Wrinkleproof Moms?
by Maggie Van Ostrand
There are two indisputable indications of uncommon bravery. The first is when the military earn their medals, and the second is when the moms earn their wrinkles.
When society encourages women to seek today’s many forms of physically altering “solutions” to aging, there’s a sub-text: our lives will no longer be written on our faces as God intended.
Botox, the botulinim toxin which paralyzes muscles preventing frown lines and wrinkles, has created a scientific smoothing of the passage of time. The moving finger may well write, but it’s using invisible ink.
We should call Botox what it really is, an eraser for your face.
When we submit our faces for medical “correction,” aren’t we criticizing God’s design? If He wanted us to remain bland looking, why did He give us so many big boulders to lift on the road of life?
Are we erasing all evidence of emotional history, negative and positive? What happens to those wonderful laugh lines when they’re Botoxed? How will anyone know we ever had any fun if our faces are unlined, unexpressive, unlived.
Perhaps we’re not being quite as radical as Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray who surrendered his soul to remain youthful looking, but we’re definitely giving up something almost as precious: our innate ability for nonverbal communication.
God has armed women with very special weapons, making it unnecessary to lay a hand on our children or even raise our voices. He has given us non-violent-but-near-lethal alternatives: looks that kill, glances that wither, and tongues that lash.
There’s a price tag on everything but, if the cost of being unfurrowed is our facial expressions, we’re being overcharged.
In order to be fair and impartial, characteristics for which women are famous, we should also consider the positive side of The Botox Boom, to wit:
The American Medical Association states Botox “may cause difficulty in swallowing.” That should help with weight loss.
Doctors advise patients “not to lean forward or do strenuous activity for four to six hours after a procedure.” This could well be interpreted as meaning you won’t have to pick up after your kids, at least not until your swelling goes down. At last, there will be peace between you and your teenagers because no matter how angry you might feel toward them for shoving pizza boxes under their beds or writing "Keep Out Nosy" in their diaries, they’ll think you don’t really mean it because you’ll look so nonthreatening, so expressionless, so calm.
Frankly, I think God put history on faces as clues for our children.
How else will they know that those lines are from worrying about them, that the furrows between your brows came from reading them to sleep with only a night light for illumination, that the creases across your forehead are from the questioning looks you gave rather than accusing, that the crinkles around your eyes are from laughing over their high school hijinks, that the lines around your mouth are from cheering them on in ballgames.
Can even Botox stifle such facial history?
Time will tell, but it won’t say much.
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