Adjusting to the fact that we actually are going to get old in a culture that worships youth is a big challenge. The knowledge creeps over us one fine day that we in fact will look like our mothers and our grandmothers -if we are so lucky as to live long enough. We can age better; we can live more healthy lives - but inevitably, ultimately, we will look like "old ladies." Even in our 50's and 60's, ages my grandmothers appeared to have accepted as "old age," this is often hard for us to swallow.

Along with our youth, in this culture we lose our authority. The wisdom and experience of older women are little valued in the workplace, and often not even in the family. UNLESS!! Unless we can stay young by relying on magic potions and makeup to cover our age, and take advantage of the numerous surgical and chemical adjustments that can now be made to unsatisfactory flesh.

It's more important to think young, in the sense of being curious, open-minded and adventurous in trying new things - but looking young does help us to think young. It also keeps others from filing us away in their "old" box. The age-old stratagem of not telling your age also keeps others from defining you by their expectations.

However, we have to recognize now, in the age of "anything is possible," the damage that playing the cosmetic makeover game can do both to our health and to our incomes. We owe it to ourselves to cherish our bodies and nourish them - not slather them with poisons and cut off or plump up the parts that don't happen to match some impossible image.

First we need to evaluate why we are using the cosmetics we use, and whether it really serves us. Most cosmetics have not been tested adequately and are not particularly good for us, and some are carcinogenic, toxic, irritating, or disrupt hormonal systems. What is put onto the skin is absorbed into the system - that's how hormone patches and creams work. Once we have a feeling for the difference between "what I am doing for myself" and "what I am doing to appease the Beauty Myth," we can find products that are safe and dump the rest.

There are good reasons to have cosmetic surgery - but confoming to the Beauty Myth at any cost in order to increase self-esteem is not one of them. The cosmetic industry, the cosmetic surgery industry, the diet industry, and the advertising industry are making millions off our dissatisfaction with our bodies - dissatisfaction which, let me say once again, they have created for the very purpose of making millions.

  

In another five years you may be thinking you would be happy if only your face and body looked the way they do today - so one choice is to just relax and enjoy how you look now! Is that "living in the moment," or what?

Beauty to Die For

The Cosmetic Consequence Judi Vance Deathtraps in Cosmetics -- a quick and startling overview Buy new or used at Amazon Vance covers all kinds of cosmetics, and what the known toxins and chemicals with unknown actions are, plus environmental estrogens and animal testing. Cosmetic companies can basically put almost any ingredient they want in their products, and charge what the market will bear. They are not regulated in any meaningful way. We all put products on our skin, on our eyes, on our lips, in our mouths, that may have toxic effects, especially cumulatively over years. Please - check this out and toss the things that are dangerous.

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