The Mystery of the Missing Lips

So, I looked in the mirror and something was missing...........my lips. Once when I was a little girl some rude child told me I had fat lips and I was crushed. Oddly enough, when I looked in the mirror and my lips were gone, I was crushed again. It's like someone poked a hole in them and they deflated in a slow leak, leaving little wrinkles around them where voluptuosity used to be. Trying to be one of those glass-half-full persons, I have dug deep and found a benefit to having no lips. Lipstick. I have saved money by using less lipstick, since I'm not one to try the futile optical illusion of painted-on lipstick lips.

One of my colleagues has beautiful fat lips and uses lip liner with the lip filled in with lipstick. Since the color in my lips also disappeared, I tried it. When I closed my mouth you could see the liner but none of the lipstick. Until I smiled. The lipsitck was all over my teeth. So there I was was, a wrinkled, lipless woman who appeared to have bleeding gums. Nice try, french fry. I suppose I could invest in some Botox treatments every once in awhile, but that would be like getting a new house. New houses make the old furniture look terrible, so then I would have to have a facelift, liposuction, laser treatments, lapband surgery, my eyes done, permanent makeup, my earlobes shortened, and a new wardrobe.

There is no greater test to having a healthy body image than aging. But I think there are some things that you can control to make up for the things you can't control. Things you can do to make up for the onset of ugly, to make yourself more acceptable in a youth and beauty-crazed society.

A. Focus on clothes. Maybe even stop shopping at Wet Seal and go more for the mature but hip look.
B. Keep your hairstyle updated. When people know what year you graduated from high school by your hairstyle, it's time to change.
C. Listen and laugh. People don't care as much if you are ugly if you are making them feel special.
D. Don't make your grandchildren kiss you. This is a carry-over from gagging after kissing my grandparents.
E. Smell good. I have a ways to go on this one since my grandson calls me his stinky grandma.
F. Look on the bright side of growing older, more money, less work, enjoying adult children and grandchildren, more freedom.
G. Don't purse your lips.

When I looked in the mirror, I also noticed that my unibrow had disappeared. But, at closer look, I noticed that many of those hairs had just relocated to my chin.

Sigh.