June 1, 2012

The politics of skin

About three years ago, I was given a gift certificate to a spa.

First off, I’m not a spa girl. I don’t care for folks putting their hands on my face. It’s a thing.

Secondly, I don’t see the point in spending all that money when I can do it myself, at home, with product I already have.

I do enjoy a good massage, though.

Despite all this, I went anyway.

The certificate was for separate sessions, which I could take all at once, if I wanted. But I chose to just try it out with the first one to decide if I wanted to continue with the others. The first session was for a facial.

It took me most of the session to relax with a stranger touching my face. A few minutes later, I heard, “You know, we can take care of those blemishes with some vitamin C cream.”

What?

What blemishes?

“You mean this one?” I pointed to a miniscule pinkish area above one of my eyes. (I have no idea when it showed up. Took me a couple of days, thinking I had managed to get eyeliner all the way above my eyebrow before I realized it was my skin.)

“It can take care of that one, too. You also have this,” she said as she ran her fingers from the top middle of my forehead along my hair line to my ears. “You have a pregnancy mask.”

A pregnancy mask is a darkening of the skin that happens, well, when you’re pregnant. Not every woman gets it and it darkens to differing degrees, depending on the woman. It has to do with elevated hormone levels and genetics. And it doesn’t affect health; it’s merely cosmetic.

Mine’s very light.

“Um, have you ever been pregnant?” I asked.

“No.”

“I’ll keep it, thanks.”

I’d finally managed to relax, and I left pissed off. I didn’t go back.

No makeup – Photo by the boy

The assumption is that my skin isn’t beautiful. The assumption is that it’s ugly with the natural pigmentation that appears throughout life’s events. The assumption is that I don’t admire my own body for it.

The bodily things I sacrificed to the bringing of a child into this world aren’t pretty: stretch marks, loose skin, pregnancy mask, breasts that aren’t as firm, one hip that’s slightly higher than the other, a bad back. At least according to the skin industry.

How about aging?

I’m getting wrinkles.

By the time I hit my 30s, I had the beginnings of crow’s feet and frown lines. I since developed what I call a wrinkle divet to one side of my mouth, and my neck is starting to, as my sissy puts it, “turtle.” And the only body part that is still where it used to be is my butt. Everything is starting to shift and sag. My skin is loosening.

What does the skin industry have to say about that?

Wrinkle creams and plastic surgery.

There’s beauty in modifying the body, in expressing one’s self by whatever means the individual sees as making themselves more beautiful. They are confident in their expression. They are beautiful in their expression.

I have tattoos and piercings. I have wrinkles, scars and blemishes. These modifications, whether they’re self- or life-induced, are my expression.

Admittedly, the one thing I would do for myself that would involve plastic surgery would be breast reduction. This would be for pragmatism, not vanity. The weight makes my back and shoulders hurt.

Touching on vanity, none of this is to say that I’m not. I look at myself, naked, in a mirror, and I find all kinds of things I don’t like. I’m vain about my eyes, hence the eye makeup. I’m vain about my hair, hence the extra money I put into herbal and organic products. I’m vain about my skin, particularly my face, hence my slight addiction to wipes.

My vanity is simply different than others’ and for different reasons. And beauty comes in all types of expression. All of them beautiful.

Either way, what I find really amusing is that I’m turning 40 this year, and I still get carded. Folks guess my age at around 30.

I have good skin. I inherited it from my mother.

The only makeup I wear is eyeliner, mascara and chap-stick.

It’s my skin.

I’ve had it since before I was born.

My skin bears the marks of my life: I have scars from falling off bikes and out of trees. I can show you the spots where I had the chicken pox when I was a toddler. There’s a scar where my son was born. There are stretch marks where I carried and nursed him. I have a frown line across my forehead for every majorly stressful moment I’ve had as an adult. My eyes are decorated in laugh lines, not crow’s feet.

The older I get, the more I experience life. The more I experience, the more my skin will reflect my joys and sorrows.

Why would I want to cover them up, pretend they don’t exist and those things I’ve experienced never happened?

I’m only lacking — sadly, in my opinion — the gray hair that comes with all that experiential wisdom.

I guess I need to get more life in me.

This is my skin. These, my stories.

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Filed under Health & Beauty

May 25, 2012

On minimizing stuff

For a long time I’ve been an advocate for frugality — shopping at thrift stores, using what’s available in the house, repurposing and so forth.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about minimalism, thinking that it was an extension and overlap of frugality. Then I realized it is and it isn’t.

If I had short, red hair …

Stay with me, here …

I love smaller homes. You know, like cottages and shot-gun shacks or bungalows.  They’re cozy and can be made very inviting and warm with the right paint, plants and decor. The smaller space also helps give me the immediate kick-in-the-butt I need to say to myself, “No. I don’t have anywhere to put that.” Right now, I live in a small, two-bedroom duplex that I love very much.

I also love antiques or any useful, vintage things that can go in the house, like a manual hand-mixer for the kitchen.

Here’s the problem: I keep managing to accrue stuff, not necessarily by spending money, that are either redundant or strictly decorous.

Example: I have a set of depression glass place settings. I have a set of metal place settings. I have a set of stoneware place settings with bowls. I have set of hand-carved wooden salad bowls.

The depression glass I’ve always used for special occasions, as an alternative to owning some kind of china. The stoneware I’ve used every day for the past four years, with nary a chip or crack. The metal plates I’ve gotten out only to serve fajitas. The bowls, I’ve never used.

That is, until recently.

A friend of mine bought his first home this month, and he has nothing so far as the basics for living to put in it. I don’t have a lot of extra money to spend on new place settings, and I really don’t have a lot of redundant things that he’s going to want — but I do have dishes.

So, I gave him my everyday place settings. I still use the depression glass for special occasions, but now, I have the metal plates  — bonus, they don’t break! — and the wooden bowls — finally getting some use out of them — for every day.

You have no idea how much cabinet space that opened up for me. I now have more space in my kitchen than I have stuff.

Let’s hear it for minimizing!

This sort of thing gets me excited, so here’s my proposal to myself: Over the summer, I plan on cleaning out all the closets, the boy’s room and my room. I’ll use this blog as my accountability to myself — what did I get rid of this month? How did I repurpose something that’s in storage? Why didn’t I get rid of certain things?

Everything I own fits in my house, and there’s still room to put more stuff. However, I’d like to maximize space and minimize junk, things that I don’t and will never use, stuff that acts as dust collectors. (How many canvas bags do I really need at once? I have about a dozen.)

Goals for the closets:

  • Have space in them to be able to move things around without hurting myself or someone else.
  • Provide easier access to stuff in the back of the closets.
  • Make sure the things I use most are in the middle front, so I don’t have to hunt for them.

Goals for the boy’s room:

  • Donate all unused toys.
  • Use existing buckets, bins and shelves to organize remaining toys.
  • Make sure the bottom two drawers, that are currently used as toy boxes, actually get used to store clothes.
  • Hang the one framed picture still sitting on the floor and has been there since we moved in two years ago.

Goals for my room:

  • Go through sweaters and outerwear to downsize.
  • Reorganize sewing stuff — really. I haven’t been able to find the little things without going through three storage cases first.
  • Figure out how to rearrange clothing storage to eliminate one piece of furniture. (Aha! Didn’t see that coming, did you?)

Minimum three goals per project.

Four for the boy, ’cause there’s a lot more stuff to go through, and the framed picture still sitting on the floor is actually my bad.

And I’m also using the justification that if I can’t get rid of the extra piece of furniture in my room, the fourth for his counter-balances the number of goals.

Yeah, I know: I’m reaching.

And I realize that a couple of those are duplicates, just worded differently.

Well, it’s a start.

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Filed under Everyday life, Family

May 18, 2012

Other folks’ stuff: A lazy blog post

For lack of any other inspiration at the moment (and some research on a couple of draft posts I haven’t gotten to), I’ve been poking around on the ‘Net to read what other bloggers and writers have to say about writing exercises and prompts and so forth.

Basically, this is a lazy post, where I show you other people’s stuff. (Hey, at least I’m honest!)

These are a couple of my go-to sites when I’m editing. (For the record, I love Purdue’s resources. Be sure to check out that link — there’s a BUNCH of cool stuff on the OWL (Online Writing Lab) site.):

Mostly, I use these links to remind when I’m a bit fuzzy on something or want to double check myself.

When these don’t get it, I hit the books on my shelf. And they have the bruises to prove it.

There are also a couple of phone numbers in my contacts list I’ll call for professional peer courtesy confirmation if I’m still not sure.

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Filed under Professional