#BEDM Day 7

Today's topic is Gadgets but that's not a topic on which I have anything to say so, again, I'm going off piste!

Today on the bus out of Oxford there was an old lady & her daughter/carer.  She was of Oriental appearance & must have been in her 80s.  She had a lovely, soft, kind face which had her whole life etched upon it.  It spoke of her long life, her family & friends, the fun times & the bad times, work, happiness, sadness & everything in between.  When she chatted with the woman who was with her, her whole face lit up & she became really animated. When they finished their chat her face softened & she gazed out of the window, watching the world pass by.  She seemed so serene as she watched the passing houses.  I wondered what she was thinking about as she looked at the passing scene; I wondered if she was thinking about another landscape, perhaps from her past, in another country.

What struck me most of all was her beauty.  She wasn't beautiful in the youthful, unblemished way we're used to these days.  It was a natural beauty, she looked the way an woman in her 80s should look.  She was totally natural, no embellishments, nothing fake.  It got me thinking about how fake some people look, especially 'women of a certain age' as they desperately try to hang on to their passing youth.

Many years ago we had a holiday in Florida.  There were many things that I remember from that holiday but I'll always remember the older women who had undergone some form of cosmetic surgery.  Their faces were taut & unlined, barely able to move as they spoke or smiled, tanned until they looked as if they were made of old, cured leather.  The tightness of their faces contrasted with the skin below their necks which had not been pulled & tucked.  It looked as if two women had been joined together by some mad scientist a la Frankenstein - old woman's wrinkled body, young woman's smooth face & neck.  As they insisted on walking around in string bikinis there was no way of not noticing!  What did they see when they looked in the mirror?  

Apart from the fact that I'm a coward, I can't conceive of a single reason  I would undergo cosmetic surgery.  Never having been a beauty during my youth I don't know how it feels to lose beauty, so maybe I'd feel differently if I was always reminded of the looks I no longer have.  I have the face that I deserve, the face that my life has given me & that's OK by me.