More Than Skin Deep

Taking the wrinkles as they come.

Photo by Alexandru Tudorache on Unsplash

The past several years have given me ample opportunity to wrestle with the “problem” of wrinkles. With each passing birthday, I see new additions to the lines I noticed the year before. Or sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror and think, “Whoa! Look at all the new wrinkles around my eyes … where did those come from?”

Recently, I went to the gym with my husband on a super sunny spring day. Inside, the gym was brighter than usual. One of the machines I like to use happened to be positioned beside a window in full sunlight. Aside from making me sweat a little more than I normally do, this didn’t seem notable.

Until I looked at my forearms.

Now let me just admit a little secret here. Although I’m approaching my 60’s, when I strength train, I somehow transform into my more youthful self (yes, a wee bit of self-delusion at play here). I feel strong and ready for anything. Or at least ready to carry loaded bags of groceries or shovel snow when the need arises. In other words, I don’t feel my actual age. At all.

But when the sun hit the skin on my forearms, I saw truth magnified in the bright light. My skin is no longer dewy and youthful, instead looking rather crepey and dry. Years of sun, soap, and forgetting to lotion up have taken their toll. As has the mere fact of being several decades old.

This didn’t initially distress me. In fact, I felt rather detached from my skin’s appearance. Sort of like, “Huh! Would you look at that!?” I shifted into philosophical mode. “Not much to be done about it! Might as well just accept it and move on with the reality that my skin is going to look however it looks!”

And I did move on from that eye-opening moment. But a nagging discomfort about the incident kept coming back to my mind later in the day. Despite my surface level bravado about the changes of aging, deep down I felt unsettled, like something was wrong due to those very changes. Something wrong with me.

When I was young, I used to look at my grandmother and think how lovely she was. When Nana would complain about looking old, I would dismiss her remarks, thinking to myself how crazy it was for her to be dissatisfied with her appearance when she was so clearly a beautiful woman. I determined that I would not do that as I got older, that I would instead grow old gracefully, enjoying life’s journey. An easy commitment to make when you’re still in your 30s and 40s.

But as an old song by Bonnie Raitt says, “Those lines are pretty hard to take, when they’re staring back at you.” Those lines are now staring back at me. It’s my turn, and my commitment to graceful aging is being put to the test.

My beautiful grandmother!

What troubles me most is not the wrinkles themselves, but rather some more fundamental questions. Who determines the definition of beauty, and why has our culture tied it so intrinsically to youth?

The voices most loudly proclaiming answers to these questions have hidden agendas. Cosmetic and skincare companies, plastic surgeons, influencers whose livelihood is connected to their audience size … all of them must create a desire for their products or services. They all benefit from feeding the idea that we can look “forever 21.” Or at least “forever 50.” We’re urged to focus our finite energy on fixing our external appearance, as though that will bring us some sort of deep and lasting life satisfaction.

Unfortunately, spending too much precious life energy on the externals is … exhausting. And although I enjoy feeling reasonably put together as occasion warrants, I really don’t want to spend my remaining lifetime on a fruitless quest to look like the me of thirty years ago.

When I think about what makes me admire an older woman, it’s not how “young” she looks but rather her vitality. Physical, emotional, and spiritual health – nurtured from the inside out – lead to a glow that can’t fade as time marches on. A character of deep integrity and love yields a timeless and tangible beauty that cannot be erased by the passing of years.

That’s the kind of “ageless beauty” I want to aspire to. It will never come from a lotion or potion.

I wish I could say all these musings about wrinkles have magically led to complete acceptance of my changing appearance. But as with so many things in life, this will be a be a practice and a process. Going forward, I want to look in the mirror and be kinder to the woman I see, reminding her that her value is in so much more than her outward appearance.

And I will encourage her to move forward in grace, growing in the deeper qualities that make a woman truly beautiful.

Your skin is marked with wrinkle lines of life, put there by laughter and love, tears, and suffering; and it’s beautiful. ~ Lynsay Sands