Photo: Author, Remington Write
And no matter what you do, you will never look like this.
By Remington Write — Written on Feb 18, 2023
Don’t fall for it. It’s a lie. That is not a human person in the ad on the side of the bus stop. That is a sophisticated graphic presentation created with technology and it exists for one reason only.
To get someone’s hands into your pocket to take your money.
Slap those bozos away and don’t look back.
That does not in any way resemble what a real woman ever has looked like. It’s a mirage. An illusion. And entirely too many women — especially young ones — think they must look as close to that as humanly possible or they’ll never find true love and without true love, they’ll never be happy.
Too many people buy the lie and buy the useless garbage the lie is used to sell. It’s another mendacious way that the gears keep grinding us into little pieces of profit flowing into someone else’s offshore account.
Photo: AleXander Hirka / Used with permission
Even the actual person whose photo was taken for these lies doesn’t look like this.
Do the models yearn to look like their manipulated images?
If even Charlize Theron — J’adore, baby, j’adore — doesn’t actually look like that what hope is there for any of us?
Here’s where.
In the hope that we can completely reject what the gods of commerce insist on telling us we need to buy.
Will a bottle of Dior’s fragrance win me the attention of that elusive soulmate? Oh, hell no. Nothing in any bottle or cunning little jar or elegantly designed package can do that. And why can’t they?
Because the entire concept of a soul mate or the One Who Shall Complete Me is false and harmful.
Screw what the fashionistas and the influencers and the experts say.
I have this interesting new dark patch just below my right eye. It’s getting darker and for about a week I fell for the notion that it was — oh, what’s the word? — unsightly.
In my neighborhood, Harlem, there is no lack of potions and creams and ointments and compounds created to lighten skin (more on that another time). I dutifully did my research and bought myself some chemical bleaching agent. Know what it did? It burned!
Then I went to the dermatologist.
Oh, no problem. They could freeze it so that it would turn into a big scab about a quarter inch from my eye and when the scab fell off and the giant sore on my face healed, voila! that brown patch would be gone.
Well, that’s as may be but then what am I supposed to do about those wrinkles? And the weight I gained during the pandemic? And the shockingly loose skin that’s appeared under my chin?
Well — other than eating less and moving more — nothing.
Do I yearn to have smooth, glowing skin like that freak on the side of the bus stop on 14th Street? Of course, I do. But I know that no actual living human being in the entire history of the species ever had skin that perfect.
You know this, too.
Screw that lie and enjoy yourself as you are.
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Remington Write is an editor, writer, and blogger who discusses the perils of growing older while trying to stay sane.
This article was originally published at Medium. Reprinted with permission from the author.