Mother Nature – that bitch!

The other day, as I was applying eye make-up, I noticed that each time I dragged the brush across the eye lid, the skin followed the brush, like some stray dog, following you on the street. The skin used to just sit where it sat. With age, gravity has become a Natural Law that makes itself known.

When I was nursing my second child, I was equal parts mortified and fascinated by the fact that I was now able to nurse the kid lying down. On my back! One more kid and I’ll be able to nurse lying down on my back with the kid in the other room.

And what is UP with the hairs? If I didn’t pluck I would have a full goat-T. If I was stranded on a deserted island and discovered years later, I can just imaging the headlines: “Missing Link Found!”. And it would just be me. In need of wax and tweezers.

Today’s beauty ideals are so far from what woman really look like, it is ridiculous. As age takes me farther and farther away from those ideals, I am relieved that I care less and less. I have long stopped following trends in fashion. (Except for the one with the leggings. When there is no air between your inner thighs, fabric is good against the friction. Teflon has a whole uncultivated market there…) I feel like one of the very few woman on the planet who thinks that the so-praised fashion style of Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw is.. well, flat out ugly more often than not. I was so happy once when I read that Sarah Jessica Parker said: “My knees are shot!” She hates the heels. But they are so much a part of the brand she has become, that she only get’s to wear flats when she is incognito. And then again, I can’t escape my cultural inheritance; I do think it can be very sexy with a pair of high heels. I just think that after an evening of looking incredibly sexy in heels the only thing a woman wants to get up is her feet.

The ideals cover the whole body and there is a million products, treatments and surgeries to help us look our best. I recently read that a procedure to have the brown ring around the anus bleached was increasingly popular. It blows my mind. I mean, who looks down there? Who cares? I guess by revealing my mortification, I also reveal what a naïve and innocent Hausfrau from Surburbia I really am.

So with the sagging, the stray and grey hairs, the slowing metabolism and alllll those other things that draw us away from the ideals of beauty, I just want to ask: What kind of girlfriend is Mother Nature? Has she no sister-solidarity? Or is it the ideals we should challenge?