Are you proud of your wrinkles?

Anita Roddick (British founder of Body Shop) posted her picture a good fifteen to twenty years ago in all of her stores showing her face sans make-up and sans photo-retouching. I cannot remember how old I was, but I do know that wrinkles or aging (ageing as the Brits would say) was the last thing on my mind at the time. The image of Ms. Roddick with arrows pointing at her wrinkles with explanation of how she had acquired those particular wrinkles had fascinated me (it made such a strong impression on me that I still am talking about it today). There she was naked for all to see her life drawn on her face. I remember some of the stories behind her wrinkles ranging from: having children, staying up all night stressing over a big launch, meetings regarding her expanding company and caring for the planet’s future. Her message was clear: she wanted younger girls and young women to know that it wasn’t such a bad thing to have wrinkles in the grand scheme of life.

More recently, Jamie Lee Curtis did something similar where she posed without make-up and without any Hollywood touch-up tricks because she felt that women where sold a bunch of lies (and well touched-up photos) every time they flipped through most magazines. She wanted women to know that she has fines lines, deeper wrinkles and her body was not perfect.

I’ve often wondered if we were obsessed with an unattainable image of perfection where pores are almost invisible, wrinkles are foreign and teeth are “Chiclets gum extreme-white”.

Given that in my teens and in my early twenties I ate up Vogue and Bazaar magazines with a voracious appetite would I be able to accept the image that would be reflected back to me in the mirror as the decades rolled by?

I’m still in the process of figuring how I will deal with some of the obvious changes of aging. Most days, I say bring it on because there are so many positive role models out there. So many women (and men) have put their foot down and decided they would control how they age. Luckily today more people are talking about aging well as opposed to stop aging. It’s really up to me to decide how I want to age but there are still days where I’ll pick-up a magazine or watch an entertainment show and wonder when I’m 50 something, will I have Anita’s or Jamie Lee’s strength?

Beauty note: Our model is a 97 year old Aboriginal woman.