Facing Old Age Head On

 

They say that growing old is not for sissies.  It’s true.  When you are young, you leap out of bed in the morning, fly into the bathroom and toss your full head of hair out of your unlined face, brush your teeth, pull on a tee-shirt and jeans and you are ready to do battle.  These days, you stretch your legs toward the pillow before gingerly stepping out of bed, so that your heels won’t hurt so much.  You do further stretches in the bathroom so that your torso and neck won’t hurt so much.  And then, you look in the mirror and see—well, your hair. 

Here’s the thing you need to understand.  I always had good hair.  Dark brown, thick, wavy tendrils down to my waist from age 12 to early 20s.  People, mostly men, but sometimes women, too, would stop to compliment me (or my hair) as I walked around Sydney, Australia where I grew up.  It seemed like a big deal to them and so it became a very big deal to me.  I felt my hair distracted onlookers from my acned skin, which may not have been as bad as it felt.   Nevertheless, my hair was my shield.  I made sure it covered at least two-thirds of my face.  My hair gave me the confidence to feel ‘attractive’. 

During the late 70s, I stretched my hair on an ironing board, which by then reached my waist, and ironed it straight.  By the late 80s, when I was living in LA, my acting coach (yes, I was a wannabe actress) told me that with my hair I had limited my options and I should consider cutting it. 

He didn’t say that I looked like a 60s Italian hippie, but I did.  It is so clear in the headshots on which I spent hundreds of dollars.  In my mind, I was quite British with a touch of educated Australian, but there was the proof in black and white.  Italian American.  Or Jewish.  No callbacks.

After much anguish, I found a Lebanese hairdresser in North Hollywood who cut it so that it just graced my shoulders. 

I looked even more Italian.

During the late 90s, I had it colored and highlighted to hide the grey.  And all that time, imperceptibly through the 2000’s, it thinned.  I noticed it in photos and was horrified.  My new friends and colleagues, who had no idea what I had lost, said how photogenic I was. Those who saw photos of me in my youth asked who that was.  I tried to comfort myself with the fact that I still had more hair than most women had ever had. 

So, here’s the thing.  I spend a lot of money these days on my hair.  But who am I actually fooling?  Maybe no one.  Maybe everyone.  But it’s amazing the things I have done.  There was the Rogaine for Men I purchased on the advice of my dermatologist.  I paid a fortune for it, took it home and then studied the side effects, which ranged from acne, to facial hair growth, increased hair loss, swelling of the face, blurred vision, dizziness, fast or irregular heartbeat, and rapid weight gain.  Oh my God!  I could die from this product.  Or worse, I could be bald, fat, with a beard and acne.  I quickly threw it away and, to this day, have never used it. 

Meanwhile, my hairdresser, an adventuress into the world of hair, found a product called X-fusion, a magnetized powder that covered the bald spaces on your scalp.  I loved it.  I called it “shake and bake” and used it after every hair wash.  My hairdresser also found a little fake bang piece that I could clip on and cover with my real hair.  No one seemed to know.  But it was hard to clip in and when the real wind blew it separated my fake bangs from my real bangs, so that I ended up walking with my hand over my forehead.  I watched carefully to see if any of my colleagues or friends were staring strangely at my forehead, never sure.  It was not a perfect solution.

Then one day my fearless hairdresser found a new thing.  Real hair.  An attachment.  Easy to put on.  Almost impossible to detect.  Many actors use them, she told me.  It cost mucho bucks but I went ahead and ordered it.  Here’s the thing.  I haven’t told anyone.  Not my husband, friends or colleagues.  Only my hairdresser knows.  And now, you.  My hairdresser colored it to match my already colored hair.

I love it.  It never turns grey.  It makes my hair appear thicker.  It looks real.  Hey, it is real.  Just not mine.  I wonder who the person was who sold it.  I hope she had so much hair that it left her head with barely a ripple.  I understand she is from India.  I fantasized that the money she got represented a year’s worth of salary, giving her time to stabilize her poor finances.  But when I googled it, I see this: 

“ 2006 the Daily Mail reported how in the hills of Tirupati, in India, a Hindu temple has become the second richest religious site in the world- due mostly to its sale of human hair . . .  every day, up to 4,000 women visit the temple to take part in a religious ceremony, called tonsuring, during which they shave off their hair as a sacrifice to the god Vishnu. These women believe that taking part in the ceremony is a sign that they are willing to give up their pride and vanity, and to thank the gods or ask them for health and happiness in the future- but what they don't know is they are also making a lot of money for those who run the temple. After the ceremony all the hair that is collected is combed, sorted into lengths and dyed before being shipped to Western countries to sell as wigs and hair extensions. So while we see our extensions as a great way to give us a beauty boost and make us feel great . . . there is in fact a much bigger human story behind every lock of hair.”

I may not have purchased this if I knew.  I am so, so sorry.  But whoever you are, wherever you are—my great thanks to you.  I pray you made money, but if you didn’t, I hope you are not suffering now.

One of my work colleagues said this to me on the first day I wore it.  This exactly.  “Your hair looks so healthy.  It’s really great.  What did you do?”  Without hesitation, I said: “Well, my hairdresser is trying new things.” “It’s working,” she said.  Since then, many others have commented, “I’m not sure what you’ve done to your hair, but I like it.”  And I just laugh because I have somewhat tricked old age. 

But I dream about this poor woman who visited the temple one day.  Perhaps she went to that temple to thank the gods for all of the small fortunes that came to her family.  Her first born son has a job now in an American call center in Delhi. Her husband is still working as a cook in a restaurant.  And her 2 daughters are healthy.  They are poor but most days can afford 3 meals. 

But then I look up life expectancy in India today.  It is 27 years old.  My poor donor may already be dead.

It has happened:  I have joined the vast society of women with too much time and money on their hands.  But by now, you realize, I am trapped.  I can never not wear this “extension” because the contrast would be so noticeable.  I understand now why my very beautiful cousin began extensive surgery.  She was probably complimented all of her life on how beautiful she was, and when she started to get older and noticed the wrinkles in her 10x magnifying mirror, she didn’t want to let her fans down.  She only saw what she had lost.  Everyone else saw what she still had.  And so she went to the plastic surgeon and had just one thing done, and then another and another and another and another.  It ended up destroying her own natural beauty. 

To date, I have not had one single thing on my face or neck altered.  Only my hair.  Even though I notice the little lines from my nose to my lips, and crow’s feet around my eyes, and the worry lines on my forehead and the downfall of my neck.  They scare me in the 10X mirror, but when I look in regular mirrors, everything is a blessed blur.  Plus, I hate pain and I don’t have the income to afford extensive anything.  I admire how European women age with grace.  But how about those poor Hindu women?  Who is looking out for them?

It seems to me, and probably many other women, that others seem so happy when you look good.  They say things like “wow, you never age” even though you have documented every wrinkle in your 10X mirror.  You think, “if I look old, they won’t like me anymore.  They won’t want to look at me.  They won’t want to spend time with me.”  But how stupid is that?  But you, like everyone else, revel in beauty.  In art, in nature, and in other people’s visage.  Is that shallow?  Or is that natural?  I get that people’s inner beauty is transformative.  And that once you get to know someone, they become beautiful because of their soul.  And no one can buy an “attachment” to make their soul better.  Although, you can work on being more loving, less harsh towards others, forgiving, living in the moment, being kind to every living thing, handing more money out to the homeless, or better still, supporting the legislation that will build affordable housing in the inner cities . . . and so much more.

But back to me and my hair.  So here it is.  Out there now.  I am wearing a fake/real attachment.  It makes me feel good.  And I believe, it makes everyone else feel good.  So where’s the harm?  Well, it’s fake.  But isn’t my make-up fake?  My skin is not that even.  My eyes are not that dark.  My lips are not that moist.  Fake.  Isn’t that what art is all about?  Replicating nature.  Imitating life.  When I looked at the still life of some of the greats, the best thing was how close to the real beauty they came to portray.  Like Vermeer’s “Tulips in a Vase” at Norton Simon Museum, or the many paintings of Cezanne.  Were they frustrated with how far from the actual beauty their paintings came?   

You can take yourself too seriously as a work of art like my cousin did.  At the gym the other day, I watched a program, while pedaling on the bike, about plastic surgery gone wrong.  These women, who agreed to be on camera, went overboard with catastrophic results.  One of them said, “I just wanted to be perfect.”  And, as I was struggling to make ten minutes on the bike (which I am proud to say ended up being 20 minutes because I was sucked into the woman with the boob job gone awry with no problem lifting her tee-shirt to show us) I asked myself, “What is perfect?  Who defines it?  Is there even such a thing?” 

 

Sometimes I think that women who got a lot of attention in their younger years are the ones who have the most problems growing older.  Those others who suffered in their younger years roll gracefully into older age.  Maybe that is the Higher Power’s way of evening out the playing field.  And that, my friends, is a good thing.