Ain't No Forehead Smooth Enough

Published in The Bigger The Better, The Tighter The Sweater — 2007

“… My husband had done well in the entertainment industry, and we’d recently attended the Emmy Awards.  I had my hair and makeup professionally done and wore a beaded, smoky-gray gown.  He won an Emmy that night, and we danced at the Governor’s Ball.  I felt young and sexy.  

But when I got the pictures back, there was a forty-three-year-old woman wearing my beaded gown.  I saw a woman with clearly emerging jowls and annoying arm fat bulging ever so slightly over the hand-sewn straps.  

Even at my very best, even with help from Hollywood makeup artists and hairstylists, I looked my age.  Of course I did, how could I not?  Why did I keep forgetting what I really looked like?  Why was the image in my head so different from the one the world saw - and when would I catch up with the rest of the world – not in a panic – but in a cool, confident sort of way?  After all, forty-three was not that old, but it was new to me.

I decided to come to terms, really soon, with who I was and what I looked like.  I wanted to accept and (I hated this word) embrace who I was becoming every day.  I couldn’t roll back the clock so I taped pictures of Diane Keaton, Helen Mirren and Judi Dench to my bathroom mirror.  These women were glorious—gorgeous and sexy.  Beside them, I taped Mary Tyler Moore’s hopelessly stretched-out mouth and Lisa Rinna’s bee stung face and lips.  I looked at them every day and decided I’d try to do the Diane Keaton.  I’d find the right clothes somehow, and I’d be groovy and sexy even with my crotch harness.

And I’d start right after my next Botox appointment.”