Loving Our Laugh Lines

It is possible to love our laugh lines. If we could bottle our sense of humor and sell it to other women who are ashamed of how they look we’d be billionaires. Indeed employing a sense of humor is what got me as far as I have in life jumping over the hurdles I faced.

We have to laugh, or we’re not going to survive whatever hell and heartache is in our lives. And on the topic of pretty I would like to give a spoonful of humor to help the medicine go down.

That is: If astrology is to be believed I’ve kept up a youthful appearance because the sign Gemini appears in my horoscope. Whatever. Could that really be why I look 15 years younger than I am–61 today?

The picture above was taken with an iPhone in May. I think an iPhone camera makes everyone look good in photos.

Ordinarily like in the photo above I don’t wear foundation and blush anymore. Just eyeliner or mascara and lipstick. I won’t leave the house without swiping on lipstick.

The author of The Problem with Pretty stated that the average women uses 10 to 12 products per day to get ready to go out into the world. Like deodorant, cleansers, shampoo, and setting spray, etc.

In reality I do nothing to my face except use micellar water to take off the eyeliner. On the advice of Jessica Cruel the editor-in-chief of the online Allure beauty magazine I bought the Glow Recipe ceramide cleanser. Sometimes I use the cleanser. Other times I do not.

You and I will wake up when real life intervenes with our normal routine. Acting as the caregiver for a mother who is 88 will change your perception of the need to go under the knife to scalpel yourself seductive to men.

An 88-year old woman who has wrinkles like rivers and mottled purple skin isn’t going to show up like 70-year old Maye Musk in a magazine advertisement for makeup like Cover Girl or was it Maybelline.

The fact that a double-8s octogenarian is still kicking and alive shows that longevity counts more than using potions and lotions to remain youthful. The Grim Reaper won’t be fooled by our youthful appearance when he comes to get us on our last day.

For three years on my birthday I treated myself to a Sephora makeover. Of course I looked gorgeous after the makeup artist powdered and puffed me. Whatever to this too. Soon after I didn’t have the energy and couldn’t muster the desire to put on a full face of makeup like in the After photo she took.

Reading The Problem with Pretty was enough to get me to shore up my feeling that I don’t care to impress other people with how I look. Not when idiot men in the patriarchy are pulling women’s purse strings in capitalist America to get us to toe the line and eyeliner to conform to their definition of pretty.

Sez who that you and I are nothing unless others like and approve of us?

Feeling ashamed of our bodies or anything else about ourselves and feeling unworthy is all too common. The author exposes that often it’s us women judging each other.

In a coming blog entry I might write about and explore the topic of the intergenerational shame you and I can feel that we inherited from our mothers.

Smile! You want to look real pretty smile! Smiling is an instant face and mood lift. You’ll look better and feel better smiling than spending hundreds or thousands of dollars a cosmetic procedure.

Beauty Unbound

Each of us should use our free will to choose how we want to present ourselves to the world. The author of the Problem with Pretty states point-blank that “Self-care is resistance.”

The guide is written in the right convincing way to expose how the majority of American women internalize shame when others (usually White men in the patriarchy who call the shots) are judging whether you and I are pretty or ugly.

My story: For too long to count I was thinking about my time in college in the 1980s and the weird clothes and garish makeup I wore. Imitating the face of Siouxsie Sioux, the lead singer of the Banshees, I slathered on a smoky eye, dark lipstick, and crimson blush.. Every day.

You could not see my real face back then. Luckily when I turned 35 all traces of that makeup were gone. I simply stopped using the war paint. And maybe using the word war before paint is apt. Not only was I fighting that the notion of traditional beauty was the only standard or should be a standard to begin with:

Too I was hiding under that mask because I was a rebel back then. It was the 1980s–a decade of extremes. Shoulder pads so big a plane could take off from them. Outsized ambition in the era of Wall Street wunderkinds.

My one regret about The Problem with Pretty is the Truth. Powell-Hicks corroborates the way things have been for too long. Using research and her own first-person account. Again I’m always impressed with motivational books that use memoir to tell a story.

Powell-Hicks details how when she attended an HBCU in Alabama the other Black women students thought she was too thin. A size 4 the author wanted to lose weight! It was the firs time she realized that a Black woman could be “thick” and pretty. Having lived in Orange County all her life before then. There she experienced racism based on her looks. A factor in why she internalized beauty shame.

In the coming blog entry I’m going to talk about my first-person experience with beauty unbound. To illustrate that you and I should not waste five minutes caring about pleasing men with how we look.

Yes, the time has come to choose how you and I want to present ourselves to the world. “They” might not like our newfound confidence in our bodies that enables us to resist feeling ashamed.

That’s O.K. I for one wasn’t satisfied with the men on offer in my life who revolved in and out of restaurant doors on the endless first dates that were duds.

Coming up: This blogger’s expose of her own alternative approach to pretty.

Anguished Advice

Before checking the Problem With Pretty out of the library I had independently begun Saying No Thanks to Advice.

Think about this: Why in the early New Year is there a glut of Finding Better Habits special edition magazines targeted to women readers only? Like the Real Simple remedies on offer. I bought their 2026 issue and read it cover-to-cover.

It’s possible to be anguished by advice. This week I’ve been thinking about the fact that women editors are churning out these challenges for other women to live up to.

You don’t see Make Yourself Better Men! special editions in the New Year do you?

As a girl who feels I’ve been a feminist since I was a teenager I’m saying No Thanks to this Advice today. One piece of advice in the Real Simple Finding Better Habits I realized that the majority of us cannot follow–the mandate that whenever you exercise you exercise at the same time of day every time you exercise.

Herein lies the rub that allowed me to rub out feeling terrible. Real Life is Not Real Simple for 90 percent of us. If becoming healthy were as simple as adhering to a strict routine without fail more of us could do it.

In my view there’s No one Right Way to feel think act live dress and love. The idea that you and I can do the right things all the time every day is a myth too.

Let’s face it: when we can’t live up to this special edition Advice we can feel crummy. And give up altogether.

Only real life cannot be lived following an instruction manual created by who-knows-who. And real life happens to all of us: Our mother or father goes into hospice. Our grandfather ends up in a coma.

However our life goes off the rails I say: being adaptable is the best advice anyone can give us. As I would think most of us have full-time jobs or are in college full-time. You and I aren’t going to spend our limited free time on remodeling our psyche or physique to please who-knows-who either.

Maybe when we do exercise it’s NOT going to be at 9:00 a.m. every time we lift the first dumbbell. And maybe when a relative is in hospice we’re going to exercise once a week. And go visit them on the weekend.

One gem of advice along with the other advice I do take is to drink water every day. The Anguished Advice in magazines: Not so fast.

Remember if Real Life were Real Simple none of us would be faced with the choice of having to choose between spending time with an elderly relative or whittling our abs into a washboard.

The choice is clear to me. YOLO.

The Problem with Pretty

The new June book The Problem with Pretty I checked out of the library.

The author has a PhD in Health Psychology with a focus on perception. In the nonfiction guide she rightly asserted that it’s often white men in control in the patriarchy who judge you and me as either pretty or ugly.

It’s far better to engage in self-adoration at our own hands and hearts. Instead of waiting for or wanting others to stamp us as beautiful.

Th real curiosity is that I didn’t ever think about my body except when I weighed 138 pounds and wanted to lose weight. I lost about 20 pounds over the decades. Today I’m OK with the number on the scale.

What interests me more is having the “functional fitness” to carry home a 25-pound tote bag of groceries or a tote bag full of gifts from a local boutique.

The curious reality is that I didn’t think about whether I was pretty–either in my eyes or in other people’s eyes at all when I was younger. It wasn’t until I turned 50 that I looked in the mirror and realized I was photogenic.

Yet even I face with my pretty face ghosting on OKCupid and scammers on Plenty of Fish.

Only being thin and pretty ironically guarantees that sleazy men will come after you. As well when you’re thin and pretty and INTELLIGENT men aren’t interested in you. They want you to open your mouth to kiss not speak.

As it stands, I’m not proud of how I look. It’s an accident of genes at birth. Nothing I fought for and won.

Those of us whose mother is 88 and still alive and kicking. When she has wrinkles like rivers and purple mottled skin. Should not care about our looks but our longevity.

What good is the plastic surgery if we’re not eating well and breaking a sweat? The Grim Reaper when they come looking for us is not going to be fooled by a pretty face into thinking it’s not our time to enter the pearly gates.

The author asserts that women who have a connection to their ethnicity and take pride in their heritage are immune from internalizing the pervasive beauty shame that all too often plagues us.

Buy The Problem with Pretty or check it out of the library. It was published this month in June and has two 5-star reviews on Amazon already.

CBK: A Life in Fashion

I checked the book above out of the library. I wasn’t charmed by the narrative. As I would’ve liked to hear about Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s humanitarian efforts if she engaged in any. I wasn’t enamored of the focus on her beauty actually.

One detail that I took in positively was the authors reference to how CBK was naturally attuned to choosing and wearing clothes that fit her body.

I wrote in here years ago that the motto of a woman’s fifties should be: “There’s nothing I won’t wear, and I’ll try anything once.”

After reading CBK: A Life in Fashion I would like to follow up that assertion with a codicil: We should wear the items we feel good in. And I think it’s true that we’ll feel good in the items that fit and flatter. Without having to tug or tussle with a skirt or other clothing item.

In the Science of Fitness magazine an article referred to how women in order to feel good about our bodies should dress in our favorite clothes that we like to wear and feel good in.

Every wardrobe should have at least 5 of these outfits that are winners if you ask me. An outfit we can choose on those days. A day where we don’t want the attention to be on us. A day where we need extra confidence. And so on.

CBK wore black almost always. She was also drawn to beige. Beige. No kidding.

The rule allegedly stated that an older woman should buy a gray cashmere sweater. No way for this blogger!

I think finding your seasonal colors and wearing those colors that you look good in will brighten your mood not just your face. I happen to be a Winter by the way. My favorite color to wear is hot pink.

Though I say it’s OK to dress in your favorite colors–seasonal color theory be damned! I simply don’t like to dress in neutrals like ivory, beige, camel, gray, brown, and mustard.

Come on really–how many of us really look good in a mustard sweater?

I’d say to check CBK: A Life in Fashion out of the library. It’s an easy, breezy read that should be accepted for what it is: A joyful ode to a woman who cheered up and cheered on the people she worked with at Calvin Klein and interacted with in the designer stores she shopped at.

I say to not discount reading “fluff” as even I’ve stopped reading hard-hitting social science nonfiction. I recommend checking out of the library books on self-help (150s), beauty (646s), business (650s), and design (747s)

Perhaps reading CBK: A Life in Fashion could be a momentary escape on a rainy day.

I’m all for a different kind of entertainment like readings books, listening to music, and making art. Instead of hours-on-end social media scrolling.

Allora. Now Then. Let’s have fun this summer.

Eulogy for an Electronic Device

I’ve said a eulogy for an electronic device. Circa 2002 I bough the first iteration of an iPod that had something like only 500 or 1,000 songs you could play on it. Then with a Christmas gift card I was given I bought what I think was an iPod Nano that I used for 15 years.

The electronic device that is now sitting in a landfill or was recycled somehow for the metal (doubtful I think!) was an HD radio receiver with an iPod dock. I bought it 15 years ago.

The alarm clock on the device could be set to wake me up to an iPod song or even a Playlist of iPod songs plural. For the longest time I set the clock to wake me to “Get the Party Started” by P!nk. Because why couldn’t I be the center of my attention with adoring fans waiting for me to arrive?

Like P!nk sings in the song about everyone who’s already arrived getting the party started for her. We should all listen to this song to get a burst of confidence.

The electronic device broke for good 5 months ago. I couldn’t set the clock ahead for Daylight Savings Time or Eastern Time or whatever the calendar date required the time to be.

Then instead of hearing a song in the morning the device started beeping. Out! Out! went the device for electronic recycling.

And though I’m no fan of how Amazon treats its warehouse employees I admit I buy things from Amazon. Things I can’t get locally or elsewhere.

So I ordered an Echo Show 5 device to keep on my night table. I shout too loudly “Alexa, shut down!” when I should use a quieter voice. As it is I have a loud voice. I’ve been castigated in a restaurant by a nearby diner for talking too loudly.

Only it makes sense that I have a loud voice. My aunt told me that she knew it was me screaming when she heard the loudest baby in the maternity ward. Imagine. I haven’t stopped speaking out loud.

It’s because I lost my voice when I was 22 and had to fight to get things normal people take for granted they can have–it’s because I lost my voice early in life–that I don’t think I should stop speaking out and writing about the truth.

So, I tell Alexa to shut down a little too loudly.

And since I always wake up early without needing an alarm clock to get me up there’s a benefit to the Echo Show 5 device. I can wake up and tell Alexa to play my new favorite song to get me going in the morning.

Though I’ve been a fan of alternative music I cannot resist the allure of Lady Gaga telling me to put my paws up. And so when I wake up I shout: “Alexa, play ‘Born This Way’ by Lady Gaga.”

“Born This Way” is my new favorite anthem. It has replaced “Get the Party Started” to get me going in the morning.

With the advent of new technology and streaming music services (I ordered Sirius XM) Apple no longer manufactures and sells iPods. Which I found out going on the Best Buy website to try to order a replacement HD radio receiver iPod dock. That device I used for the last 15 years is no longer sold either.

Really I should not be shouting at a device. So there you have it. I’m now living in the 21st Century when it comes to how to play and listen to music.

Harper’s Bazaar Freedom Issue 2026

In the summer issue of Harper’s Bazaar with the theme of Freedom editor-in-chief Samira Nasr quotes former president Barack Obama:

“Progress is bumpy. But because of dreamers and innovators and strivers and activists, progress has been this nation’s hallmark.”

Freedom from fear. Freedom from scarcity. Freedom from poverty. Freedom from having a broken brain.

We do not have these freedoms in America today. The one freedom we have courtesy of our founding “fathers” is the right to “the pursuit of happiness.”

Everyone living in America can be happy regardless of our circumstances. You and I don’t have to like the hardship we face. Yet we can be happy even in the throes of pain.

This is not to excuse injustice. However it really was revolutionary that happiness was written into the original American contract for our new country.

Today each of us can and should declare our independence from the hate, fear, judgment, resentment, jealousy, and anger that dot our landscape and how Americans have interacted with each other for too long.

For the 250th birthday of America it’s time to write out a new contract that is a bolder, more equitable Declaration of Independence to abide by.

I hold this truth to be self-evident: That everyone living on earth is equal to each other. I don’t think I’m better than others, and no one’s better than me.

I also believe that Patti Smith got it right decades ago with her song title “People Have the Power.” Like Smith sang we have the force within us to dream.

And I have the dream that the coming 250 years in America–if our civilization on earth is here that long–will be better. That America will really be “America the Beautiful” for everyone living in the U.S.

We cannot forget the past. To guarantee a future where we don’t repeat the past each of us is beholden to create via our own just efforts the change we seek today.

Flying under the radar is the way to effect positive change before anyone can stop us.Because really putting our faith in elected leaders is over. I’m done with political reporting.

Think of flying to the moon for the first time. Then think of your own brave acts that changed your life for the better for the first time.

In one week Americans celebrate Juneteenth, a holiday that was an achievement at long last. Now it’s time to get our hearts and minds centered on what we can do to be on the right side of history in how we act towards each other right now.

I’m hopeful. We have so much to celebrate even with the ongoing setbacks in America at the hands of those in power.

Happy Birthday to everyone living in America!

On Coveting Beautiful Things

The book above I read in five hours. The author mines her personal history as a depressed teen slathering on makeup and collecting seashells to plumb the perils of hoarding beautiful things.

Those marble countertops in the kitchens of the rich homeowners she profiles for a design magazine come with a high cost. The illiterate Latino men who work in the marble factories get ill inhaling the silica dust and can even die from lung disease.

Those dozen red roses appearing on Valentine’s Day every year are cut and harvested with modern slave labor. My Romeo doesn’t have to give me roses.

At the end of the book the author cops to her everlasting infatuation with the cut flowers and her sooty mascara.

What’s a gal or guy or even a person who doesn’t identify as either supposed to do when we’re attracted to glitter born of gloom?

My plan is to plunk down cash on only two new tee shirts for my summer wardrobe. Those velvet-flocked hangers are a curse because they allow you to cram tons of clothes into your closet.

Reading The Ugly History of Beautiful Things I had an intense distaste for the colonizers and their dirty deeds in trading with countries like China and India in the 1700s and 1800s. The author details how explorers along the Silk Road were nefarious in treating the native people. This is the ugly history of consumption.

How to sparkle and shine and buy cut flowers with impunity? It hinges on advocating for worker’s rights first of all. Voting with our wallets.

It comes down to what I wrote about in my health and fitness blog: I promoted there my Little Bites philosophy of not biting off more than you can chew and consuming everything in moderation.

This is borne out by research that the authors of Happy Money cite: The fewer items you have the more you’ll like each one.

Let’s go for a little glam as a special treat and opt out of overconsumption. Our wallets are not bottomless wells. Our joy can be infinite with consideration of the ugly history of beautiful things before we take home everything that attracts us.

I confess that it’s all too easy to experience overwhelm seeing the overstuffed closet. The rod to hell is paved with unused purchases.

My hope is that I can give followers hope: Once you Just Say No to impulse buying that overwhelm should be reduced if not totally end. I know that I saved my sanity when I carefully considered what I wanted to buy. No more heading to the register with whatever catches my eye!

In this regard a new book about the art of dressing that I’m reading now I’ll review soon. We really don’t need 500 items of clothing clogging our closets and dumped in our dresser drawers.

I feel like I’ve been a broken record in writing about this too. Perhaps though it can be a refresher to boost our confidence. Too often too many of us do what we think we’re supposed to do and follow along in doing what’s popular like loading up on fashion loot. To get other people’s approval we often mirror what they’re doing.

So I’d like this blog entry to be a liberating voice of hope that gives followers permission to say: “No way. I can do without that latest gimcrack and still be happy.”

On Not Caring

I received a free copy of the guide above. It’s laugh-out-loud funny in parts of the book.

The We Do Not Care Club has gotten over caring about the inequities of the changes you experience as a woman getting older.

Like the sudden muffin top. Just put on a tee shirt or blouse that covers the side of your waist bulging over your jeans. Wear a cropped top to your heart’s content when you’re home and no one’s around.

Post-40 we have the right to get out of bed at 1:00 a.m., turn on Netflix, and watch old Seinfeld episodes until the rooster crows. The iconic New York City laugh-a-minute sitcom is the cure for whatever ailment has come on.

The ideal issue to not care about is throwing money at conveniences like a housecleaner or a meal delivery service.. If you can afford to spring for these things when you’re 50 I say: Just Do It.

You can join a real We Do Not Care Club in your area or online devoted to a specific hot-mess dilemma.

Perhaps the liberating effect of not caring is the ultimate rebellion against the patriarchal-induced shame women all too often follow lockstep into having.

After reading the guide I was ready to kick ass.

As it’s nobody’s business but yours and mine how we choose to live our lives when we’re in perimenopause, menopause, and beyond.

Perhaps us Generation X girls paved the way for others to rock the world on fire with their confidence.

We Do Not Care. End of Story.

Others should not care that we do not care.

Coming together to laugh and cry over what we’re experiencing surely is the remedy for believing the lies that we’re over the hill and have an expiration date for vitality.

In the end though I do care about having vitality in the face of my body and all its parts veering east west and south.

I hope you will join the sisters in the We Do Not Care Club. Even if you don’t identify as a woman surely you have things not to care about either when you’re getting older.

Harper’s Bazaar Beauty Issue 2026

Harper’s Bazaar is back with their perennial Beauty issue. Beauty in all its vibrant individual forms is not to be discounted as a worthy tonic for the ugly in society like war and ongoing injustice.

What can be defined as a work of beauty is vast. There is beauty in self-acceptance. There is beauty in overcoming a hardship. There is beauty in feeling what we feel.

All around us beauty exists.

There is beauty in going through what we experience in life as our lives are not lived in vain.

There’s no shame in anyone’s game. It’s time to recognize as beautiful what gives each of us joy.

That could be watching a video of a kitten. Or having a caffe latte at 3:00 in the afternoon. Or buying a pair of whimsical socks at a local boutique in our neighborhood

All around us beauty exists. I think everyone should install “I Am Light” the song by India.Arie in their iTunes library or on a device. The vocalist gets at how she is not her physical attributes or any of the markers that can be seen.

India.Arie croons that “I Am Light” and like her we are all light. We are light for each other in the darkness.

There’s beauty in our differentness which is a gift we give each other.

God did not stamp human beings out with a cookie cutter. Right. We are all beautiful.

Life is Beauty Full. Case closed.

I think I’ve written this all before so must sound like a broken record.