Age and appearance: two recent events

[redbird]

A couple of weeks ago, someone (friends-locked) was talking about how she dressed, and why, and said something about expecting that she would "age out of pretty altogether", and that even if she could still dress well then, it wouldn't be as effective, because of the competition from younger, prettier women. My reaction was an odd certainty that I didn't need to worry about that anymore.

I don't know if I was ever pretty in the sense she's talking about, but what I have now is something equally real and less ephemeral, I think. It's not just personality; I know my partners like looking at me.

The almost immediate follow-up to the thought that I didn't need to worry about aging out of my looks was to wonder when and where I got that self-confidence. I'm still not sure, but it's there. Not always, and not about everything, but somewhere along the line I've gotten a lot more comfortable with how I look. Not just in terms of not fretting about it, not wanting to spend a lot of money and time on it, but that I look good.

Last Sunday, I bought cough syrup at a Walgreen's in Cambridge, Mass. The cashier started to ask for my ID, and as I reached for it corrected himself, saying that he only needed my date of birth, which I gave him. I don't know if not selling dextromethorphan to people under 18 is store or state policy, but he clearly was sure that I was old enough, so it didn't actually matter if the answer I gave him was valid. (It was: I can reel off two or three zip codes other than my own without thinking, but asked date of birth and I'll either tell the truth or maybe ask why you want to know. More likely the former.)

Comments

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

I have many mixed feelings about this, both because when I was pretty, I didn't know it, and because I think I shifted quickly from pretty to beatiful/striking, and that's my mature state. This is all hard to verbalize...

...some of the not knowing is because I have always been so much Other (black in primarily white subcultures, short-haired in long-haired circles, dancer/ex-dancer in non-athletic groups) that I found it hard to believe that what I was was pretty in its own right.

Hmmmm.... let me come back to this and noodle around, because, as one of the people (if not the only) who understood the appearance-as-weapon concept, I need to verbalize it more fully, and I don't have time right now.

[redbird]

It's not that I didn't understand the concept of appearance as weapon, it's that the post sparked this other set of thoughts.

I've seldom if ever used my appearance consciously as a weapon: I can't recall doing so, but that doesn't mean I haven't, let alone that nobody had that reaction to what I was doing. I've never used my kitchen knives as weapons either, but I'm aware that they could be, in some other context than my usual one.

There's room, I think, for noodling on the idea of appearance as tool; in this context, "weapon" is a special case of "tool" (as are such things as "heater," "container," and "writing implement"). We shape our tools, but our tool use shapes us.

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

I've seldom if ever used my appearance consciously as a weapon: I can't recall doing so, but that doesn't mean I haven't, let alone that nobody had that reaction to what I was doing. I've never used my kitchen knives as weapons either, but I'm aware that they could be, in some other context than my usual one.

Thank you. This is what I meant by the tool/weapon thing.

Also, you're right about the tool use shaping us.