Age before Health and Beauty

As I walked up to a girlfriend, she was finishing up a conversation with another woman, who had just handed her a box of something that looked like fancy lotion.  A tall, slender box with silvery lettering.

"Use it for a week and then give it back to me," the woman said to my friend.  

"What is that, some kind of wrinkle cream?" I asked.

The woman fluttered her eyelashes and said, "Anything we can do to help get rid of those wrinkles.

Smoking Man in Beauty Shop
Nationaal Archief/Spaarnestad Photo
Flickr Commons

I'm actually only 23, can't you tell?"  And she flitted away, saying, "Just bring it back next week!"

"Oh dear," I thought to myself.  "Another woman trying to hold back the clock."

"Yeah," said my friend, as she opened the container to reveal a very fancy dispenser.  "It's night time wrinkle cream."  Then she lowered her voice, "I'm just helping her out with her business."

"I love my wrinkles.  They're beautiful!" I declared.  "I'm not going to stop aging any time soon, and the wrinkles are just going to keep coming.  What happens if I hate my wrinkles when I'm old?  I'll just hate myself."

My friend shoved the fancy dispenser back into the box as her husband walked up on the conversation.  "Wrinkles are good," he said.

Well there you have it.

Quantifiable beauty?

 Beauty contest in Turkey.
Men admiring participants beauty contest.
 Flickr Commons

Let's get something straight right now.  I can measure my height, weight, cholesterol, heart rate, blood pressure, and a large number of things that might tell me how healthy or fit I am.  I can count how many years I have been alive, and I my age is increasing at the exact same rate as every other living being's.  But no matter how hard I might try, I can not measure how beautiful I am.  Are we talking inner beauty or outer beauty here?  It doesn't matter.  Nobody has, nor will anyone ever build a foolproof, objective system for measuring beauty--beauty pageant judges included.

So why does society equate age, weight, health and numerous measurable things with something that can not be measured?  There is no logic behind it, other than oppression.  It is the driving force behind societal ills such as scientific racism, where body measurements have been used as justification for genocide, forced sterilization, internment, apartheid, slavery and other expressions of racism.  Equating beauty to age and health is society's way of building a false hierarchy of humanity.  I reject this dominant paradigm, and I invite you liberate yourself from it, too.

In the aching back, clogged arteries, and wrinkled eye of the beholder

The best connection I can see between beauty and the quantifiable is that our perception of ourselves,

 May, 1960.
Fern Derstine combs Mary Schlegel's hair.
Mennonite Board of Missions.
Illinois
Flickr Commons

our self-worth, can impact our health and aging process.  It has been shown in studies that increased pride in one's identity increases overall health.  If someone fails to perceive their own beauty, they will be unhappy with themselves and their health will decline, and health factors associated with age may become more apparent.

There is no standard for beauty beyond self-identification of it.  The one truth in beauty is that it is immeasurable.  If I choose to believe that I am beautiful, I define "beauty," therefore it is true that I am beautiful.  If others see me differently, their views are irrelevant and wrong.  The good news is that I will likely pass on my good looks to my kids, and also my healthy outlook.

Skin deep

What about all that inner beauty business?  Are people who love themselves for who they are the meanies and bullies of the world?  I mean, yeah you can read all about how school bullies are just climbing the social ladder and they don't necessarily come from abusive homes or have low self-esteem.  But really, come on.  It's insecurity that causes people to wrong others.  Jealousy, greed, and unkindness aren't born of self-love.  They may be born of megalomania, but that is arguably an overdose of self-esteem, or overcompensation for self-hatred.

Bully Suicide Project campaign
for Campus Harmony, Inc.
photographed by Fashion photographer Tracy Nanthavongsa.

So I say go ahead and love those wrinkles.  Let your hair go gray.  See it, live it, love it.  Overweight?  Still beautiful.  Fighting cancer?  You're gorgeous.  Did someone along the way say otherwise?  They were not speaking a truth.