is linked to more frequent and more positive sexual experiences (Montemurro & Gillen) and I think body image is something we can change.

Since women enjoy their sex lives well into their 90's (Montemurro & Gillen), I think it’s important that we all think long and hard about what a wrinkle really represents and what we are willing to give up by accepting the world's script about body image and aging.

What a Wrinkle Represents

“It is only once women stop trying to conform to conventional ideals for desirability that they seem able to silence the voice that demands discipline of the body and see their true reflections in the mirror” (Montemurro & Gillen).

Hilary Hendel said, “The truth is we all just look like the humans we are. We are all in this aging thing together. No one is spared. And THAT is truly beautiful”.

Isn’t it strange how we humans get so upset when we do human things? When we make mistakes, when we gain weight with stress or stretch marks with babies. Why do we fight the wrinkles on our face that show us our bodies are doing what they are supposed to? That they are living, breathing, growing, aging?

Willow Teagan wrote,

i want wrinkles.

i want a memoir etched

in tiny fissures upon my face.

deep crevices of life disguised

in rivulets, evident to

anyone whose gaze happens upon me.

a small token awarded me for

the continual renewal of

breath every sunrise.

see there? i smiled so much one

afternoon, my face cracked.

I’m going to end with some quotes from women who have both wisdom and wrinkles to show for their long life of experience, heartache, joy, and meaning. They have decided that wrinkles represent their life history, their strength, their stories.

Shelly, 74

“I have a very bad back, so it’s limiting. Plus, I have arthritis and a bulging disk. It’s wonderful stuff. So I work around it. I’m comfortable with my body. You reach an age where you realize this is it— it’s not going to change. Accept yourself and love yourself for what you are and don’t let anyone else tell you what to be” (Goldman).

Paula, 72

“And my body, what can I say about my body? It’s mine... It’s not like those pretty young things. But it’s mine” (Goldman).

Linda, 63

“A lot of women carry shame about how we look. Many of us are undergoing [elective] surgery, even at a very young age… I have a totally different relationship with my body— a very loving relationship. I feel beautiful. I am my body’s loving mother...I have transformed my inner critic to an approver who can appreciate my body’s strength” (Goldman).

Becky, 91

“I believe in focusing on the body, as long as we remember we are not the body; and if you focus too much on the body, you lose what you really are. And what you really are is a beautiful daughter of God. First, realize you are a spiritual soul. The body is a vessel. And that’s what’s wrong with the world today— we’re so interested in the I, the me, that we don’t realize we’re more than the body. We’re the mind and spirit" (Goldman).

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References

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Goldman, L. (2006). Locker room diaries: The naked truth about women, body image, and re-imagining the “perfect” body. Da Capo Press.

Kinnunen, T. (2010). A second youth: Pursuing happiness and respectability through cosmetic surgery in Finland. Sociology of Health & Illness, 32(2), 258–271. https://doi-org.erl.lib.byu.edu/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2009.01215.x

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