What’s important

So, the me you see recently is not the normal me.

You have seen me giving myself the weight loss drugs, wearing the mouth-bright flashlight, applying the wigs, and considering the eyelashes.

I usually don’t care that much about my appearance. But now that it has declined SO dramatically since I turned sixty, it seems I have found the bottom to how bad I can let myself look.

And it made me wonder why. Why would I shy away from vanity? I think it goes back to my Mom, of course.

Mom

For years while she was in the wheelchair, Mom had to hear discussions over her head on how “she was pretty until she got polio.” This was while she was thirteen to sixteen, always the best age to hear that commentary, especially when it was followed by, “Well she won’t ever get married, of course.”

Mom got herself into college as there was no hope of being a housewife, and then got a degree and got married as a bonus.

That’s Mom. Develop your brain, not your looks.

Stepmom

I remember very few things my stepmother said to me, though we did spend a few months living together.

However, when she spoke to me, she had one topic: my appearance.

• Stand up straight, slouching gives you a pot belly.
• If you have a pot belly you won’t get married. (Spoiler: I took my pot belly and slouched right up the aisle.)
• Don’t just plop down on a chair, smooth your skirt before you sit. You don’t want to be wrinkled. (She did not connect wrinkles to future marital prospects.)

So that was my stepmother. Looks, not brains.

—————

So here I am today, my proudly-slouchy pot-bellied wrinkly form is in decline, and my brain is probably not going to hold up much longer either. I feel like I’m betraying the Mom side for the Stepmother side, but there’s no way around it: I can get fake hair, teeth, and eyelashes, but I can’t get a fake brain.