I LOVE MEL. ephemeraetcetera: racheladler: I agree with you…and I’ve tried really hard (and continue to try) to look at it that way. But somehow no matter how hard I try, the feeling creeps back at me repeatedly. I realize it’s just a response to the values that our society has pushed upon me, but it’s really powerful response. I’ve never really felt anything like this. The other things that I’ve been trained to want/be as a woman didn’t really speak to me in the same way — never felt pressured to have the big, beautiful wedding or to be conventionally feminine in almost any way… and yet, somehow, this is different.  I guess it’s partly because as a woman in our society, our youth is a source of power (that sounds really nauseating, and it is wrong that it is that way, but I think it’s true). And to have it, and then watch it slowly slip away from me is a terrifying thing. I aspire to be able to accept it. That was, I think, what I meant in my teens and early twenties when I proclaimed that wrinkles were beautiful and that I’d let myself go gray. I understood then that it was wrong to place youth on a pedestal and that there was value in age. But it was a lot easier for me to stand behind the truth inherent in that idea when I wasn’t going through the process. It’s partially all the above and partially the idea of age (not relating to beauty, etc.) at all. There’s just a shock in realizing that I am a physical being and like all other physical beings, I too will age and eventually die. There’s knowing something is true and then there’s seeing evidence of it. And so here I am. Yeah, I hear you. I’m 32, and when I smile, I really see it. Wrinkles all around my eyes, laugh lines around my mouth. But, God, if ever there was something you can’t control, it’s time and age. Age gets us all, if we’re lucky. Also, if we’re lucky, wrinkles are the least of our problems as we age.  I too just hate the way we treat age. We erase it. We ask it to shut up, to shuffle off, to go away. Leave our faces, leave our bodies. We hide old people away in places like the one my mom worked in. Women especially are under so much pressure throughout life: during the first parts of our lives, we work hard to look older, until at some arbitrary point we have to work to look young again. And why? I feel in Boulder, sometimes, like I am an alien surrounded by spry young things and people who wish desperately that they were spry young things. I think it would be so much better to be an aging thing among ancient things and young things, to witness a full spectrum of age. Sadly, the reality doesn’t look like this. But the problem with worrying about all of our wrinkles is that it is fundamentally incompatible with living life right now, in this moment. I’ve known you for three years now. In those years, you have become one of my best friends. You live life like no one else I know - travel, food, love, inspiration, writing, drawing, and all of these things fearlessly - and that’s one of the things I love about you. So you have a few wrinkles. Me too! You are beautiful! And maybe your face, over time, gives some small indication that you are a woman who smiles and laughs and lives.  And, I understand all the power theory behind this too. I’m not trying to belittle that because it definitely is there, it definitely exists. I just don’t think there are enough voices speaking at it from the other direction. So I had to go and open my goddamn mouth. I just feel like I see so much body shame, so much obsessing about this, about thinness, about age, about bodies being some unattainable normal. It makes me angry when it gets my buddies down. So, fuck it. I’m having an attack of earnestness tonight, apparently.

I LOVE MEL.

ephemeraetcetera:

racheladler:

I agree with you…and I’ve tried really hard (and continue to try) to look at it that way. But somehow no matter how hard I try, the feeling creeps back at me repeatedly.

I realize it’s just a response to the values that our society has pushed upon me, but it’s really powerful response. I’ve never really felt anything like this. The other things that I’ve been trained to want/be as a woman didn’t really speak to me in the same way — never felt pressured to have the big, beautiful wedding or to be conventionally feminine in almost any way… and yet, somehow, this is different. 

I guess it’s partly because as a woman in our society, our youth is a source of power (that sounds really nauseating, and it is wrong that it is that way, but I think it’s true). And to have it, and then watch it slowly slip away from me is a terrifying thing.

I aspire to be able to accept it. That was, I think, what I meant in my teens and early twenties when I proclaimed that wrinkles were beautiful and that I’d let myself go gray. I understood then that it was wrong to place youth on a pedestal and that there was value in age. But it was a lot easier for me to stand behind the truth inherent in that idea when I wasn’t going through the process.

It’s partially all the above and partially the idea of age (not relating to beauty, etc.) at all. There’s just a shock in realizing that I am a physical being and like all other physical beings, I too will age and eventually die. There’s knowing something is true and then there’s seeing evidence of it. And so here I am.

Yeah, I hear you. I’m 32, and when I smile, I really see it. Wrinkles all around my eyes, laugh lines around my mouth. But, God, if ever there was something you can’t control, it’s time and age. Age gets us all, if we’re lucky. Also, if we’re lucky, wrinkles are the least of our problems as we age. 

I too just hate the way we treat age. We erase it. We ask it to shut up, to shuffle off, to go away. Leave our faces, leave our bodies. We hide old people away in places like the one my mom worked in. Women especially are under so much pressure throughout life: during the first parts of our lives, we work hard to look older, until at some arbitrary point we have to work to look young again. And why? I feel in Boulder, sometimes, like I am an alien surrounded by spry young things and people who wish desperately that they were spry young things. I think it would be so much better to be an aging thing among ancient things and young things, to witness a full spectrum of age. Sadly, the reality doesn’t look like this.

But the problem with worrying about all of our wrinkles is that it is fundamentally incompatible with living life right now, in this moment.

I’ve known you for three years now. In those years, you have become one of my best friends. You live life like no one else I know - travel, food, love, inspiration, writing, drawing, and all of these things fearlessly - and that’s one of the things I love about you. So you have a few wrinkles. Me too! You are beautiful! And maybe your face, over time, gives some small indication that you are a woman who smiles and laughs and lives. 

And, I understand all the power theory behind this too. I’m not trying to belittle that because it definitely is there, it definitely exists. I just don’t think there are enough voices speaking at it from the other direction. So I had to go and open my goddamn mouth. I just feel like I see so much body shame, so much obsessing about this, about thinness, about age, about bodies being some unattainable normal. It makes me angry when it gets my buddies down.

So, fuck it. I’m having an attack of earnestness tonight, apparently.

Dec 12 2011

Photo