Clint Eastwood in a Housecoat
Late one Saturday night last summer, I said the most profane thing that has ever come out of my mouth. To children, no less. The teenagers who live next door and a handful of their friends were standing on the road next to our house, talking and joking. They were just hanging out, but they were being really loud. Before I knew what was happening, I said it:
“Come on, kids, it’s almost 10:00! Keep it down!”
I am officially the old, uncool neighbor who shushes children. I’m only a housecoat away from sitting on the front porch and spraying them with a hose if they walk on my lawn. I’m like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, but with purple hair and without the racism. I’m the curmudgeon next door. I’m Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace. I’m turning into every crotchety stereotype that wants to destroy the joys of youth.
The realization of what I’d just said smacked me in my cantankerous face and I went back inside without bothering to wait for a reply from the kids or to check if they were, in fact, going to keep it down.
“I’m officially uncool,” I told Jon.
“Okay . . .” he said, not sure where to go from there.
“I just yelled at the neighbor kids to keep it down.”
Jon started laughing and agreed with me that yes, I was indeed old and uncool.
This moment of my brain apparently shooting into adulthood without my permission seems ironic to me in light of the fact that my skin decided to go through puberty for the first time just a month shy of my 29th birthday. This is the part of the story when literally no one will feel sorry for me, but just before I entered the last year of my twenties, I got my very first acne breakout. I was extremely lucky to have avoided this during middle school and high school when everyone is an asshole. And honestly, I couldn’t have been in a better position to get my first breakout: I don’t have to impress a romantic partner because I’m already married so Jon’s stuck with me, and my two-year-old isn’t exactly judgmental of skin conditions. If anything, the redder my face is, the more I look like Elmo, so that’s a win for my son. Plus, I work from home, so if I wanted to, I could Miss Havisham this shit and never leave the house.
I have spent so many years expounding the idea that women don’t need to wear makeup to be attractive or confident. If they want to wear makeup, great! If they don’t, that’s great, too. Honestly, it’s your face, do whatever you want with it. I still wholeheartedly believe this, but once my left cheek attempted to spell “help me” in braille, I found I felt far less confident going out in public without makeup than I used to. One day, Jon, our son, and I were on our way to meet a friend at a local bookstore, and I realized with a panic that I hadn’t put any makeup on. My acne was pissed off enough for Jon to actually notice it and recommend I see a dermatologist because it was so unusual for my skin. I felt so self conscious, and it took all of my restraint to keep from demanding Jon turn the car around so I could attempt to hide my blemishes under about a gallon of makeup. My next thought was that I felt vain and foolish for caring so much about my appearance. My currency in life is not my looks--I bring a lot more to the table than purple hair and formerly clear skin. Besides, I can say with complete certainty that the friend we were meeting that day didn’t care at all about what I look like. He’s an old family friend, and for all I know, he didn’t even notice my acne. Or he has a solid sense of social propriety and isn’t going to loudly ask what the fuck is wrong with my skin in the middle of a quiet bookstore cafe. Even so, I found myself turning my face so that the right, unblemished side was more pronounced than the angry left during our meet up. This overwhelming feeling of vanity made me feel like everything I’d been preaching for years was complete bullshit, and I spent most of the outing hating myself instead of actually enjoying a visit with our friend.
I’d never realized before how much I took my clear skin for granted. Before this happened, I never really even washed my face with any kind of regularity outside of the shower, which is probably why my skin broke out in the first place. But I’d never had to--my skin was just naturally clear (I know, I know--no one feels sorry for me). After months of experimentation, I finally honed a skincare regimen for both morning and night that appeases my skin. At times, it makes me feel like my desperate attempts to clear my face are akin to pleading with my toddler to just go to sleep already--both are totally pointless endeavors as both my skin and toddler will ultimately do whatever they feel like doing. My face has mostly cleared up since the initial breakout, but now I’m facing the reality that although I got away with being lazy and entitled for years, that time is now gone. I’m almost thirty, I had a baby accompanied by the delightful cocktail of hormones that come with pregnancy, and my life and my circumstances are just different than they were when I was 20. I mean, I actually went out and bought a night cream for my face with retinol for fuck’s sake. I don’t even care about wrinkles! Or at least, I say I don’t now because I don’t have any. For all I know, my vanity will rear its ugly head at the first sign of crow’s feet, and I’ll end up staring at myself in the mirror, willing myself not to cry because it’ll make my eyes puffy. I’ve already accepted that I have gray hairs, but they showed up when I was 22, so I’ve had a minute to get used to them.
Upon reflection, I find it kind of interesting that I’m much more resistant to a sign of adolescence than I am to a sign of aging. I suppose I could say that it’s because I’d rather move forward instead of backwards, but that sounds like I’m overthinking it. Hair is just hair and I can (and do) dye it all sorts of colors. My hair has been brown, black, blue, red, accidentally orange, blonde, hot pink, and the current purple. I’ve had bad haircuts and good haircuts, and, honestly, none of them really matter because they all grow out. My hair can always be re-dyed. Even if I eventually fry my hair or something happens and I need to shave it all off, I’m not really concerned. Hair is temporary and regenerative. I’m not really a hat person, but, if need be, I could shove it all under a hat or a scarf and call it a day. My skin, however, especially the skin on my face, is always there. I was incredibly fortunate to survive my teenage years without acne, but apparently that’s no longer my lot in life. Learning to embrace a more permanent part of myself is a lot harder than something transitory and easily altered.
When I was a kid, I was really self conscious about a mole I have on the left side of my neck, down towards my collar bone. The mole isn’t big enough to qualify me for a sideshow, but it’s darker than the others I have and it’s slightly raised. I hated it so much as a kid, but over time, I learned to accept it and embrace it as part of my skin. When I was 24 or 25, I went in to see a dermatologist about two other weird moles on my back that I wanted to get checked for skin cancer because I was stupid and never wore sunscreen. The doctor noticed the mole on my neck and asked me about it. I told him it’d looked exactly the same since I was seven years old, so he shrugged and said that if that was the case, it probably wasn’t cancerous.
“Want me to remove it anyway?” he offered.
I didn’t even consider it, I automatically told him no, thank you, it was fine the way it was. It still is, in my opinion. It’s just a part of my skin and what I look like. I realize now that that mole is fine with me because I’ve chosen to embrace it. However, it’s a lot harder for me to embrace a recent change in my skin and the presence of acne, maybe because I haven’t had as long to accept it, or maybe it just boils down to me being more concerned about my appearance than I thought I was. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with caring about how you look; after all, I obviously care enough to dye my hair purple. My problem is that my concern over my looks started interfering in other areas of my life, like when I wanted to ask Jon to turn the car around so I could put on makeup, or how I turned my face away from our friend because I was embarrassed.
The moment I stopped hiding my face came one night while I was putting my son to bed, about a week or so after we saw our friend at the bookstore. I was sitting next to my son’s crib and he’d just stood up, announcing, “Bye bye! All done! Bye bye!” in an effort to avoid bedtime. I was resting my face on my hand, a habit I’d begun to develop in an effort to conceal the breakout on the left side of my face. The fact that this was probably making the breakout worse didn’t escape me, but vanity trumped common sense. My son then turned to me and got a very serious look on his face as he stared at me. He then reached over and gently pushed my hand away from my face. Once I moved it, my whole face exposed, he smiled at me. Logically, I know that my two-year-old probably wasn’t trying to make some grand statement about me, but I felt something change in that moment. Suddenly, my concern shifted from wanting to look a certain way to wanting my skin to be healthy. I cared more about what was underneath rather than what was on the surface. My son loves me regardless of how I look because I’m his mom. I don’t want to raise him to be insecure about his outward appearance if he doesn’t fit some arbitrary beauty ideal; I want to raise him to be a good person. Really, he has started out pretty well, so my main goal at this point is just to not ruin the good that comes naturally to him. Part of me wonders how it is that my son already knows the value of what’s really important at such a young age. The other part of me wonders how I forgot it in the first place.
My skin isn’t perfect, but neither am I. If given the choice, I’d rather embrace the opportunity to spend time with those I love instead of fighting off my own poor self-image. But if I ever falter and succumb to my own vanity again--as I’m apt to do because I’m human--I’ll reassure myself that if my skin ever gets really bad, I can always go buy a mask. That’ll really keep those goddamn neighborhood kids off my lawn.