I talked Joe's ear off yesterday about makeup. The basic female condition of makeup and botox and carting around huge suitcases full of clothes and hair dryers and straighteners and creams and scales. I don't like it. I almost fear it. Maybe I do fear it.
Nobody Panic podcast did an episode on how to get a wax. I have never managed my pubic hair apart from trying to maneuver a razor to clean up the crease of my upper leg. I feel unsophisticated in this. But I've been satisfied with my sex life so far. I haven't minded wearing little board shorts as swimsuit bottoms. And I've grilled each man who's seen me in the buff, at knife point, as to whether he thinks it's okay. So far I've gotten the all-clear. (Although, I tend to only hook up with men who are nice, possibly in part because I don't want to hear the true answer to this question.)
Stevie, NP podcast host, says that waxing is painful and expensive and she feels unfeminist for doing it, but if she doesn't get it done she feels dirty. The mental struggle over it has gotten very boring, so she just gets it done. My mental struggles around the point have not been enough to inspire me to action.
I would like to occasionally give myself a new face. That seems like a big benefit of makeup. I could signal to everyone, Oh, fancy Amy is out tonight. Or edgy Amy. Or #girlboss Amy. Or just Amy who's taken this night seriously. But that shit takes time and makeup and experimentation. People figure out their look over the course of years.
Getting older brings the spectre of more extreme procedures: botox, fillers, laser treatments, and whatever they think of next. It feels like penance for the crime of aging. You're doing something morally wrong by rounding into your 40s.
I was telling Joe about my sense, even at a young age, of getting away with something by rejecting the work of trying to be beautiful. It felt, it feels, like breaking the rules. The core of it came to me -- less noble than feminism -- something that you could needle point on a pillow. I like to think of it like the serenity prayer:
Lord, may I experience love and affection throughout my life without having to do anything too expensive or uninteresting to me.
