Monday, July 4, 2011

Vein, Vane, Vain…

Age is a very strange thing…I find that people struggle with aging gracefully. I recently saw Suzanne Summers on tv. I have always loved her. In fact, in 1983, her thigh master was part of my daily elementary school regimen. I think I overused it because it eventually broke in two…Of course two thigh masters were quite useless…but perhaps equally as useless as one. As for “Chrissy Snow?”…well…at 70 years old, is it really possible that her hair is still platinum blonde like that?...

I think there comes a time when being comfortable with your age is more useful when it comes to looking your best than working so hard to look like you’re 17 years old. I see 60 year old women all the time who have had their eyes done to look as though they are 30 years younger. Unfortunately, there is a point when it goes too far. What happened to personal acceptance and sophistication?

Of course the “beautiful people” are paraded in front of cameras as the norm! Not only that, men in their 50’s and 60’s seem to think they want girls in their 20’s with no regard to their own beer guts or darkened grays. This all started when they invented the telephone and then started developing housing in neighborhoods! It just didn’t happen in centuries before us. 16 year old men married the 13 year old girl from the farm 20 miles down the road and they grew old together. There was no fox news to distract the men by showing them perfectly toned, glitzy, blonde bombshells that they could fantasize about. You can’t really blame them actually. Those women certainly are beautiful. I always give credit where credit is due!

Now I don’t mean to say that this is only a male problem. I run into women all the time who are looking for really young guys. No 40 year old woman that I know really wants a 40 year old man. Far be it for anyone to make it easy on themselves! There is a sense of entitlement once a person has gotten to a point in her life when she knows what she likes and what she wants. Sometimes she’s fresh out of a bad marriage. Sometimes she is fresh out of school and waking up after many years of putting her personal life on hold. She is 40 years old and wants someone she finds attractive. Unfortunately we don’t always find our own age to be attractive. We didn’t think 40 was hot when we were 20 and we still don’t. My 93 year old grandmother commented the other day when she saw a woman who was 92, “Wow. Did you see how many wrinkles she had?”…um…yes I did. There’s a certain point when there is just NOTHING you can do. The body wasn’t meant to hold up for an entire century! Eventually the miniskirts and half shirts have to go!

So then what can we do to make ourselves happy with our single lives? I contend that people tend to fill their heads with limitations and requirements in order to stay in the safety zone. Once we are older than 21, our lives become layered with experiences and clutter that build a protective shell around us. I’m quite certain that we don’t even realize we are doing it but if we get a little “real” with ourselves, a 50 year old woman doesn’t really have all that much in common with a 30 year old man, and a 60 year old man has even less in common with a 20 year old girl. My fiancé is 2 months older than I am. I have to say that I don’t usually like older men BUT he is really great and has lived a healthy lifestyle! He is perfect for me and people don’t stare at us in the street wondering if he is my father or if I am his mother…or do I need to sound out the words for him when he reads books!...(BUT on a side note: the other day I signaled to him to do a sound check for my band and he completely misinterpreted my hand motions as I pointed to the audience and then to my ear. He walked out and found a cookie and never returned…baby steps though. I guess the cookies were good and we eventually figured out that we hadn’t turned on the main speakers ourselves!- I digress…) The point is that I DO believe that there is someone for everyone! The catch is to strip off the underlying protective tactics and strong beliefs of what “we have to have” that keep us frozen in the “there is no one out there for me” stage…

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