Aging and vanity

Lately I have noticed the lines around my mouth. I was going to write "the lines around my mouth getting deeper", but seriously, I swear they just moved in last spring. It's crazy. I have heard many midwives talk about the extra gray hairs they get~ how this work ages you, wears on your body and just makes your plain tired. I have felt this way this past year. It's like when my Eamon-pregnancy weight came away, the lines around my mouth appeared, and well, here I am.
If I didn't color my hair I might notice a gray hair now and then. But no, lines around my mouth. My eyes look small and tired. Not bright and alert. It makes me sad. And while I have always vowed to myself to do my best to grow old graciously, I didn't think I'd have to start adjusting at 32. In a culture so fixated on image and youth, I have fallen victim to their bullshit cultural voodoo.
Whiter teeth and wrinkle cream? A boob job for these none-so-perky breasts that have nourished two beautiful children? A tummy tuck for my belly that is fairly flat but with saggy skin due to growing and housing a 9#girl and a 10# boy (respectively)?
Ugh. So I thought I would be "proactive" and make myself feel good by scheduling a hair appointment for myself next Tuesday. (And I so don't have the extra to spend on this, but I was feeling selfish.) I got out the hair magazines and poured through, trying to find a short to medium length cut that I liked without looking like a fucking soap opera star *POOF!* Blech. But then I found a nearly shaved head and said to myself AHA!
I always feel like a million bucks when my hair is super-duper short. And you know why? Because when a woman's head is shaved or very nearly so, she doesn't fit into American bullshit cultural voodoo. Especially when said woman is wearing normal clothes (not so punk rock these days), driving a 15 year old Volvo station wagon and carting children around town with birth bags in the back.
I don't know. Perhaps that is drastic. I know I am this huge transitional state right now. Things are changing, or at least, things are no longer as they were. And maybe I look old because I have the haircut of a 5 year old and the face of a 40 year old. Maybe 5 years of heavy smoking sucked lots of collagen from my skin and left me with these two etched lines when I smile and that remain when I have been smiling a lot.
Hmmm. At least they are smile lines, right? I swore as a kid that I would not be one of those old, bitter women who had mouths like puckered assholes. All down-turned and pruney as if they just smelled bad sour cream.

So this is what happens to aging punk rock girls. They get normal, fret about their fading physical assets and then get pissed that they have fallen into a vain, cultural shit trap. Back and forth. I want to whiten my teeth and go on the Isaac Mizrahi show, then do a 180 and want to shave my head. How silly. Made all the worse by my oh-so-blunt husband who said, "Yeah, I've noticed you look older....like it just happened this year...." when I said, "I think I've aged a lot this year." and after he commented I just said, "Wow, thanks a lot."
And he asked, "Was that like a dumb, 'Do I look fat in this?' question?"
"No, not at all. You could've just been a bit gentler."
Whatever. Because I may be looking a bit older, but his belly is a bit fatter. I don't care. I love him just the same. Even if he lacks a bit of tact at times.

I think I will cancel my hair appointment. Unless I really do decide for a super short hair cut (in which case I won't need color). I just might. I don't know where I'm heading with this Dutch Boy hair cut I currently have. My hair grows about as fast as grass in a Michigan February.
And in the mean time I'll try to find some balance on the mainstream/punk rock image spectrum. I'm too tired to be dolled-up and made-up, I'm also too content, busy and lazy to be pissed off feminist chick.