I Just Woke Up Like This

My mother didn’t really “do” beauty. She wore very little makeup, she never dyed her hair (though admittedly Williamsons go gray late in life). She invested in good haircuts, driving the 2 ½ hours to Boston every six weeks to see Louie, but otherwise she swiped on lipstick when she went out and called it good.

My sisters and I are similar. Nature? Nurture? Growing up in an academic small town in New England? Who knows. Suffice to say that in general I confront the world bare-faced and smiling.

Call it hubris, but I tend to think that people are like me until I see that they are not.

Thus, a couple of years ago, it finally occurred to me that a sizable proportion of the women I know are not just wearing makeup, but engaging in more explicit interventions on behalf of youth and beauty.

I’ve got a lot of feelings about this, and they’re kind of hard to parse.

First and foremost, I support absolute bodily autonomy. Do what you will with the flesh and bones God gave you! No judgment here. 

Next, I’m a little envious of those women who have prioritized looking good. I’ve often wished that I were constitutionally able to take excellent care of my skin and wield eyeliner effectively, but that’s just not how I’m wired. 

So I’m pretty low on the up-your-beauty scale. By which I mean I’m the last person who would think to let people inject things into my skin in order to look better. Also? I’m hella nervous about needles and knives.

And then there’s this - I’m the mother of daughters. 

I’ve always felt a heavy responsibility to help them feel okay about the way they look. I’ve bitten my tongue more times than I can count, about to say something negative about my body or my face. It’s hard; I live in the world and I’m not immune to the low-level hum of judgment that follows women through their days.

My girls can make their own decisions about what they want to do with their lovely bodies, but I want to model my mantra: you are perfect just the way you are. Your worth is not defined by your appearance. 

Aging is not a curse.

In 2021 Andie McDowell stunned the world by *gasp* letting her gray hair grow out. I mean, the very fact that a woman in her 60’s having gray hair is news is… shocking? Horrifying? Weird? 

Looking at her pictures, you can see that while Ms. McDowell may be taking some steps to look young, she’s got plenty of wrinkles. Her face isn’t plumped up and smooth. She’s not fighting the march of time tooth and nail. 

As far as I’m concerned, she’s a national treasure and has a terrific attitude about aging. (She calls growing out her hair a “power move”.)

Then there’s Jennifer Aniston - an actress I adore, by the way. Her face has yet to sport a single line. I can’t help wondering how long she’ll continue to fill and plump and smooth. Perhaps for as long as the magazines rave about her ageless beauty? 

But we’ve all seen how that turns out. The women who end up looking not young but malformed, their original beauty twisted into masks.

What’s the answer? I don’t know! 

I mean, obviously the answer is this: do whatever you want or need to do to feel good about yourself. But I’m stuck wrestling with this conundrum: I don’t want to tell you not to get Botox, fillers, and any other beauty interventions I haven’t even heard of. 

I just don’t want you to feel you have to do it.

The elephant in this virtual room? The male gaze. Ugh, I’m tired of even thinking about the male gaze. But there it is, informing our decisions. 

I wrote an article about becoming invisible after I turned 50. A lot of men didn’t take it very well. Which is hilarious and fascinating and troublesome. I’ll delve into that in another email; suffice to say that what men think of women continues to drive the conversation, as well as the multi-billion dollar beauty industrial complex.

I’ll leave you with Beyoncé, who does most things to perfection. Here she tells us all the reasons she’s perfect exactly as she is. But tell me she’s not putting a lot of effort into looking this good. 😁

Maybe I’m wrong - maybe there is no problem here. Maybe it’s just cognitive dissonance on my part, and you can think appearance shouldn’t matter while still wanting to look great.

I don’t have the answers, but I’ll continue to ask the questions.