by Christa Forster

As a woman of a certain age, I find myself in social situations with other women, and it’s like everyone’s singing the same song: “The Ballad of the Middle Aged Woman: from Cosmetic Surgery to Constipation.” It’s a long song, too; it can dominate the better part of a three-hour pool party or the bulk of happy hour conversation. Observe any place where middle-aged women huddle, away from the herd, and I promise that they are talking about their brows and their bowels.

“I was telling this woman at a party about my dolls,” said Laura during one of our Houston summer walk-‘n’-talks, “and she was like, ‘if I could have a doll made of my face, I’d never need plastic surgery!'”

Given that I would like to avoid this particular road, after I heard about this exchange, I committed to collaborating with Laura.

Soon, we were driving north on I-45 to 3D Envision in Spring, TX, where Thomas would design and print a smaller-scale copy of my head.

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After seeing the initial rendition of my face, I was shocked. Is that what I look like? It was my red-rimmed, lab-rat eyes that bothered me the most—those and my sagging chin-line. I probably irritated Thomas, the owner of Envision 3D, to near rage with all the back and forth we had regarding my printed head.

“I want a 30-year-old chin,” I emailed him. “Not a 50-year-old chin.”

Laura’s invitation also amplified a question that has been percolating in my brain for years: “is it possible to be content in a world in which we are content?” 

As children, we are often the content of other peoples’ narratives (our parents’, for example). Playing dolls as a child is primarily an act of identity construction. It is one way we begin to try on different identities in our quest to assume control over the narratives in which we are embedded.

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It matters who we play with: I have always wanted someone courageous, open-minded, willing and imaginatively strong enough to co-create interesting and fun stories with me. I seek this in mates as well as friends.

As children, we may not be conscious of the character traits we’re after in our mates; nevertheless, our unconscious mind desperately seeks to recreate our familial patterns so that we can carry on in a world that “feels right” for ourselves.

Making Up My Face

When I was in my early teens, my mom looked in the rear view mirror of our station wagon one day and told me that I always needed to remember to put on some lip gloss; otherwise, I would look like a ghost. 

I am haunted by my face. I assess it in the mirror daily as I get ready to meet other inhabitants of this world. I can control what other people see only to a minimal extent. I wear makeup, or I don’t wear makeup; if I don’t wear any, it’s usually because I’m exhausted.

Looking at the initial image Thomas sent, I can’t help but wonder if my eyes always resemble lab rats’. Not even mascara hides the pink around my eyes? I did not know this before. If I had to pick only one piece of makeup to wear for the rest of my life, it would be hard.

Blush helps balance the shock of my ghost-like complexion, but if I had to choose, I’d probably go with lipstick, though the thinness of my lips requires lip-liner to define them so that the paint doesn’t feather past my mouth’s contours.

As I get older, I fear that I might look like one of those women whom I sometimes see on the street, whose makeup broadcasts that they can no longer see themselves in the mirror. They look like clowns, their blush too heavy, their lipstick smeared, their mascara clumped on eyelashes and streaking down the face. My red hair and fair skin already lend me clownish qualities. I have to be careful with the makeup.

Begging the question: for whom am I wearing makeup?! Do I not have graver concerns than my bloodless lips?

As content, I am flummoxed. 

As content, I am not content.

I’ll never forget seeing my aging chin line through my son’s eyes in 2017. The image startled me. I did not understand what I was seeing—is that what I look like from the side? It seemed almost monstrous to me. 

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In the email chain with Thomas, I held the line regarding my chin. I toyed with the idea of letting it be just dropped enough to reflect my current reality, but I opted to not settle for less than I could visually handle. “I want a 30 year old chin, not a 50 year old one,” I repeated.

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For now, I think I’ve got what I want.