Happily Before the After

A couple of weeks ago I had a little thingie removed from one of my lower eyelids by an ophthalmic surgeon.  While I was waiting for the Novocaine to kick in, I looked at the Before and After photos on his walls,  a cosmetic smorgasbord of procedures completely unrelated to eyesight.  I have no idea what was done in those photos–it was all Greek to me and I didn’t see the word Botox anywhere, but whatever was used to smooth out the hollows and wrinkles of the ordinary women in the photos certainly looked natural.  I was intrigued.

Subsequently, I came home and spent some time in front of the lighted magnifying mirror and believe me, it was not to give myself admiring glances.  There is much going on there, very little of it good.  I am a Before photo waiting for my knight with shining laser.

My children would probably say that the vertical lines encircling my mouth stem from all the warning, pursed lip looks I shot them when they were growing up.  It’s punishment time, so tracks of lines now point emphatically toward my thinning lips.  I’ve tried creams, slathering them on thickly in an attempt to fill in the cracks.  Dearly Beloved looked at me recently after one of my treatments and gasped, “What’s wrong with your mouth???” 

“It’s a cream.  I’m trying to get rid of the wrinkles.”

“Thank goodness.  I thought you had rabies.”

Not that he gets a pass in the image department.  The man can grow a walrus tusk overnight.  Unfortunately for him, I don’t usually notice those errant nose hairs to point them out (with all the enthusiasm of a K Mart Blue Light Special) until we’re in the car, where he’s reduced to attempting to yank them out at traffic lights.  Without tweezers, battery or otherwise.

As Jerry Seinfeld used to say, however, “It was NOT A PICK!”   

The magnifying mirror usually reveals any escapees in my own nostrils.  After menopause, women’s eyebrow hairs become bored with their location and migrate south, down into our nostrils.  Next thing you know, they’re hanging out, waving at our chin hairs.  It takes daily pluck to keep the post-menopausal nasal landscape tidy.

If there is one thing I don’t understand, it’s eyebrow physiology.  Mine are so thin that they peter out shortly after my brow arch, yet men’s eyebrows grow thick and wiry. Why?  If they need eyebrows, why don’t we?  Which one is Mother Nature playing a joke on?

My frump slump continued until one day this week when I happened to see Dyan Cannon on the Today Show.  I was aghast!  That was enough to put me off any thought toward a hereAfter.

I’ve since looked online at some of the Before & After photographs of other Hollywood celebrities and have to tell you, they are downright scary.  Either they all go to the same doctor or they all held up the same photo for the doctor to copy.  The similarities are striking, but sad.  Really.

If this is the Hollywood look, it’s time to bring back the floppy hats.

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I’ll tell you the names, you figure out who’s who.

Dyan Cannon, Suzanne Summers, Meg Ryan, Loni Anderson