Revolution by Botox
Loyalty, patience, a giant heart, resilience, forgiveness, optimism, humility, and faith turn charisma and flirty charm into cheap costume jewelry.
If you catch me trying to set you up on a date, please stop me. Every once in a while I get the urge to rescue someone from the single life and it never ends well. The problem, I have concluded, is that I think Hashem makes most people pretty cute. Lest you think I’m bragging about how full of love and generosity of spirit I am, that’s not really it. I was born that way the way some people are born thinking most food tastes kind of yummy. Or the way some people can turn on the radio to just about any station and tap their toes contentedly. A Jackson Pollock splatter painting will excite me for decades on the living room wall. A Manet of a field of lavender quickly becomes wall paper. What can I say?
I recall one painful moment when two victims of my hare-brained matchmaking schemes met one another. They both had a look of panic on their faces that said, “You think that’s the best I can do?” That was it for me. No more.
Early in my life, like many people I hope, I figured out that people blessed with perky noses, silky hair, and well proportioned figures- even if they kind of sparkled with prettiness- could become transformed into something much more real and sometimes much less attractive when they opened their mouths. The Jackson Pollocks of the crowd were the ones who got more interesting over time, the one you wanted to sit across from for a year in Social Studies. When charm and charisma animate ordinary flesh and bones, it’s like magic.
As we age, hopefully we begin to see that even charm and charisma – as delightful as they are – won’t make us great. The charmers may win a few battles, but the people who win the war are the made up of better stuff- the real stuff. The best buddies who have stuck with us, the coach who inspires us, the coworker who challenges us to do better, the neighbor who helps you fix your car for half the price of the mechanic, and the spouse who has stuck with you through serious illness, through miscarriages, through layoffs- they are the real deal. Loyalty, commitment to a solid ethos, patience, a giant heart, resilience, forgiveness, optimism, humility, and faith turn charisma and flirty charm into cheap costume jewelry.
This summer, God willing, I’ll be turning 40. As the date approaches, naturally I’ve been engaging in the requisite comparisons. How do I measure up? Where did I think I would be at this age? Do I look forty? All the regular questions that are difficult to resist are cluttering my brain and competing for my attention over real reflection.
What I find so sad and comical is that the second I let this date become a benchmark, I started freaking out about how I look, of all things. How I look? After 40 years of life, after years and years of attempts at profound reflection, high stakes battles lost, high stakes battles won, amazing travels, hundreds of friendships and acquaintances, move after move, class after class, marriage, child bearing- in no time flat I am obsessing over something so crazily vacuous as how I look compared to an air-brushed picture of a fourteen-year-old in a Chanel makeup advertisement. And she looks so stupid pouting at me saying, “Your hair won’t stick to this lip gloss.” Or the woman in playgroup who has had three kids and whose physique snapped right back like it never happened. I don’t begrudge her this. She clearly did something great in a former life. Mazal tov.
Why is it that I need to look like a Manet at the age of forty? Pollock is out the window in a panic. Because instead of turning to Torah and to Hashem as this auspicious date is approaching, and it really is a big day, a wonderful day, I have let the noisy, chatter-y, high school silliness of ‘Oprah Magazine’, of network TV, of Jenny Craig advertisements, take me down some crazy road way out into the middle of nowhere. I can’t remember where I took the wrong turn, yet here I am in the emptiness of it all. And this lame world is like a stage set for a sitcom. Pick up the phone and there’s nothing there. Take a sip from the empty teacup.
Not that I really need to prove this to you, because you know it’s true, let me just share with you an excerpt from an ‘Oprah Magazine’ article that I impulse purchased in a weak moment. “We’re starting a beauty revolution- say bye-bye to feeling bad about your looks!” That’s on the cover to get you pumped. It’s revolution, baby! Think Che Guevara. Think France in 1789. OK, so hit me Oprah, I’m ready to be liberated. First we need to check out some ads from the folks who are funding the rebels: Cadillac, Botox, Chanel, Tiffany, and credit card companies- who knew? OK, and now we need to hear about the new “Sex and the City” movie bunch, which is really depressing because they aren’t involved in the revolution from the looks of it. How did they get in here?
OK, so here it is. Apparently it’s all about left brain/right brain stuff. There are some brain exercises we can all do that will totally redefine how we see ourselves. All we need to do is draw a picture upside down (I kid you not), blur our vision with ‘soft gazing’ (still not joking), and engage in rhythmic movement (as in tap dancing and the like). This is the stuff of a beauty revolution. I’m ecstatic, really.
Oprah, I’m sorry I’m picking on you so badly. Your magazine is schizophrenic and not even slightly revolutionary. It’s not even remotely confrontational. Not even sassy. I’m sure you have fed more people with your millions than I ever will, so I’m not judging you too harshly. But when I open it after forking over five bucks with tax, this army of jerks who are a part of the problem is let loose in my house and in my head. And they are powerful enough to distract me and lots of other people so badly we forget about our own real victories and dramas. And we even forget about Hashem because we allow ourselves to be put in the center of a high-end retail food fight.
Hashem, when King David was fleeing for his life, and was besieged by armies who didn’t acknowledge he was the real king, he prayed to you with such clarity and such guts. His emuna was so great that he slept soundly knowing that thousands of soldiers were pursuing him. “I am not afraid of the ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me…” Hashem, shield us all from the thousands of voices that besiege us and block out the light. Please smite me upon the cheek if I go for that magazine again.
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