{"id":15148,"date":"2022-08-01T20:56:24","date_gmt":"2022-08-02T03:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/?p=15148"},"modified":"2022-08-01T20:56:24","modified_gmt":"2022-08-02T03:56:24","slug":"dont-look-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/dont-look-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Look Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Not long ago, I saw my own thigh in the sunlight though my bathroom window and I screamed. EW! Whose leg is that? I thought. I’m not kidding; that was my actual thought. I guess I expected to see my thigh as it exists in my memory. Not the world’s best thigh, but not a dry crepe-y one with no muscle tone. Today as I walked my dog, wearing cut off jeans because of the awful, muggy heat, I looked down and saw it again. Truly an old thigh, commensurate with my age but no less disappointing and even shocking.<\/p>\n

You think this is stupid and shallow but just wait. You too will experience this cognitive dissonance unless you go blind, in which case you’ll have a while different set of problems. Since I rarely look at my own body in bright sunlight, I had no idea this was happening. A person I know who inspects every inch of her body and face every single day and exfoliates with a stiff vegetable brush will never be taken by surprise.<\/p>\n

But keeping shit from falling apart is just too time consuming. It already takes me forever to get ready for bed, and my beauty routine is practically non-existent. Have\u00a0 you guys seem Kim Kardashian’s new skincare line with nine (or 12?) products that she says are essential to use together in a certain order? Forget the cost. The time spent at your sink would move bedtime to around 4:am. No, Kim, don’t make me!<\/p>\n

So being an old bag leaves you very few choices of how to visualize and project your image to yourself and the world. On one end of the spectrum is Paulina Porizkova, who at 57 never stops bitching about how the male gaze won’t acknowledge her aging appeal while shoving her remarkably well-preserved body in our face nonstop on Instagram.<\/p>\n

Paulina rose to fame at just 18 years old as the first Central European woman to be on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Almost 40 years later, Paulina said she still feels sexy and hated society’s obsession with looking youthful. Despite still feeling confident though, the mother-of-two said younger men haven’t been interested in her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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daring to look her age!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Haha Paulina, you hate the obsession with looking youthful? I guess all the bikini shots are just something you do for fun.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cI am now completely invisible.\u201cI walk into a party, I try to flirt with guys and they will just walk away from me mid-sentence to pursue someone 20 years younger.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

God, just shut up Paulina and fuck off. Eat some sandwiches. If you want to hear more of this faux insecurity, check out her Instagram.<\/p>\n

At the other end is Bridget Fonda, who has evidently rejected all efforts at looking young and attractive. When I first saw a recent picture of her, I didn’t believe it. It could not be her. Even though regular non-celebrities look old and fat when they’re old and fat, Bridget Fonda’s transformation is just startling. She is unrecognizable.<\/p>\n

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then and now<\/p><\/div>\n

I felt sort of betrayed by Bridget. I should have admired her courage to stop pursuing a narrowly defined ideal of female beauty. Maybe she’s trying to live the opposite existence of her aunt Jane, whose face is now a clownish travesty<\/p>\n

Somewhere in between these two extremes is a healthy outlook on aging. I just can’t find it.<\/p>\n

It’s not the male gaze that bothers me. It’s my own gaze in the cruel morning light of my bathroom. I’m going to get some under eye filler and then go around pretending that I’d never<\/em> get any filler, just like J. Lo and everyone else.<\/p>\n

And I’ll stop wearing cut offs or just remember to not look down. Aging is so horrible! I just googled the insulting term “aging gracefully” and found a list of tips<\/a>. I’m not going to follow any of them, because of my PDA<\/a>, but you can if you want to.<\/p>\n

Thoughts, ladies and gays?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not long ago, I saw my own thigh in the sunlight though my bathroom window and I screamed. EW! Whose leg is that? I thought. I’m not kidding; that was my actual thought. I guess I expected to see my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[314,856,1101],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/dont-look.jpg?fit=400%2C533&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7t44M-3Wk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15148"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15148"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15167,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15148\/revisions\/15167"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}