This Old Thing, Fuckface

Hey Fuckface,

Faces. I have one. You have one. All fuckfaces have one. It’s the face part!

Last week I was scrolling TikTok and a face appeared. It was attached to a body. This person was standing in a field at the edge of a forested area. They were about my age. Their face had creases and crinkles when they laughed, and their smile was infectious and charming. I said out loud to myself as they joked and chatted (it was a funny video), “I love this face!” I put my phone down. I sunk into the throw pillows on my couch and I audibly sighed. I felt strangely calm.

A few days later I went to my community garden to help chop and clean up our compost. All the women who showed up to volunteer that day (no men showed up) were around my age or many years older. Their faces too, were not 100% smooth, their lips were not plumped. I watched them as we were being splashed in the light rain that came down as we shoveled dirt under a large maple tree. Afterwards, I was walking around running errands in my neighbourhood, and I couldn’t stop looking at faces. My neighbourhood is the most densely populated area in the city, and still one of the most affordable in Vancouver proper and has a lower average income (go look at the stats!!). These are people like me in enough ways for it to matter. And like me, the faces were wrinkly or blotchy or blemished or saggy. I really could not look away from all the people in my neighbourhood.

I went home, after looking at all these faces, paying close attention to them, and that day I took a nap. When I woke up all I could think was that those faces were pleasing and soothing to me. I liked being around them.

Seeing a face allowed to age relaxed me. After I thought about this, I was like great, time for another of your fucking hot takes that will make people hate you!

The face of a Fuckface.

I believe in body autonomy. Which means I think people can do as they please with their bodies. Including aging as they’d like to. Though, some people have more choice in how much they can afford to spend on their bodies as they age.

I one million percent support trans and gender non-conforming people getting whatever procedures they need and want (and that it shouldn’t be unaffordable, maybe make it free, dorks) but the “anti-aging” world of cis people bums me out, on a personal level.

The poor will look old like our ancestors did. The wealthy will be able to afford a different type of aging. This obviously is already happening! The poor age and look old school old, and the rich don’t. Lips filled with injections aren’t youthful, but a different aesthetic choice. Botox is not youthful, but a paid treatment that makes a person look different. None of these stave off aging or even the signs of aging. They are choices to look different. They are choices to make people look different from poor people aging faces. These are paid aesthetic choices. That’s all.

A lot of time and money is spent on making rich people look aesthetically different from poor people. The kind of money we would never see in other areas of health care. Areas that desperately need funding and time and research. But sure, Mama Kris has a brand new face, I guess. It’s a business. We are watching those with means not only NOT have to deal with regular daily struggles, like the affordability of food and shelter and daycare and transportation, but they’re using their scads of excess money to pay for new faces and bodies beyond the scope of average people. I can’t actually fathom the cost of all of this, the amount of resources used.

Maybe one day the faces of tweens in poverty will literally be transplanted onto the flesh of the richest eighty year olds. They will sacrifice their supple cheeks and collagen and elastin for their own financial future, to pay for their families’ food and shelter. They’ll share their rations, sitting in their one-room, multi-generational apartments, covered in bloody bandages, gathered with the family to watch the propaganda news station on their shared smartphone. What a future!

I’ve lost interest in the skin care industry. I can’t watch twenty-year-old influencers on TikTok tell me which skin care and “anti-aging” products to use. They’ll never have the hard won sun damage I’ve got! This is the skin of a sun-worshipping champion. They’ve never worked in a warehouse or an industrial plant or hauled speaker systems across town in a weird van filled with weed smoke. I mean, probably not! I don’t know them. What I’m saying is that our skin has seen different environments.

I wash my face, I use moisturizer, I’ll exfoliate, but I’ve pretty much stopped doing most other things and buying other products. Not because I have wisdom about skin care or product knowledge to impart, but because those things don’t make me happy. Why should I spend my money on serums that don’t spark joy. Hell, they don’t even spark meh.

The faces of those who are getting old school old remind me of my grandmother and my Nonna and my greats aunts and all their friends and all the other older people I’ve encountered and appreciated and it also reminds me of their beautiful aged skin, delicate and fragile. People I loved and who cared for me, who came before me, who dealt with shit I can’t even imagine and surprisingly they did it without butt lifts.

The ravages of aging are not about societal beauty standards. It’s about not being able to afford medications or treatments you need for your body and brain as we slowly approach death. We are ravaged by time, mentally and physically, but our faces and skin and appearance are never gonna hurt us as much as bad backs, arthritis, joint pain, loss of senses and mental capacity

Closer view of the face admiring her love, the sun.

Walking by naturally aging women makes me want to kiss them right on the mouth. I am charmed, in awe and in no way intimidated. I am intimidated by wealth, and the visual representation of that. A face can take me aback. Aback I say! Because I can see the cost, I can see how different we are. My face is cheap. Look at this cheap face! Cheap face Fuckface.

Body autonomy. You gotta do what works for you! I’m not here to tell people what to do with their bodies. I simply now know that looking at an aging face makes me feel a particular way that I like, a way that makes me feel relaxed. It’s serene.

I hope you get old in comfort. I hope you all get old.

xoxo

A Fuckface