I am sat in a red dress, with hastily applied make up waiting for a photographer. A few years back, this was my ambition: to be a person photographed regularly, or a model as they are otherwise known. Today this little photo session is very much not about what I look like per se, but more about illustrating an article for a local magazine. I'm a local person and in writing my books I have become of some interest to the Shire in which I abode. Which is always lovely, but this isn't about my potential newfound and very specifically shire-d fame, it's about the whole she-bang.
Having dashed into the house with 30 mins till photography time. I threw on a red dress - it's classy and didn't need ironing - and I haphazardly topped up my make up. In doing so I couldn't help but notice the appearance of some lovely new wrinkles! Even though I just wrote a book with a chapter that rants and raves about the beauty industry and how it makes Women feel if they do not fit the beauty and youth prescription, my heart still sank a little bit. I am not beyond the bite of the media it seems. So being the brave spiritual trooper that I am I decided that a smile would fix it all, so I smiled in the mirror, and guess what, the wrinkles got worse! You just have to laugh...
So this leaves me with a dillemma. The way I see it is I have three options. Be morose and sullen and in turn hope to look relatively young. This will of course lead to me obsessed with how I may look, concerned wholly with externals and drastically avoiding any and all humor for fear I may lapse and allow the old crows feet out of the (old) bag. There is of course the option of Botox. Nope to that. So the final option is of course, smile and F**k the wrinkles.
Guess which option I chose?
So if you see a slightly frayed version of my younger self, happily peering out of the pages of a glossy local social mag, you know why. Looks, youth and smooth undereyes are a truly passing trend, they have an expiry date, very few of us can genuinely partake. Compared to our souls and our wisdom they are but a blip. So with this in mind we should all just smile and F**k the wrinkles! We are more our souls than we will ever know, and the externals be they warped, frayed, wrinkled or flumpy are perfect. They are our little well worn homes. They keep our soul housed and wasting time on major renovations, money on nip tucks, tears and frustrations on the ravages of time is money, time and tears thoroughly wasted! You are beautiful, and your imperfections are too!
On that note... where is this photographer, I'm not getting any younger...