Age Envy

Growing old gracefully just got easier for me. It happened as I was reading an opinion piece by Meghan Daum in the Los Angeles Times, in which she reflected on “society’s shallow preoccupation with physical appearance.” Like a lightning bolt, it hit me that as aging women are advised ad nauseam on how to bring back their youthful glow, the youthful glow set is acting like a bunch of middle-aged women dealing with the reality of their reflections in the morning mirror. They want to be us! Pardon me, but aren’t lines, wrinkles and sagging skin the purview of women in their fifties? Not anymore! Now women in their twenties and early thirties are running, not walking, to the swamped Botox Store to get rid of frown lines they should keep—for frowning at important things like idiotic boyfriends, vexing career moves, 650,000 civilian lives lost in Iraq and whether to spring for that sixth pair of jeans or not. As you know, once you get Botoxed and the lines disappear, so does the ability to frown.

I’ve had cellulite all my life, but it’s only now, as it gets worse with age, that I’ve begun considering serious above-the-surgery-belt options that probably won’t work. Thank God for the $2,700 price tag attached to the treatment I called about the other day. That, along with recent news on the economy, which our government tried to convince us was steady and growing, but which in fact was standing still at an alarming speed(!), helped me to decide that I could live another year with lumpy thighs. But I’m 51. Young women don’t bother to wait anymore, given a fat wallet or total disregard for debt. At the first sighting of a UFO (or Unidentified Fatty Object), it’s Woosh! Faster than a speeding bullet or Superman in his waist-high underpants, they fly to the nearest liposuction center to get vacuumed smooth. And, have you heard about—hold on to your firming tights, ladies—anal bleaching? If what I read in a glossy magazine is true, yes, young women are choosing to have the skin around their anus bleached—to make it pink like a baby’s, I’m guessing? In the article I read, the woman had been gifted the treatment by her boss as a birthday present. Never mind the implications of this trend, which makes the feminist in me gasp in judgmental horror—I just find this weird obsession with youth by the young to be inspiring. It means we older gals are healthy and well-adjusted. We don’t start avoiding our mirrors until we’re well on our way to memory loss and impaired vision—two developments that really burn my ass, but not as much as anal bleaching!