…enhancement, augmentation, enrichment, improvement, supplement, enlargement, gain, expansion, addition, betterment, change, reform, revision, mending, correction, remedy, alteration, modification, repair…
Beauty cannot be preserved. Beauty cannot be maintained through bandages, injections or surgeries. At its very essence beauty is defined by character, and character is something that is developed over time. If this is true, some of the most beautiful people in the world have endured time; our great grandparents, our grandparents, and our parents. No wrinkle can ever take away the ageless beauty of someone who has conquered life, who has entangled themselves with both glory and strife. It is one thing to be a lonely peacock in the wild, looking to refine their mating call by enhancing repugnant feathers. It is another to have already lived that call and maim what has withstood the ages. Our wisdoms are no longer wise, flaunting schoolgirl tendencies, destroying the role of the matriarch.
This quest for youthfulness wouldn’t be so lugubrious if the outcome proved triumphant. I promise you, Ponce De Leon wouldn’t accept Rodeo Drive as a substitute for his fountain of youth, yet women still drink from its waters. The drink isn’t a sip either; breast augmentation, rhinoplasty, tummy tuck, “facial reconstruction” (though these women didn’t actually need to be reconstructed), liposuction, vaginoplasty, all for the sake of timeless “beauty.” The curse of Medusa has been extended to any woman who falls helplessly for these defective procedures. I have not seen one woman who has been made to look younger or more beautiful from modernity’s miscalculated beauty formulas. Rather, it has made the people who I have been taught to respect since my early age look like a bunch of clowns. How are our children going to be mentored by hypocrisy?
If you have mothered children (or mothered your children’s children), then you shouldn’t be acting like a dimwitted debutant. Your face looks like plastic. Your skin is stretched so tight around your body it looks like you are in a constant wind tunnel. A breast enhancement on an older woman makes me want to throw up. Your lips look like hemorrhoids of the mouth (seriously, who the hell started the gigantic lip trend because it looks ridiculous?). These women look so fake and disgusting from these cosmetic procedures that no one can even recognize them. The biggest woebegone I have for these women is that there is no way to change them back. They are stuck looking like this for the rest of their lives (Even though that won’t be long).
I hope the disease of insecurity hasn’t spread to the sapient of our society. The newer generations need foundation from our elders and if our elders are dabbling in the same cosmetic malevolence as our youth, the world’s wit will fold. Family seniors should be focusing on preserving traditions, tales, experiences and astute teachings, instead of wrapping themselves in bandages to ward off age and time. Please, before you head to the cosmetic surgeons office one more time, try being unselfish and passing a story or experience to a grandchild or child and do it with age and time on your side. Try becoming a role model in their lives (You know, that thing called parenting) …and not some mommification of what once was a classic beauty.