My Arse …

Unless invited to do so you wouldn’t countenance a stranger coming into your house and telling you how to arrange your nik naks, which furniture you must have, which colours to use, insisting that your house is just… not right. Inadequate. Why then do we allow people to tell us what’s “wrong” with our faces. How the body we have is deformed; what we should do with it, how we should look?

Our bodies, our faces, they change … they age.

Every single person all over the world goes through the same right of passage in the same way from the day they are born and yet we in the “developed world” flog ourselves because …. because the world of marketing has decreed that being perfect is a thing that actually exists.

If only you are rich enough, good enough, pretty enough, disciplined enough to attain it; toned, honed, white toothed and tanned. Youthful, glowing with vitality, shiny haired like a thoroughbred foal.

All we need is to buy more stuff and buy into more fairytales to make this happen.

We have been duped into believing that there is a “perfect” and therefore, when we don’t fit that image we conclude that there’s fundamentally something wrong with us.

The problem is that the images we see are not actually real.

Models, though, are freaks of nature and I don’t mean that negatively but literally – their physical appearance is just not what the overwhelming vast majority of people look like. Models simply don’t represent most human beings. Then, just to really create the optimum optical illusion, these photos are lit and staged, artists drafted in for make up and hair and the finished photos; touched up and filtered. They are so far removed from being a true reflection of a real person that they are bordering on holographic.

Ask yourself, why do you expect to have the same face and body as you did 10 years ago? 20 years ago??

It’s

Literally

Insane

To try and ultimately fail to attain this though we self loath, stress, compare and judge; wasting money and precious time over something unattainable.

Look around you. Really look. Look at real people not images. We are all the glorious shapes, colours and sizes under the sun.

Yes, it’s important we look after ourselves to give us the best chance of getting to old age, happy and healthy: doing 4 hours of exercise daily though is not self care. Obsessing over each morsel of food you put in your mouth will not make you a beacon of vigour and having plastic surgery is not actually going to fill up your pot of happiness to the brim.

Life changes all of us, mentally and physically, it shouldn’t be taboo. Wisdom is coveted, to be mature is a compliment but we will park all those wisdoms and buy into the narrative that your face and body has to look like it's been parked in a time machine.

Why would you beat yourself up because your face is lined?

Those lines are your story… IT IS YOUR FACE.

That is how we all age.

No exceptions.

TODAY IS THE YOUNGEST YOU WILL EVER BE AGAIN. DEAL WITH IT.