While vacationing recently, I was afforded the luxury of a vanity area with very good lighting. I imagine this is supposed to allow you to apply your make-up in better lighting so when your go out in public, there isn’t a helter-skelter fault line of mascara on your eyelid and lipstick brimming your lips. Unfortunately, while applying my pure minerals foundation up close and personal in this crystal clear mirror with this really good lighting, I noticed wrinkles on my chin.
I have this stuff I apply before my foundation that is suppose to act as an undercoat and smooth out these uneven surfaces, so I leaned in closer to be sure I hadn’t just failed to wash off part of my breakfast from my chin. Then I leaned closer to be sure that my foundation hadn’t gathered in a weird way. Upon very close inspection it became clear in this great lighting that the $35 undercoat wasn’t really working and I remembered I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet that morning.
So I spent the day rubbing my chin wondering what to do about these new found wrinkles.
These wrinkles joined good company, so it wasn’t like I was shocked that I had wrinkles. It’s just that these wrinkles required some new rationalizations and strategies to preserve my self-image.
I’ve had the wrinkles around my eyes since I burned them there permanently one summer laying out at Carlsbad Beach with no sunscreen and no sunglasses – me squinting into the sun and sea in my peach bikini. But, I always liked those wrinkles, even as they got deeper and spread because I called them laugh lines, and I love laughing or even looking like I’m laughing just around the eyes even when I’m not.
Then I got wrinkles around my mouth, which mostly creased when I laughed, so I stuck with that theme of being a happy person and these wrinkles added proof.
Suddenly I had a wrinkle along one side of my face that at first went away after being awake a few hours, then decided to stick around all day. But since it’s along the side of my face, I just pretty much ignore it because I don’t really see it, much like I ignore the back of my hairdo and my butt because I don’t have time and energy to spend looking at them let alone worrying about things out of sight and out of mind.
Then I got wrinkles on my lips. Smiling took care of those and since smiling enhanced the beauty of my other wrinkles, I vowed to smile more. Some of my older friends began to think I might be losing it as I got older, what with all this unnecessary laughing and smiling all the time, but I just smiled and pretended not to be able to hear their concerns. When I wasn’t smiling, those lip lines increased just how sour I looked when I was making a sourpuss face so once again, I thought these wrinkles were an asset.
But, wrinkles on the chin, I’m having a difficult time finding a good way to hide them, or how they are actually an asset.
If I bite my lower lip, the wrinkles go away. But then I look like I’m in deep concentration and people expect me to be thoughtful and intelligent, which is a lot of pressure to be under if you’re solving all your aging troubles by relying on laughing and smiling.
I found through lots of makeup experiments that makeup just tends to make these wrinkles more pronounced because I end up with a cake chin.
Then I began eyeing my husband’s beard and wondering what was under all that hair. I got jealous that he got to hide whatever it was under that hair with hair. I contemplated how unfair it was that he looked distinguished with a beard and if I had a beard I would just look like I was taking the wrong combination of hormones and hadn’t had time to wax or that I belonged in a circus.
I decided that growing a beard, for now, was not a good solution to my wrinkled chin.
Luckily, I returned home from vacation to my poorly lighted bathroom and virtually forgot about the wrinkles on my chin. I also returned to my crazy life and thought that it wasn’t much different than a circus, so maybe a beard wasn’t such a bad option after all.
This week I will resist the urge to grow a beard and join a different circus.
