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I have always sworn that I will age gracefully, and I think that I am. Sort of.
I admit that I’m not crazy about the marionette lines forming at the corners of my mouth; they tend to give me a very grim expression. I battle those lines – and various others – on a daily basis with moisturizers and wrinkle creams. However, there will be no botox or dermal injections of any sort for this girl. I wouldn’t go back to my early adult years for anything, so why would I want to waste my money trying to look like I’m still in my twenties? The best way that I’ve found to hide the lines is to smile. So expect to see me smile – a lot.
I’m still a natural strawberry blonde, but my hair is starting to grey. I have absolutely no problem with this and don’t plan on coloring my hair – that is way too high maintenance for me. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true – once my hair goes completely grey/white I do plan to streak it with purple. I can’t wait!
At this point I would like to pause and issue a heartfelt neener-neener to my sisters – they swore that I would be completely grey before I was thirty. My hair has never been one color; if you look at it closely the individual strands range in color from white to auburn. I am looking at thirty in the rearview mirror and only now are the white strands struggling for dominance. My sisters? You got it – they both color their hair.
However, there is one part of the aging process that is driving me absolutely nuts – my eyebrows. My brows have always been light-colored, just slightly on the reddish side of blonde so it seems that their going grey wouldn’t be very noticeable. And it may not be, to the rest of the world. To me the white hairs stick out like, well, like white hairs. And I mean stick out in a very literal sense. The white hairs don’t play well with others; they don’t like to lie down and they like to grow the wrong direction – vertical as opposed to horizontal. Enter the tweezers.
I must confess that I have become an almost obsessive eyebrow tweezer. Every day the hunt begins anew and white hairs are ruthlessly plucked. However, as their presence has grown this tendency has resulted in the occasional truly jacked-up brow line. Fortunately, this is where their light coloring is a plus –it’s not too noticeable. Still, it’s a losing battle; the number of white hairs continues to increase. Therefore I am trying a new approach – only tweezing every two to three weeks and letting nature take its course. The only exceptions are for those stray hairs that really need to be plucked. And yes, I know that’s kind of subjective. Going cold turkey has been hard and I’ll admit to a few slip ups, but I’m doing better. I think.
Hmmm. Maybe I should just color my brows purple as well. What do you think?
What part of the aging process bugs you the most? Feel free to vent in the comments!
Sometime in the 40s, eyebrows take on a life of their own. A cruel twist of nature–along with many other unwelcome changes. Sigh.
There are changes that I was expecting and some that I was even looking forward to. Somehow I missed the memo that “old man” eyebrows are not limited to males. o_O
Though luckily men do tend to get it worse. Well, luckily for us anyway…
True. (I’m in charge of trimming my hubby’s brows when I cut his hair.)
You can try a brow gel that can be purchased in a clear or tinted formula. Unfortunately, my eyebrows are becoming extremely sparse as I age.
I may have to look into the brow gel. So far mine haven’t started thinning – at least not naturally, LOL! My tweezers and I are their worst enemy.
Trimming those dastardly eyebrow hairs with scissors work well, and keeps you from rocking the Whoopi Goldberg no-eyebrows look eventually.
My aging concern is wrinkles. My hair can go as grey as it wants*, just don’t let there be a wrinkle on my face. When the first sign of crow’s feet showed up when I was in my early 20s, my reaction was to hold my face as still as possible, and to swear that I was never making a facial expression again. Obviously, that didn’t last long. Moments later, I was walking through the doors at Walmart and buying my first bottle of Olay. I’m obsessive about it.
Your neener-neener to your sisters is fabulous! They earned it. Mine will get a neener-neener in another decade or so, when her obsessive tanning and my obsessive moisturizing results in *her* looking like the older sister.
I resort to trimming with scissors occasionally in addition to plucking, although I’m slowly breaking myself of the over-plucking habit. (I hope.)
Lol! What would we do without our sisters?