Looking Like Your Mother

Living in the Petrie Dish

In my only mile-wide circumference of travel yesterday, I managed to cross the path of a man with no face and a woman in the process of erasing hers. The woman, at 55, is now more fully lipped and less wrinkled than she was at 40. Flawless, actually.

Lara talked to me about what motivates her. She and her husband travel in such moneyed and powerful circles that the couples she meets, the significant-other women she dines with, keep getting younger and younger. She will not be undone, become invisible, or be replaced. 

I noticed that in her process, she had become remarkably adept at the bobble-head.
Maybe you have seen it, the bobble-head? Look for it on one of the currently running Botox Freedom of Expression advertisements. People compensate the loss of use of their eyes and foreheads by swinging their heads, moving their shoulders, grinning a toothy smile and throwing hands about. The chest cavity chuckles because the eyes can no longer twinkle.

The problem one runs into with Botox addiction or just plain overuse goes way beyond waiting for Nicole Kidman's forehead to crush down under the Frankenstein weight and cover up her eyes. (Jeebus, I'm gonna turn blue waiting for her to snap out of it and get the damn endoscopic lift, for goodness sake - it's getting kind of freakish, but I digress.) The problem actually lies in the smooth perfection. Our brains are hard wired to see certain expressions and when we don't see those expressions we get, well, nervous. When our eyes see bobble-head instead of raised eyebrows or instant cheery eyes, then there is a flash of psychological resistance. Some deep survival part of the brain has recognized that something is not right with that person you are looking at, and is trying hard to tell you to keep some distance.   

I linked eyes with the man from far across a room. He had been looking in my direction.  I took enough time to determine that he had two eyes, but that in the area where the nose and upper lip should be, somewhere around the nasal cavity, there appeared to be only a doughnut hole. As soon as I realized there was in fact a deformity I made sure my face made no outward change in appearance and diverted my attention to continue my business.

Later I had a chance to inspect. The jaw was completely gone. There were no upper teeth. I suspected removal due to cancer, but there was also an odd indentation around the top of his head that ran like a too tight hair band. I found no visible burn marks. He could talk. He was as close to being decapitated as I think medically possible. He could have been thirty. He could have been sixty. Then I began to wonder how it felt to be inside.  I wanted to take him home, to lie to him that everything would be all right. I wanted to stay far enough away to be prepared for when he lost it.

All sorts of scientific tests could have been run in the course of those two meetings, what with brain reactions of the viewer, the mental workings of the viewee. The layman in me appreciates days like that just for perspective: It doesn't hurt to be reminded that I am one extremely fortunate soul.

I Always Wanted a Pony

I tested it. I researched it. I walked away from it. For six months, I patiently waited for my interest to go away. It did not. So yesterday, I bought it, the iGallup.

The man behind the counter at Brookstone turned to his co-worker and said, "Hey, I sold an iGallup!" and then I felt like the biggest chump e-v-e-r.

And an even bigger one when I came home and found this Japanese ad.

But chumpiness really knows no bounds, because when I finally had the nerve to admit to my office mates that had I bought a horse, I heard this;

1. Laughter
2. "You could put it in your front window, and put a slot machine by it for quarters"
3. "Did they throw in a cowboy hat with the deal?"
4. "Just when I thought you had run out of dumb things to get into . . . "
5. "Next time we're at the Broncin' Buc, I am putting ALL my money on you."

We don't have a Broncin Buc. I going home, pulling a big blanket over my head as I sit on new dumb exercise machine, and think very hard about what I just did.

The Face Bra

I guess my daughter won't be inventing a face support system for the science fair next year (this post explains), as that idea's already been taken. Besides, the face wrap company promises its minerals will take 10 to 15 years off your looks.

We're taking a poll in the office. So far we have epsom salts and an ace bandage, dead sea salts and tube socks, and four people who yelled at us for not working.   

When 36 Feels Like 80

It was supposed to be a two day business trip to Puerto Rico, but upon my arrival my contact told me of his sudden need to see a specialist for internal problems. Geez, I wanted to wrap him in a big band-aid. We worked late into the night so he could still make his medical appointments the next day. This opened up my schedule a little, but enjoying a sunny day in the Commonwealth was not going to be an option, as rain had followed the plane in. So before my meeting I popped my head into the hotel salon to ask about what kind of services would be available in the morning.

"We have hair styles," the proprietress with bangs told me. Hers weren't just any bangs. They were color block, with large section of vibrant red, matched with sections of chestnut. ". . . and we can do a blow out. We do manicures and pedicures, and . . . ," she leaned in closer to me and raised an eyebrow, "we have waxing."

She said it as if it was to die for, waxing. I would rather die first. Of all the markers that tend to separate the baby boomer generation from those younger, the one that might signal the strongest is the desire to engage in - nay, even come up with the idea to - engage in topiary designs for one's short hairs. The shape of a heart, where?

In any event, I was thinking more in terms of total body re-hydration, and as soon as the salon owner mentioned waxing, the young woman behind the salon desk must have been reading my mind, because she directed in a monotone, "There's a spa on the 10th floor."

But I took a pass on all of it anyway. I need more than four hours to explore the island; more like four weeks. I would be back to PR before long. So instead I took the 2 am flight back, learning at some point during the journey that Tony Snow had joined the ranks of Elizabeth Edwards as one of those facing cancer recurrence and the likelihood of a death sooner rather than later. Then I remembered that I had forgotten to show up for a free bone marrow transplant donor screening the Saturday before.

I'll call today and get a new date. Our band-aids just aren't big enough.

Notes

On family excursions my husband has a habit of waiting until everyone is close to hypoglycemic before announcing, "Maybe we should think about lunch." Then we walk for blocks and blocks, for days it seems, reading menus. He had a hardy breakfast. We sipped coffee and fought over lipstick. He looks for choices and ambiance. We choke back tears. This summer I'm gonna get a pair of gladiator sandals and one time, just one time during the most arduous of one of these life threatening treks yell out at the top of my lungs, "Spartans! Tonight we dine in Hell!"

It's nice that the NY Times gives us the name of the hottest skin doc in Washington DC, then tells us she isn't taking new patients. And the point is? The article calls Dr. Tina S. Alster the laser expert, using laser beams to cure skin problems, including, ahem, wrinkles. Last I knew, the jury was still way out on whether lasers work on puffy eyes and saggy necks. Actually, on the under-eye bags, I thought the jury had already returned a verdict of No Way, so it looks like I have to see if things have changed or we are still in experimentation mode. She caters to the politicians and the press, or those likely to have to be in front of either. Men in Congress are big on fixing red noses. The women like injections for wrinkles. Both, the article says, are concerned about their hands. Me too. I'm actually going to talk with some doctors about what procedures are out there for hands, if there is anything new.  Long gloves, I'm thinking.

My Bad

I finally gave in to the skinny jeans in a big way, with a pair of light blue Lucky's and a pale orange from Urban Outfitters. Within a week I spot a woman looking all sophisticated and turning heads in an indigo denim boot cut. The same style showed up on Cate Blanchett in People, with the headline suggestion that skinny is on its way out. I knew this would happen. I knew that the second I would buy them - whenever that was to be - that the temporary insanity of the unflattering style would end. It's ok. I'm laughing 'cause I knew better. I'm just thinking that I should have done it sooner and done a lot of people a favor.

Really, I think I will complete my summer look with an off-the-shoulder white peasant blouse and stilettos and tell everyone I got lost on my way to the casting call for Grease.

Gosh, Irene, What Do They Call Them New-Fangled Things, Mannequins?

IconNicholson has found a way to allow you to try on a virtual dress at a department store, and then reach out to other connected folks for comment. I like the idea, although because I always shop alone, I may be a statistical outlier. I never completely trust the motives of the people normally in my entourage: the mom who thinks everything costs too much, the child wanting me to spend on myself so I will spend on her, the husband just wanting to go home so buy something already. I end up relying more on the stranger on the street or the girl behind the counter who can't seem to help but say, "Oh, I like that," or "Where did you get that?" Then I know it is a keeper.  Anyway, this virtual technology could help avoid some of the pitfalls of physically shopping with others.   

So with all the potential for even oddballs such as I, why is this so heavily marketed  only to youth on IN's site. Five references to "youth" or "teen" in almost as many paragraphs of markety-speak, six, if you count the phrase, "digi-savvy." Gosh, my age-challenged buddies are likely to be online, answer a cell phone, get excited over the tech. Why the exclusion?

Here's some marekty-speak I approve:  Blend it, guys. Blend it.

When Barbie Likes Math

Catherine McNeil, the Times tells us, is the It girl of modeling. Uberskinny is out, fatally gorgeous is back in. That's good news. I mean, heroin chic is so tough to pull off without a cache of heroin, you know?

But if we are switching to classic beauty, then that means facial restructuring. I spent some time trying to figure out those ratios to compare to my own, such as nose length in proportion to the height of the forehead, etc. I was doing ok on one site, that I might not be too far off classic, until I realized it was a breeders' page for Labrador Retrievers. 

Anyway, just to have it all in my notes somewhere, after using a broad search of "classic beauty" and nose and forehead and length, this is what I finally found on the subject - for humans, of Egyptian and Greek descent, I am assuming.

The Egyptians and then the Greeks divided up the body and the face and were most pleased when the component parts measured up to a set of mathmatical calculations. Geometry, harmony, insanity, you choose a discriptor.  (Anyway, it exists, and whether you want to adopt it or scorn it, it's always better to operate from facts.) The Greeks developed the math part, the Golden Ratio. How we get that number is thus: the length of a line is divided into two parts such that the minor part divided by the major part equals the major part divided by the total. So for Golden proportion, the smaller part must relate to the larger as the larger part relates to the  total. In reverse, the relation of the total to the major part must be the same as that of the major part to the minor.

To qualify as Golden, the major part is 1.61803 times larger than the minor part, a number represented by the Greek letter phi, the initial letter of Phidias Pythagoras’ first name.  Eventually all this math gets us to something more familiar, such as his Vitruvian man.

The width of the nasal base is supposed to be .618 of (shorter than) the mouth.
The width of the mouth is supposed to be .618 of the width of the eyes
The width of the eyes is supposed to be .618 the width of the head at the temple
The height of the forehead-to-eyes is .618 the height of the eyes to the chin
The height of the eye to the nose tip is .618 the height of the nose to the chin

Of course, once you know it is called the Golden Ratio, searches become much easier.  For the face, try this, the Golden Number net site, which is where these color images are from.

I still think McNeil looks like a renegade elf from Rings, but as I have consumed a loaf of French bread viewing site after site turned up on ridiculously large "classic beauty" search, I am feeling a bit hobbity myself.

Be Sure to Include a Straw Hole for Wine

It was another late-nighter, this time caused by an invention contest for my first grader.

The contest sounded good at first, when she brought the paper home. "I want to make a robot that can help kids who can't walk."

"That's great honey, but to do that you will need different parents. What other ideas do you have?" I asked, noting that the state-wide contest pretty much left instructions off at "No time machines or flying saucers."

"I'm the only first grader that signed up for it!" she exclaimed the next day. "Mom, you gotta get me outta this." She sounded like she meant it, or else she has been watching too much Suite Life and other Disney channel ham-n-egging sitcoms. I laughed and, calculating the dramatic increase in odds of success, didn't let her out.

She made something, and she worked hard at it, from conception to design to production of component parts, and I said I would offer to package it up for her, which seemed so ministerial at the time and involved the use of a finger taking off tool, but arts and crafts mon dieu, the whole dining room is covered with slivers of paper and typos.  I helped her carry the project into school this morning and I asked her homeroom teacher if next year couldn't they just make bad birdhouses as everyone else. The teacher began to explain the need to use creative thought. I felt the need to explain the concept of weak humor.

And fine if the six-year-old gets a lot of attention today but does anyone know how much not getting enough sleep does to my face. I swear, the entire inner structure - from malar to beneath the nasolabial folds - seems to melt like a living version of The Scream.  I wonder why that is. I can see it. I can add or lose 5 years depending on how much sleep I have had the week before, which usually means that when I am working on something intense that requires an accompanying live presentation, damn if I'm not dreaming of anti-gravity boots.

It would be easier to get enough sleep, to plan ahead, to be organized, but that would have required me to have had different parents. I think my daughter and I are going to simply have to spend some time this year inventing a face brace that I can wear when I have to stay vertical all night. Now that would be one second-grade presentation I would pay money to see, followed, no doubt, by a totally free parent-teacher consultation.

Up For Air

February is my favorite month. Yeah, right, Valentines. No, it's because it is the month when I sink the lowest, and I never remember that it is the month that I sink the lowest. Somewhere around the third week, moisturizer no longer works, I am unicolor dull, and I internalize to my core that the concept of smiling is so last year. 

At some point in March I realize that I must reverse the downward pull to the abyss and start swimming to the top or succumb, but March doesn't win the prize. March is when the realization, planning, and hard work starts. February is the point of the end of the cycle, which in turn suggests the new cycle; and it is in the aspect of having a life cycle at all that everything seems right again.

I suppose that at some point I will stop feeling so good about the turnaround moment, the walking so near the edge, the need to remember that the year has its seasons that I have experienced and therefore I have a life in continuum. At that point I will probably move to Florida or Arizona or Italy. (Please, please, oh, reverent being, let it be Italy, with breads and olive oil and pesto and plain black dresses and simple black shoes for the old women you still respect. No golf carts, no lime green, no flamingo earrings and shelves full of conks.)

Where was I?

I have an appointment to see Chanel's Spring color line. I am getting a makeover. I haven't had one in at least nine months. Makeovers are funny. I always think I will look like a cover girl instead of the person that I am, and today is no exception. Plus the cost of the product I will inevitably buy will put me into shopping anxiety. All in all, a guaranteed let down. So why so giddy?

Because of February.