Upon (Another’s) Reflection

A sideways look at age, Colin McQueen - writer, Getting Older, Humour, My Life, Real life through the kaleidoscope of age 3 Minutes
Come on, everyone looks weird in a selfie don’t they?

I caught a photograph of somebody (I can’t tell you who – it was Courtney Cox) on the internet looking absolutely nothing like herself and I started to wonder if people have mirrors any more.  We’ve all seen (if you haven’t, they’re very easy to find) any number of pictures across the internet of people made unrecognizable by plastic surgery and are left with the question ‘Why?’  Mostly these were very beautiful or handsome people, presumably desperate not to age, who spent many, many thousands of pounds in making themselves look much, much worse than they originally did.  Who ever looked better after repeated surgeries?  OK, you have a crooked nose – so have it straightened, and then STOP.  Most Hollywood stars now look simply weird.  Who convinces them that they will look better with skin stretched like Clingfilm?  Who fails to tell them that in a few years time, the Clingfilm will look like it has been under a hairdryer?  Generally speaking, the stars that age the best are those who just age.

There are many photographs of formerly normal looking people who, following costly cosmetic procedures, look barely human.  If they look better now than they did pre-tuck and fill, I would honestly encourage them to sue their parents.  It is like a gambling addict chasing the losses.  The worse these people look, the more they seek to correct it.  The more they seek to correct it, the worse they look.  Anyone of my age in the UK will remember the scene from the series Spooks when Helen Flynn had her face pushed into a deep fat fryer.  (It was one of those TV moments that had you eating the cushions.)  Imagine paying thousands of pounds to achieve the same results.  How unfriendly must their mirrors be?

I toyed with accompanying my three blogs this week with this recent photograph of me, taken last week at a wedding, for this one reason, simply to prove the veracity of what I have to say: no oil painting, but not quite milk-curdling*.  In the end I used it just today as I felt it unfair to put anyone off three meals in a week.  If you had my face looking back from your mirror, you would not be ecstatic, but you would probably learn to live with it – even if it meant racking up the multiples of ‘seven years bad luck’ as you patrolled the house with a hammer.  There are many things I would be happy to change about me – most prominently my personality, but I don’t think such a procedure exists, except in politics – I wish I had a slimmer, shorter nose, less porcine eyes, teeth that look less like stalactital remains.  My forehead, I fear, has moved beyond the bounds of Botox correction and would, instead, probably require complete replastering.  But would I actually do it?  Would I want to look in the mirror and see somebody who patently isn’t me – even if they did look much better – or would I just start seeing other things that were wrong with my appearance: the bags under my eyes, the scars on my brow, my many many chins and would they bother me even more alongside my otherwise improved visage?

Frankly, I think I’ll just live with what I’ve got.  I feel lucky that I have not had to pay hard cash to end up looking this botched-up.  I’ve had plenty of time to get used to how I look; it doesn’t really bother anybody else and it does help to keep the cats out of the garden.  Besides, if I had any Friends, I’d want them to still be able to recognise me…

*I only just noticed, seconds before publishing, that I had originally typed ‘milf curdling’, which is almost certainly grounds for divorce, if not actually illegal…

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27 thoughts on “Upon (Another’s) Reflection”

  1. Well, it’s about like I expected although going by your descriptions I would have expected a fatter neck and more chins. Not milk-curdling but any other kind of curdling you should probably keep to yourself…

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      1. I couldn’t find the cartoon but there was a Garfield comic where John gets beaten up by Garfield for saying, “Garfield, I won’t say you’re fat, but you have more chins than the Hong Kong telephone directory.”

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      5. They actually look like you’re wearing someone else’s glasses. They sit too far down on your face and in the middle of your cheek. Your eyes are up there and sparkle out, but the glasses are all the way down there and squish the sparkle inwards. I also have opinions on everything else in the universe, but when you put your dial up for inspection and it passed, just not the glasses.

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      6. Well I can live with that. I don’t do photographs so that is cropped out of one that I couldn’t avoid, taken at a wedding last week. As for the specs, ah well, at least I can see through em 😊. PS I think the sparkle may be grit

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      9. Each face is a work of art, that deserves a great frame. So here’s the last insult to the glasses, not you: Obviously a pair of kids sunglasses, just with the lenses poked out (as they seem too narrow for your face and are trying to pull your eyes closer together).

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      14. Work of art? Possibly a Jackson Pollock. My face is a little … asymmetrical following a motorbike accident many years ago and I have a plate in one cheek which means that all my specs are a bit cock eyed. Unfortunately if I have smaller glasses I have to tip my head back to read and passers by get an unwanted view of my similarly… modified conk. All in all a mildly disfigured Billy Bunter is what I’ve got to work with. PS I will remember your picture when I next go to the optician 😉😊😊

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  3. From the inside looking out, I know that content seems to suit my face. Content seems to suit my face muscles and the occasional happy. From the inside out, my face doesn’t suit too much sad or upset. I live on the inside out.
    Did I just write a poem or was I just being a tad philosophical?

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