Masking My Age

 


I had an epiphany today about wearing a mask, when a young man was strangely attentive to me:

The mask hides the biggest tipoff of my middle age - my jowls!

How have I not realized this before today? How have I not seen a Facebook ad using this angle among the hundreds of anti-aging ads in my feed (you click on one lousy ad and the industry descends on you)?

We should have been appealing to people's vanity all along about masking up. Have we not learned anything from Instagram?

Since I hardly go out anymore, I was a little excited to put on makeup before running my errand. I even put on lip color and blush, completely forgetting there was no need since I'd be wearing a mask. 

I won't say the young man was flirting with me. I just felt more seen than usual. Enough so that I noticed it. Women of a certain age know what I mean. I realized this young man was talking to me like I'm a woman, not his mom. What was happening?

I got back in my car and that's when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror with my mask on. Just my eyes and hair showed. The mask hid my jowls and even the dark circles under my eyes. And it hit me that I looked younger with my mask on. 

My next thought was, how did it take me this long to realize this? How many times have I looked in the mirror and pulled the skin of my face back to pull up my jowls and thought, that's all it takes to look 10 years younger? There are lots of things I like about being older, but jowls are not one of them. And now I get to hide them behind a mask while looking normal, responsible and younger? 


I look forward to the day when I can feel comfortable in public not wearing a mask. But until then, I'm going to enjoy the "facelift" it provides. And chuckle at the attention of those who don't realize that the woman under the mask could be their mom.

Another easy, no cost, non-surgical way to reduce the appearance of jowls: Smile! 






 

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