Having recently sat in the dentist's chair and contemplated my wattle, I can't say that I am as opposed to plastic surgery as I once was and I do understand that, lamentably, in certain careers women (and increasingly men) are forced to the knife and the needle when perhaps they would rather not be.  Still, I am amazed that women (mostly) seem to think that sutures and pin pricks somehow return them to the faces of their youth.  Indeed, these days having unlined, stretched to the far horizon foreheads and non-parentherical mouths are visages of age not faces somehow miraculously made younger.  The three ages of woman have become young, thirty to sixty and, damn, that's kind of creepy on someone old enough to be my grandmother (although I figure one has to be around eighty-four to be techically old enough to be my grandmother).

When my son and I went home to live with my parents, my mother was in her early sixties.  She has always been an attractive woman in that 1950s kind of way - expertly made up and coiffed, attentive to her wardrobe, tall and dark haired - and although she aged well, she aged in the way middle class women of her generation did: with dignity and very little help that couldn't be bought at the drugstore.  One day she remarked to my daddy that she wished she could look better for my son to which he replied that he had been brought up to a large degree by his Aunt (pronounced Ant) Bithey and she was always beautiful to him.  Considering that Aunt Bithey - when I knew her - was what at the time was unfortunately known as an "old maid", weighed about 250 pounds and wore a hairnet and rolled down stockings, I doubt that was much solace to my mother but the thought was - as most of my daddy's thoughts were - sincere and heartfelt. 

Now I don't think a woman has to look like Aunt Bithey at the age of sixty but it does give me the willies when I pass a woman with a bare midriff and near nipple cleavage that reveals chicken like skin over man made tits.  Never having been a beautiful woman, I had two features of which I was quite proud: my breasts and my hands.  For the last five years my tits seem to be seeking ground water and those spots on my hands are in no way freckles.  Do I wish that when I lie down my breasts would lay on my chest instead of on the mattress to each side of my chest?  Do I wish for a laser to de-spot my hands?  Yes and yes, just like I wish my belly would respond to the hundreds of sit-ups I do each week.  Would I cut open my body to have bouncy breasts and flat abs; not on your life.  Lasers?  Well, if I've already tithed, I might give them a go.  Still, I could retool myself from top to bottom (and make a pit stop below the belt for some ultra personal rejuvenation) and I still wouldn't look like I did when I was 23 (my personal watershed year - 117 pounds and hair to my shoulders).

There are some women out there who look amazing and, no doubt, are relying on more than good bone structure.  I still remember sitting in the Newark airport watching the 2006 election returns and telling my male friend that Andrea Mitchell is older than I am; generally a very supportive man, he turned and looked at me and said, "Naaah."  I had to Google her to prove to him that she  - at the time - was 60; but she is an age appropriate wonder and she backs that look up with an incredible resume and a keen intellect.  So many women seem to want to stay young forever not - fate worse than death - age gracefully. 

My point here is not to demean women who choose to inject their faces with poisons or lose the character derived from their genes and by their lives; but rather to point out that when every woman above the age of 30 makes the same choices then that look becomes as identifiable with age as cutting your hair off and lowering your hems did for my mother's generation.  In fact, the other day I correctly identified a woman as younger than the other women with whom she was appearing simply because she had a lined forehead and they did not; now there's a new wrinkle.  Labia like lips on your face and rubbery stretched smooth skin don't compare to skin in the full glow of youth, even if it does have lines.

Women should do what they want when it comes to their looks as they age.  There may come a time when I will have both the desire to submit my wattle to Thermage and the pocket book to pay for it, until that time I will just have to rely on a youthful gait and a questioning mind to keep myself from being pulled over by the age patrol.