Sunday, January 10, 2010

This title needs a little work.

So I figure if my grandmother could get 102 years out of a body built in the late nineteenth century, it's completely reasonable for me to expect my twentieth century model to last at least 140. That's 140 good years, mind you - all the usual caveats about being able to swallow all my spit and deposit any other physical creations of mine directly into the appropriate plumbed receptacles apply. I'd also really, really like to forgo the fart-as-you-walk thing. I'm willing to exchange clippable toenails for that one.

I not only think it's possible, I think it's likely. No, I am not forgetting all the things I've inhaled, drank, and eaten. I'm looking at the people who taught me how to inhale, drink, and eat all that crap. The people whose beautiful young bodies started breaking down when mine was still growing new and exciting things in feminine places.

Thank you, baby boomers. Thank you for smoking, toking, drinking, and living on soda pop and the fine family of Hostess products. Thank you for taking your youth for granted, and for freaking out when you discovered that you'd decimated it.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is thanks for botox. And tummy tucks. Thank you for laser eye surgery and for advanced dentistry techniques. Thank you for every revolutionary nip and age defying tuck. Thank you for sacrificing any communist principles you may have held in your youth for self serving, scientific research funding capitalism the minute you realized that the arteries in a heart full of love can clog up like a sink fed bacon grease and coffee grounds just as easily as the cold dead pipes in the chest of an industrialist can.

Most of all, thank you for doing it first. Thanks to your legacy of wanton excesses and panicked regrets, all the technologies will be perfected and all the prices will be competitive by the time I need to start booking appointments.

None of this should be taken as an admission to my having or even considering getting work done, mind you. I wilt like a tender little flower at the very suggestion of such stigma. It's all very progressive and open minded to get a tattoo or a piercing, but pump a few CCs of saline into your boob and people start looking at you like great grandma looked at that hussy who had the bold faced temerity to bleach her hair just like those common tramps in the moving pictures.

Why can't people just grow old gracefully? Because people can grow old any damn way they please, and the older they get the less of a damn they give what anybody thinks about it.

It will all be irrelevant soon, thank goodness. When the technology evolves to the point or a practice becomes popular enough that you can't be sure the person you're talking to hasn't had the same work done as the person you're trying to ridicule, that's the point at which a body modification becomes socially acceptable. By some extraordinary coincidence.

This post has been brought to you by the color gray, because it occurred to me the other day that I have no idea what the average age is for people to start to go gray since almost nobody ever does anymore. Nation of bold faced hussies, that's what we are!

Now everybody under the age of 45 go hug a baby boomer, and thank them for giving you the option of dying old and leaving a good looking corpse.

30 comments:

Pseudo said...

I started going grey...hmm... I think it was late 30's, maybe early 40's.

Unknown said...

What a wonderful post! Loved it!

nick said...

Ha, you're right about all those baby boomers who never took enough care of themselves. However, I'm glad to say I've always been studiously responsible healthwise and I'm now 62 and in pretty good shape, unlike some of a similar vintage. I have all my hair and it's not yet grey, I have all my teeth, I'm thin with no beer belly, and I can still get up the tallest mountain in NI.

I must say I'm all in favour of growing old gracefully and I think those who try to freeze time by making plastic surgeons obscenely rich should start loving themselves for what they are and not chasing after artificially perfect media images.

Fire Byrd said...

As a baby boomer all I can do is dribble gratefully!
Actually I am fitter now that ever I was back in the day.
And my hair is grey can't be arsed to colour it anymore since started doing that when I was 16 and it's boring.But get lots of women telling me how good it looks, so maybe trying to stay 'yooful' isn't all it cracks up to be. Unless you've had botox of coursein which case you could sue if cracks appear.
xx

Liz Mays said...

I think we'd go into shock if we all saw each other as nature intended! But, I wish we could!

Tabor said...

What an fun post! (Thanks for stopping by my place as well.) I stopped coloring the day I retired and have actually gotten a number of compliments from friends and relatives about how nice and silver it is! I also can still climb mountains at 63...but that farting thing...sometimes does surprise me.

The Peach Tart said...

Oh I'm fighting it all the way....no plastic surgery yet but thinking about a little here and there.

BLOGitse said...

I'm European. I'd like to know why 'all' American women want to look the same? (hair, boobs, high heels)
Why some bloggers have their avatar where she's with her husband/boyfriend? Isn't a blog personal thing even if her husband/boyfriend reads it?

Do you want to have a break?
Join me, come to the pyramids with me!

http://BLOGitse.blogspot.com

Brian Miller said...

in my 30s and got grey in my beard...wont color it though...i have little illusions of old age...figure it might help my looks. lol.

Maggie said...

Speaking as a baby boomer, You're Welcome! I think.

Enjoyed your post, made me giggle.

Serenityville said...

That's hilarious!! Coming back from your visit to my blog, ty. Wonderful post, I can't wait to read more!

Anonymous said...

I know people who were gray in high school and some who still have their natural color in their 40s.

I'm 33 and have a very few unnoticable grays. Hopefully, they will stay that way for a few more years!

JenJen said...

Can I just say I love this blog??

K.
I LOVE THIS BLOG

me said...

hehehe huggin maself! LOL

Jazz said...

I started going grey at 26 more or less, dyed my hair for years and years and eventually stopped because I think they dye was seeping into my brain and making me stupid. Or maybe that's the perimenopause working.

Now I sport a loverly head of grey hair, but my brain is still stupid

Where the Fur Flies said...

I have a theory that all the alcohol, smoking the Hostess products worked as preservatives for your ancestors.

oh - and I'm 37 with nary a grey hair yet.

Anonymous said...

I love your posts, and this one is no exception! I started seeing grey at the age of 17. My mother has only started showing her grey in the last couple of years - she's nearly seventy.

I think growing old gracefully is god, though I also admit that I really want to get veneers done....

Hayley Egan said...

hahaha yes!

Megan said...

I have more grey hair than my mother does. That really pisses me off sometimes.

gayle said...

You are welcome!!!!

The Blonde Duck said...

That's true. It's a shame how people fear aging so. There's so much personality and real comfort lost...I can't imagine grandma with breast implants and lipo...

linlah said...

Our sacrafice is your gain.

secret agent woman said...

Damn, I'm just on the other side, so I'm going to get hugged in spite of never having tried botox or surgery or any of the other youth savers. Except coloring my hair - that I've done. (First gray hair at 31, but it stayed at just a few until about 40.)

Mike said...

I actually started getting grey hair when I was 18!

You think that being trapped in a VW bug with two chain smoking parents who kept the windows rolled up was a negative?? haha

Lani said...

"the fart-as-you-walk thing... I am dying right now:)
Thanks for stopping by my blog today!

SPEAKING FROM THE CRIB said...

my hairdresser 'says' she has never found grey in my hair and i am 38

that's why i tip her big

dogimo said...

"Why can't people just grow old gracefully? Because people can grow old any damn way they please, and the older they get the less of a damn they give what anybody thinks about it."

- CHOICE observation, plainly and perfectly stated!

Great post. Not sure about the initial supposition - I don't think the human body is advancing at the same level as technological doodads, but as you imply, maybe some of the advances we create can make up for that lack.

People Who Know Me Would Say: said...

GREAT! Wanton Excesses and Panicked Regrets could be the hottest new Country Western song!!!!

I am your 100th follower. Is there confetti or a door prize???

The Blonde Duck said...

Instead of spitting, Cylde preferred to chew on the golf cart. So he's ok.

Nanny Goats In Panties said...

Oh my God, woman. Bravo on this one! Can I say I love you without it getting all weird?


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