Another troubling sign of aging is when women stop doing their nails and hair and stop wearing consume jewelry.
Obviously, there are plenty women who never do any of it, and that’s perfectly fine. Everybody has the right to manage their nails as they wish. But for women who were at the pedicurist like clockwork every 6 weeks for 50 years, it’s disturbing when they suddenly stop because “it’s just a waste of money, and why bother anyway.”
I completely agree. As you say, it’s different for women who never primped. But for women who regularly colored their hair and did their makeup and wore pretty things? It’s bizarre to stop altogether. I just don’t get it. Maybe its that for these women, aging is a huge blow? I am close to 50 and I still feel pretty. Truth be told, I still feel young. I don’t know. To each their own, I suppose. But it’s striking to see women I work with look completely different than they did only a couple of years ago. To me, it seems like depression.
LikeLike
As I have gotten older I have found a new interest in manicures and skin care that I have never had before. Maybe I was depressed? 🙂
LikeLike
My mom did this– never used to bother with any of it, but once she got old enough that it was hard to reach her feet and a little peripheral neuropathy set in, so that she actually needed somebody to look at her feet regularly… she took up a regular mani-pedi routine, and you’d think she’d been doing it all her life.
LikeLike
Heh. I never did any of those things, so nobody will notice me stopping.
It’s a little demoralizing that I’ve lost twenty pounds, and suddenly my face looks a bit saggy. The last time I lost a lot of weight, I was 25 and looked fantastic after, so this is not the result I expected!
I’ve had a few people compliment me on it (I’m now four pounds away from a healthy weight), but it leaves me confused about how to respond. Previously, I’ve had to maintain a strict diet-and-exercise regimen to lose weight at all, and I’ve had too many other things to worry about this last year, to do that. I’m always careful with diet because I’m diabetic, but I haven’t changed anything. Still, I’m down ~15 pounds since the start of the year (had come down a bit the previous year, but more gradual), lost a pants size, had to replace most of my clothes, and it’s frankly alarming because I have no idea why I’m losing weight or if it will stabilize. Like, is it some diabetic thing I should be worried about? Time to see an endocrinologist? I’ve heard about this happening to people with certain types of cancer. I don’t feel worse than usual– does that mean it’s OK?
So when people do notice and are like “You’ve lost weight! You look good!” I kind of freeze, get that deer-in-headlights stress thing, and fumble for an appropriate response… “uh, yeah. Thanks?”
I have had one — count her, one — person compliment me on my weight loss. (She hadn’t seen me for quite a while, so the loss of twenty percent of my body mass impressed her more than it would someone who sees me all the time.) I’m painfully aware that even with the weight loss I’m not much to look at — I’ll be 69 next month and no one would accuse me of looking young for my age — but still, I worked very hard to lose those forty pounds, and it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if people gave me a little credit for it. Oh well…
I turned 50 a week ago! I have gained a few (million) pounds since I was in my twenties, but I don’t have any grey hairs, and otherwise I have lots of energy and feel great (knock on wood). I did freak out around the birthday, mostly in the “OMG there’s so much I want to do, will I have the time to do it all before I drop dead?!” I still feel (kinda) pretty, aware that I’m probably delusional and the reality is more gnarly hag than sexy nymph. I’ve never been a person who could sway people with looks and had to rely on smarts and personality to get what I wanted anyway. I stopped getting manicures when I had my first kid 23 years ago, but I still wear a little makeup most days, have no intention of ever cutting my hair, and keep my wardrobe up to date. It ain’t over till it’s over!
LOL You’re pulling my leg, right?
This is in reference to many (most?) people who believe that older women shouldn’t wear their hair long, i.e., that long hair is reserved for young women.
LikeLike
I went 70% grey after I lost my son, so now I dye my hair. And with the amount of hair I’ve got, it’s never under $200.
I always thought that hair turning grey because of grief was a literary metaphor but no, it’s real.
LikeLike
I started coloring my hair when I was forty because I had a new baby and I hated it when people thought I was her grandmother. But when I became a grandmother for real I decided to embrace the gray. My problem is that the grayer my hair gets, the less curl it has. I’ve had naturally curly hair all my life and don’t know what to do with it if it doesn’t curl. Will I have to resort to using a curling iron?
I haven’t cut my hair in more than 12 years. It’s a little past waist-length. Except for a few mutants out there, most of us have a definite terminal hair length, shorter than you might think, beyond which it does not get any longer, even if you never cut it. It’s a function of how fast your hair grows, how long your follicles’ life-cycle is, and how gently you treat your hair (breakage rate), and there’s a lot of natural variation.
A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment