Look at the Old Girl Now

It’s hard to believe I entered my seventh decade nearly a year ago. Friends warned me that 60 brings unwanted changes to the body. On my natal date last July, I fulfilled a bucket list item, seeing a performance of “Hello Dolly” on Broadway. As Bette Midler belted out “Before the Parade Passes By,” I sensed my own parade passing by.

Was it my imagination? Did my rear end widen in the narrow red velvet seat of the Schubert Theatre? Did the flesh south of my hairline head for the equator just as the orchestra struck up the score? Was I aging quickly in the presence of the then 70-year-old Divine Miss M, still divinely singing and dancing? Oh, the humanity.

My second act, like that of Dolly Levi’s, began that day and I needed new rules for an old body.

Rule # 1:
Do Something About Your Raccoon in Headlights Look

So pale I make BeBe Neuwirth look like George Hamilton, I’ve always had thin skin. Even as an infant, I had dark circles under my eyes. We are bombarded with multiple new products, potions, creams, tiny pots with tinier brushes, and (I am not making this up), and a hose to spray the product on your face.
The product I found must be perfect for me because it claims it won’t crack, flake or peel on brick and stucco. It’s called Rhino Shield. I recognize that most people use it on buildings, but I have high hopes.

Rhino Shield’s website offers both residential and commercial products, but this job begged for their industrial division. Application to the delicate area below the eyes is tedious, but it’s guaranteed for generations. Doesn’t this sound like what I need – rust inhibitors and encapsulators, high gloss polyurethane, water-based epoxies, and ceramic epoxies?

Rule # 2
Connect the Dots of Your Age Spots

Can I find something for my cheeks and the other age-spotted areas of my body?

We didn’t know much about skin when I spent childhood summers at Lake Wawasee. Unlike friends who used baby oil and iodine for tanning their skin, I used Coppertone. The 1960s suntan lotion wasn’t hearty enough to stop age spots. Age spots started appearing on each cheek shortly after my birthday, spots k in the shapes of the Federated States of Micronesia.

By the time I lived in Florida in the 1980s, we knew that sun damage caused skin cancer and all kinds of other problems. I always went to Clearwater Beach in my full-length master’s degree graduation robe, but the damage had been done and would rear its head 30 years later.

Gold Bond offers affordable products for both men and women, including those for face, foot, hands, head and neck, body. Products may improve dry and bumpy skin, psoriasis, eczema, and firm the chest. Do you want softening with shea butter or COQ10, fragrance-free or with aloe?

I’m puzzled because I need all these products, but if used after each shower, I will be encapsulated like Boris Karloff’s Imhotep in 1932 classic “The Mummy.”

Rule # 3
Update your foundation garments for your actual foundation

At 60, the sands of time have not only shifted but congealed, mostly around my middle. Like Jane Russell in the old Playtex commercials, I’m a full-figured gal. Wasn’t it just last year I wore adorable pink polka-dot hipster French cut panties? The difficult and hard-to-accept reality is I am moving full throttle to the underwear of the truly desperate, the granny panty.

Go to the lingerie area of any department store where there are rows and rows of petite thongs and sexy panties in every color. On a small endcap near the back, there’s a tiny display called “Women’s.” That’s where all the white, high-waisted granny panties live. To go to Kohl’s for new undies, I wore a Groucho mask as a disguise.

The panties are only half of the full-figured equation. I am as concerned about the physics of support as the Roebling Brothers were about the structure of the Brooklyn Bridge. The Roebling brothers knew you need big American steel to hold up big American structures. I am gifted with a big American structure. The girls require majestic steel cables, just like the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s an act of God and science, indisputable law of physics.

Rule # 4
Cool Sculpting Can’t Fix Stupid

Skin and flesh and every other molecule of me rot in real time. Face it, we’re all dying every day. Thankfully, we have so much we can do to extend our lives. My final rule is simply don’t be stupid.

Eat well. Exercise. Keep your mind active. Laugh a whole lot and then laugh more.

My stupidity resulted in a recent self-inflicted wound. I dropped two frozen ribeye steaks on the big toe of my left foot. At first, the toenail looked like the top of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” Now the toenail is dead and gradually falling off. So long, dearie.

We all do the best we can. I’ve embraced my fate. All one has to do is consider the alternative, and take a page from Dolly Levi herself, “Before the parade passes by before it goes on, and only I’m left. Before the parade passes by I’ve gotta get in step while there’s still time left.”