Night out requires days of planning
Last weekend I went to a wedding. It reminded me of how far I’ve fallen.
First there was the question of the dress. Seeing as I no longer go to stores to try things on, I spent the better part of the fall in a Goldilocks round of ordering and then returning frocks for being too big, too long, too short, too everything.
Finally, I landed on something nice, but that wasn’t the end of it.
Next: dealing with the problem from the neck up. For months I have worn my hair in one long braid, directing it down one side when I wanted to shake things up a bit. But that style wouldn’t do for this evening event, so I washed and dried and ironed — my hair, that is.
Now about this face, the part of my body I have mostly neglected since losing the full-time job where I shared space with people who wore suits and real shoes. That was July 2024, so do the math.
It had been months since I’d worn makeup.
Would I even remember what was supposed to go where? Curling my eyelashes, I accidentally grabbed a wrinkle of eyelid skin – When did that get so loose? (Hours later, that eye would still be watering enough to cause a big mascara smear.) An event like this one called for eyeshadow, a dark shade in the crease and something lighter in the corners, or was it the other way around? Oh, and my right eyebrow had gone distressingly gray; I did my best to color it in.
I’d gotten so tanned and freckly from all my time in the sun that foundation didn’t really cover anything, so I surrendered, put a lipstick in my bag for later, and declared that this was the best it was going to get. I got in my car sweaty and exhausted.
There was a time I did that beauty routine every day. Working in television in the ’80s and ’90s required a certain professional aesthetic. Anchors and reporters now wear baseball caps in the field and sleeveless dresses at the desk — relaxed attire that would have gotten me called into the office. Back then I wore full makeup, a suit jacket and skirt every day. And pantyhose, oh lord, the pantyhose! I’d like to be handed back the hours I spent buying, washing and drying pantyhose.
“How did we have the energy to do all that grooming and still get to work on time and put in a full, productive day?” I asked my friend.
“Even on our days off we were fixing our hair and wearing makeup,” she said. “And for what?”
“Or for whom?” I asked.
When we were in our 20s, 30s and 40s we had more to work with — the baseline was pretty. Add primping to that and we probably approached, if not achieved, beauty. The routine was baked into our career and personal goals. The way I must walk and stretch and lift weights to keep going now? That’s the aging Baby Boomer version of all that beauty work 30 years ago.
At the wedding reception, young women graced the dance floor, each of them perfectly coiffed and made up. They were beautiful. I wondered how much time they spent getting ready for the evening. Certainly less than I spent that day.
I wasn’t going to waste all that effort. I pulled the fellow Boomer out of her chair next to me.
“I have to take this dress and hair and mascara for a spin,” I said.
“Same here,” she said.
And so we danced.