Face cream; $49.95. Knowing who you are--

PRICELESS

My yahoo email account regularly flashes these ads for wrinkle/fat/crows feet/lip line remover . They're pretty intense. A bar moves across a womans face/thighs/abdomen and replaces whatever "ugliness" aging has brought to her body with smooth, clear, vibrant, desirable, youthful skin.

I see it. I hate it. I know in the pit of my stomach that these images only make me hate my body and hate myself. I know that you can't sell stuff to contented people, that's why they have to give us a constant barrage of these images.

I know if I want to start a revolution I should stop hating my body.
Right?


Yet, paradoxically, yesterday I stood in the pharmacy before a wall of beauty cosmetics. Pricing them out. Reading the labels. Visualizing smooth, clear, vibrant youthful skin on my face, neck, eyes, thighs and belly.

Just as I realized what I was doing, a woman slid in the aisle next to me. She was at least 70. A snow bird, judging by her pink running suit and husband in tow, just returned to our lovely Michigan earth from the Southern Sun.

She stood looking at the same wall of repair -our-skin-products I was scanning. I'm 5' 8'' and the top of her head barely reached my shoulders, yet I felt dwarfed next to her. Her face was deeply riveted--vertical lines extending from her lips, crows feet from her eyes. I could have reached out an placed my finger in their depth.

"Ya know what?" I said to her. "I think I'm not gonna buy any of this crap."

She looked at me briefly, stunned. People don't talk to each other in CVS.

"I'm 42. So What? I think I"m going to embrace my wrinkles."

She laughed and shook her head a bit, it was subtle. "Oh yes, but look at mine."

"Oh who cares about wrinkles," I snorted. "I bet you know who you are."

Now she locked her blues eyes onto mine. "Oh you betcha," she laughed with raised, painted eyebrows.

I stood there for a bit longer, wondering what to say. Wishing I could ask her about her childhood. About marriage in the 1940's, 50's or 60's. About raising children, losing children. Hell she may have even lost a husband and picked up the new one standing by in his cream shorts as an afterthought.

But I didn't say anymore. Instead, I put back the box and walked away. Bought some dental floss and went home to my children.

I don't have fifty bucks for wrinkle cream. Besides--it doesn't work.