Jaci Dawn

I saw a news report today that said plastic surgery “facials” have increased with the “selfie” and social media. Apparently, people see what they look like in photos and decide they don’t want to look like that. they stew on it and think on it and contemplate it, and eventually, they make some plastic surgeon richer by deciding they need a nip here and a tuck there.

I want you to know that I don’t believe in that. People get old. It’s a fact of life. Hair gets thinner, hair grows out of moles and nostrils, you end up with a comb-over, you get warts and age spots, and those moles that were little when you were a kid suddenly balloon into something meant for a Hallowe’en costume. If you’re a woman, your boobs sag. If you’re a man, you develop boobs. (I know: never start a sentence with “if”. Get over it. We’re talking about aging un-gracefully here.)

I have always looked more like my father than my mother. I don’t have his gigantic ears (thank the blessed Lord), but when my hair is wet and pulled back, the skeletal structure of my face is very much my father and not my mother, the Beauty Queen.

My mom lost her beauty in her fifties. It was only in her mind that she lost it, but she lost it all the same. She plunged into depression ad her mid-drift expanded and she lost that 34-24-34 figure she had so carefully coaxed into a girdle (yes, my mother, who weighed all of 95#, wore a girdle). (No, I never understood it, either.)

I’m not going to wax poetic. I just want you to know that I am never, ever going to fall for that trap.

This face has aged and changed.

We can’t remain the girl in the middle forever (or the guy on the side with HAIR).

There I am. In my Daddy’s hat.

Here I am with my Hallowe’en Nose Pin.

Dang. Post-partum 1984. I’ll never wear shorts that short again.

At least my top half is hidden.

My mother always saw herself this way.

I’d like to always see myself like this.

Or even this.

But the truth is this. Live with it, folks. This is as real as it gets.

I’ll refrain from posting a pic of the guy with hair as he is now. That really isn’t pretty.

That’s why my brother LOVES me. Because I’m nice to him that way.