So I’m on a @Delta flight to Detroit for @Ford’s annual marketing conference and I have this of note to report: Aging has a direct effect on my vanity. Or perhaps the truer statement is that I care more about getting a couple of minutes more sleep than I do about going into the world with makeup applied and hair fixed. I had to leave the house today at 4:45 am to make a 6:00 am flight to LA for a 9 am flight to Detroit. Was I going to get up at 3:45 am so that I would have time to put on makeup? No, I would not. I got up at 4:06 am and went out the door with a bare face.
I thought about how unlikely this would have been for me in the past and wondered what the difference is. It’s not that I care less about my appearance generally as that I’m less invested in how people perceive me. Before I felt I had to present my best self to the world. Before I felt insecure if I wasn’t wearing the “costume”, which included appropriate makeup that I had chosen for that day’s “performance.”
(Yes, I see the way I am–the way we all are–in the world as a series of performances. So shoot me, it’s studying all that French philosophy in grad school that gave me that p.o.v. Actually grad school only put a theoretical perspective on it; I always knew that what I wore was a costume to match the persona I was performing.)
So my sense of self must have grown to the point where–hey! I’ve finally reached the I give a shit stage. And about bloody time too.
Of course I hit the ladies room at LAX and spread my wares out applying all my this’s and that’s before I met up with the friends I’m traveling with. It now occurs to me, irony of ironies, that they were wearing no makeup at all. And, it must be said, they’re younger than I am. Now what’s that about?
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