Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

Peter Pan syndrome

Monday, May 8, 2006
2:12 p.m.
Something metonym brought up in her diary some entries ago, along with the comment left by my good friend tcklyrpharsn (I left one too) have been making me think, especially since meeting my friend Dinah (of the mulled wine recipe) in the parking lot outside the bank about a week ago. Metonym was opining that a woman reached her peak, looks wise, at age 25 (or thereabouts) and that it was downhill from there.

Writing from the vantage of almost 25 years older than that, I believe that it isn�t true. There are many homely girls who mature into �handsome� women. There are many pretty girls whose looks are totally dependent on their youthfulness and the ordeals of childbearing, overeating, underexercising, smoking and drinking leave their mark. I am reminded of the Bright Carvers in the Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake, the youths of that community blessed with brilliant good looks until the onset of adulthood, when they faded very quickly and the only beauty they produced was in the carvings which lent them their name.

Dinah and I were discussing the external trappings of aging. As we stood in the parking lot, we observed many women townies on their way to the bank or the post office, women with gray hair cut in a certain style, renewed at the hairdresser every week. They dress in a certain way and look every one of their 65+ years. Dinah admitted that she is not ready to hang up her jeans and T-shirts yet, or to cut her long hair. Nor does she intend to dye it. I dye my hair, but I refuse to cut it. I wear the same style of clothes my daughter does (only not as provocative), and I too refuse to �dress my age�.

As I saw on a T-shirt a while back: Growing old is inevitable. Growing up is optional.

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