Mirror, Mirror On The Wall


By Tom Poland
February 7, 2014  

Sees It All—Botox, Implants, White Teeth, & Tattooed Eyebrows

Gena, we’ll call her, is in love with herself. She can’t walk past a mirror without glancing at it nor can she pass a window when her reflection stares back. That wonderful image stops her in her tracks. I refer to her as Narcissa.

She works her golden tresses for hours. Were she older she’d fancy herself a Breck girl. Some of you know what I mean. The mirror on the wall is Gena’s drug and it’s where her eyes spend a lot of time. Were she an artist she’d draw her likeness and nothing else. I call this ‘Self Portrait No. 2000.’ Don’t you just love it!

She’s so vain she probably thinks this column is about her. She would have given Narcissus a run for the money. Self-absorbed Narcissus, as we know, was renowned for his good looks. He scorned those who loved him, and that brought him some grief, as it should. The gods, dispensing divine punishment, had Narcissus fall in love with his image in a pool. Mesmerized and unable to part with his beautiful reflection, he wasted away and died.

Vanity like Gena’s, however, dies with great difficulty. Like the Six Million Dollar Man, she can make herself better than she was before. She has new tools at her disposal: botox, implants, whiter teeth, optical illusion eyebrows, and more. The mirror, for her, is a lover.

We all gaze in the mirror … brushing our teeth, combing our hair, washing our face, and for you ladies and a few girly men, putting on makeup. Yes I know Keith Richards loves his mascara, but damn he needs all the help he can get.

Some people hear the siren’s song of eternal youth and heed the call and they rush headlong into excess. God save them.

We live, quite simply, in the Age of Vanity.

Each day we know that we become a bit more worn, a tad older, and we know too that detecting the subtle changes aging brings proves difficult. Like a watched pot that never boils, we cannot detect the day-to-day effects of aging, but pick up a photo taken years ago and the pot boils violently, a cauldron of self-contempt cooks away.

Photographs, those historians of the ravages of time, reveal the effects of sun, gravity, stress, bad habits, and poor genetics. Only then does our blindness to aging’s accretions vanish. We become aware of a deeper wrinkle here, sagging skin there, a drooping chin, eyes not quite as bright as in those legendary days of youth, a throat losing its firmness, sagging breasts, flabby arms, and an expanding nose. How fast a firm green banana turns golden. How fast it darkens with age spots and downgrades into a shrunken, blackened parody ready for a banana bread recipe or more likely the compost pile.

A while back a presentation made the rounds on the Internet, Beautify Women Of My Time. Someone set photos of famously beautiful women in their youth, middle age, and later years to haunting music. Slowly the photos emerge, young, middle age, older: it’s nothing less than a close look at human aging. Looks were part and parcel of these women’s careers. It’s reasonable to assume these women received the very best care available. Few of them seem to have undergone cosmetic surgery though surely some did. And even if they did, the ravages of time nonetheless took their toll on most as it always does.

Remember these women? I do though all are a bit before my time. All were icons of beauty in their day. Ann Margaret, 72, of Bye, Bye Birdie fame, Brigitte Bardot of And God Created Woman, now 79, Doris Day, 91, who sang Sentimental Journey, Annette Funicello, deceased at 71, childhood star of the Mickey Mouse Club.

Some of you will recall Gina Lollobrigida, 86, once named the world’s most beautiful woman, Sophia Loren, 79, film star, Julie Newmar, 80, who was Cat Woman, Kim Novak, 80, of Hitchcock’s Vertigo fame, and Jane Powell, 84, who sang, danced, and acted her way into fame. And there’s Debbie Reynolds, 81, who won a gold record for singing Tammy, Jane Russell, 92, an actress and popular pin-up with servicemen in World War II. And Elke Sommer, 73, Jill St. John, 73, Elizabeth Taylor deceased at 79, Mamie Van Doren 82, Raquell Welch 73, and others renowned for their looks.

Of all the women, the ageless banana in the bunch, the top banana, is Raquel Welch. She has aged the least. She wrote a book about her timeless appearance, Secrets of Timeless Appeal, in which she stressed diet, exercise, yoga, and healthy living as her secrets to beating the clock. St. John looks great too. But Welch and St. John don’t walk ordinary streets alongside us. They were Hollywood stars once upon a time, and just maybe we don’t believe they didn’t have a lot of plastic surgery. We feel better seeing plain, regular folks we know beating Old Man Time. Genetics, no doubt, arms some better than others against the ravages of time. Hope that you’re among them. Hope too that you have a little luck on your side. Don’t smoke and avoid too much sun.

I love women who age gracefully. As for men, well what a boring subject. Who cares how they age. To Hell with them and to Hell with women who abuse the very things designed to make them look younger.

I know a woman who has had made several trips too many to the plastic surgeon. Her face with its taut skin and chiseled nose and collagen-injected lips is not far from being described as grotesque and yet she thinks she’s a 20-year-old Miss America. She has the cat woman syndrome. No, it’s the cougar phenomenon. It’s seeped into her marrow and turned her into a monster. Watch out boys! A cougar’s on the prowl.

I know a woman who had her eyebrows deleted via electrolysis but tattooed back. No more plucking and the ruse goes off pretty good. She has implants too. You can see her coming around the corner a half second before you actually see her face. (So what says a wag. They taste the same!) Wrinkles? Nope. Botox got them. And her teeth? Well they are so white it’s as if she munches on radioactive isotopes. When you put the total package together you get a plastic Barbie doll effect that’s anything but flattering.

To see someone aging gracefully don’t just look at Raquel Welch, look at the stately silver-haired woman next Sunday in church … look at the distinguished octogenarian who takes his daily walk … look in the mirror and judge yourself. Are you aging gracefully?

We all have the chance to live longer and better. As science unravels the secrets of DNA, it may not give us a fountain of youth but it will add years to our lives, a lot of years. How long would you like to live? More to the point, just how long is life worth living?

Dr. Ronald Klatz of the American Academy of Anti-Aging, says, Over half the baby boomers in America are going to see their hundredth birthday and beyond in excellent health. We’re looking at life spans for the baby boomers and the generation after the baby boomers of 120 to 150 years of age. A century and a half? Wow, or is it whoa?

Recall the last 10 years. How clearly you remember things. Imagine being 120 and having to reach back 100 years to recall a person you worked with when you were 20. Seems impossible doesn’t it.

I can only imagine how cosmetic surgeons will reap bonanzas from folks who are 115 and feel the need for a nip and tuck here and there. Doc, make me look young again … like I looked when I was 90. Folks, we are in for some ugly times.

We’ve all seen people who age gracefully just as we see people who make terrible decisions to go too many times to the plastic surgeon. Science will get its way, giving us an even longer chance to age gracefully and giving some, I’m afraid, a chance to be narcissistic and look in the mirror a whole lot longer than the gods gave Narcissus. People like Gena remind us that vanity has the power to render us blind to our own faults. It’s too damn bad that someone close to these cat women doesn’t pull them aside and advise them to let nature run its course.

Above Illustration: All Is Vanity, by C. Allan Gilbert

Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net 
Email Tom about most anything. [email protected]

Tom Poland is the author of seven books and more than 700 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press just released his book on how the blues became the shag, Save The Last Dance For Me. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture.

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