I look older than I feel

I had coffee with a neighbour this morning and she told me she had met an acquaintance we have in common recently. She asked about any holiday plans she had and was told that after last year she wasn't doing holidays anymore as she had realised she no longer looked good in a bikini. She is 75!! But admits to being very vain.

I have a friend who looks better in photos than in real life ( not that I would ever say that out loud). But she really takes a lovely photo. Me now. I have a feeling that my awful photos are actually a very good likeness.

I now take the lead from my (much) younger DOH who, years ago when we were newly together, waited until I was in the garden with grubby shorts over my plump white legs, an ancient unflattering T-shirt and no make-up before announcing that we were just going down the pub to meet his friends for the first time. He wouldn't let me stop to change. I was initially mortified, but he insisted they were going to meet me and my appearance was of no importance, it was the person I am that mattered. I do try to look nice but he knocked it all into perspective for me in that one moment. The age difference was obvious and has never been denied but I realised if how I looked wasn't important to him I'd be stupid to make something of it myself. And my memories of my very-much-loved Grandma are of a dear, cuddly wrinkled little old person who took time to listen and care. I'm not so sure they'd be quite such happy memories had she been a smart, elegant, well-groomed lady.

I've been out and about a bit lately with a visiting friend of my son and he's taken to taking snaps of me with his i phone and putting them on facebook. The photos look quite hideous. I've had nice comments but I don't agree!The best of them are ones where I've lifted the hair off my face with a pretty scarf as this helps to avoid the hangdog look. Some blusher helps and lots of mascara.

Well , some young people don't seem to care if they don't take a good photo, they just pose and pout!

And can't they pose these days?! They look as though they are doing a phgotoshoo for a fashion magazine! We just used to stand and smile.

photoshoot

I can relate to so much that has been said about how I look in photos but my family just don't see any problem with my photos or even with their own.

Having recently moved and busy sorting out the house contents one of the things we have been concentrating on is family photographs. It has been very interesting to see the changes and differences over the years. The really old photos are hard to take seriously as truly depicting how people really were as they are so stiff and starchy, dressed in their finest and one of my 3 x GGM shows her looking very wide eyed and absolutely terrified. There are perhaps only one or two of each of the 'ancestors' and so they are immortalized in that one split second so that is how their descendants will see them for all time. When we were children photography was quite expensive and studio portraits were not common so there were not so many of those either. The DIY ones in my parents days are usually taken from a long way off, blurred or, if taken by my mother, had the heads or feet cut off!
Nowadays with such instant and cheap photography you stand more of a chance of seeing people as they really are and it is interesting to see how the family resemblances still manage to show through over the generations. It is comforting to know that we are not totally responsible for how we look and can honestly say 'it is in our genes'.
In any case we will never be satisfied by how we look to ourselves as we always hanker to be 'other than......'.

I was looking at some photographs of one of my friends, who is now 86, and commenting on one which showed her at a party with her handsome husband and she was looking really gorgeous and sophisticated and she said that she wished she had known then how good she looked as she always felt such a freak. She was stunning! So many of us are the same and don't appreciate what we have and what we are. Fortunately our friends and family look more kindly on us than we do ourselves.

I think feeling older than one looks is far worse than feeling younger than one looks. Said with feeling!

I had my first "older" photo when I was 61 and was really shocked.

Now I'm 70 this year I've grown used to it and do the best I can with moisturizers, hairstyle, colours that suit me etc., Also comfy shoes and clothes help me look more relaxed.

I had a lot of fun working out what suited me and if the camera is about I try to keep a good posture and a nice smile.

I like my hair to look as full as possible (tell myself that people notice the hair rather than the face) Batiste dry shampoo works miracles on the days hair is limp and flat. Try it!