Lying about age seems so insignificant. Cosmetic presentation is the more common way that people lie. It's not necessarily a bad thing (or a lie), but almost everyone does it.
Interesting issue Jake. Plato and the Puritans were/ are against such 'lies,' because they create a mask. Plato condemned the theatre for the same reason - he'd HATE the cinema and modern games as going further into the Cave rather than going outside it.
I used to feel much the same. I did wear some make up as a younger woman, mainly kohl for the eyes, and coloured eye shadow, and silvedr or gold bride make up from Pakistan.. My feeling was that this was pure fun, equivalent to wearing a pretty colour Tshirt or silk robe. Not an attempt to be something I was not - I was until recent years flamboyant, and t=some say still am.
I admired my mother immensely. She was a stunningly beautiful woman: the level of beauty where people went silent, breath took, if she walked in. She cultivated her grace, went to a hairdresser for tints as she aged, and wore full make up and painted nails.
This seemed understandable - if you were given a work of art you'd try to conserve it.
Where I admired her so greatly was in regularly reviewing a facelift, and each time saying no under huge pressure from our culture to say yes. I loved it that at the funeral director the staff were fascinated by her, and saw her as beautiful at almost 90 and a corpse. Yet that immense beauty caused her as much misery as joy because it defined all her relationships, every one, even mine. In a way I hated beauty culture because of what it did to her.
Then I saw Joan Collins on stage talking about her beauty regime. Her pride in her bodywork was immense. It took long hours of dedicated labour every day like an athlete. Clearly she had had surgery. Suddenly I understood - for her her face and body were like a sculptor's material, wood, stone, jewels. Painfully and savagely she worked it to wrest a beautiful thing from it.
Now I could never do that. I'd loathe it. But I could see her courage in doing it. I understand dedication to my art.
Which leaves me asking where is it sick? where is it just a lie? and where is it art?
I can see that sacrificing nerve lines (like nipples losing sensation in breast surgery) is grotesque.
If someone is so addicted to the body work they cannot exist without it, that is sickmess. Pedrhaps that's Joan Collins, but not my mother because she said no.
Most of all I grieve for all the young women today who have been brainwashed into painting their whole face before going out the door - always. So the skin is clogged, barred to light, and goes grey under the paint, ensuring they buy more slop to try to look acceptable.
The fear underneath that compulsion drives all that money spent, all that time putting it on, patching it through the day, taking it off, is so unhappy. The block to communication is huge - delicate colours in skin, and tiny muscles create shapes that together 'speak.' So the painted face is indeed a mask, blank and boring, compared to a naked, real face.
