Your appearance is tied to your age. 

Right now, how old would you like to look? If you ask a 30-year-old, she’ll probably say, “25.” Ask a 40-year-old and she’ll say, “Between 25 and 30.” A 50-year-old generally wants to look 35 to 40. When you ask a 21-year-old, she absolutely won't want to look six or 11 and could almost want to look older!

This issue for women wanting to look younger than they really are is surely a desire that’s been perpetrated (especially on women) by the media. Do you think our early ancestors worried about looking younger than they actually were? Doubtful, because when you’re in survival mode you’re more worried about staying alive than how long you’ve been doing it. 

Today our culture is focused on youth and that emphasis is a multi-billion dollar business. Sadly, the plastic surgery performed to hide age, more often than not, just flags aging, and in many cases the results are painful to look at. If you’ve ever put egg white on your face and let it dry you know how awful it feels, so when you see someone who’s had the skin on her face stretched so tight her lips can barely move, it’s hard not to imagine it must feel just like dried egg on your face.

The Botox lip inflation rage is another example of women trying to look younger. (Lips tend to get thinner as we age.) I recently had a six-week battle with a virus I named the DB Virus, (the initials of my ex-husband), because it was so unpredictable. I’d feel good for a couple of days thinking everything was going fine and then WHAM for no reason at all it’d knock me down like I’d been injected with poison. One of the effects of the DB was swollen lips. They made me think about what it must feel like to have your lips pumped up with Botox. Mine were so swollen I could see them sticking out under my nose and they were itchy right along the edge of where the lips end and the face begins.

In the middle of the night during, my bout with the fat lip part of the DB, I woke up scratching that fine lip line while thinking about using one of those scouring pads or something scratchier to really get to the itch. If you’ve ever experienced any part of your body in itch mode, then you understand how the scratching can turn vicious, almost violent in an attempt to appease the itch. It’s almost like you work yourself into a frenzy akin to what primitive tribes get into around a fire right before war. In the middle of the night when you’re half asleep, you can really do some epidermal damage. In my frenzied state, ready to head to the garage for some sandpaper, I stopped and looked in the mirror. I looked like a sick trout.

My lips were not only itching, they were burning and I needed coconut oil. After slathering the welcomed goo thickly from my nose holes to my chin I was wide awake. I didn’t want to get the stuff all over my pillow and sheets so I wrapped my lips with two five-inch squares of plastic wrap (one for the top lip and one on the lower). Burning lips wrapped in plastic wrap stop burning, but the mouth the lips are connected to, can no longer hold saliva so when I woke up an hour later, my pillow was soaked in drool.

When I tried to drink some water using a straw I'd been using so the water wouldn’t get on my lips and make them chapped-er, I was unable to get a good connection with the straw so I ripped off the plastic wrap and realized how hard it is to use trout lips, whether you’ve done it on purpose to look younger, or because you’re sick. 

Okay, here’s the deal, everyone who knows and loves you knows how old you are, so if you’re trying to look ten or fifteen years younger, who is that for? If you’re a big deal actress, it’s understandable, but just because Julia Roberts works hard at looking young and beautiful, just remember she does it to get work. If you’re not in the entertainment industry then ask yourself if you really need to have people you aren’t close to and don’t even know you, think you’re younger than you are? It takes a lot of work, money and time to hide your age (I’m not talking about exercise here).

I have a better solution, and it doesn’t cost anything, take any of your time or involve any work! If you're into wanting strangers to think you're younger than you are, just tell them (any chance you can get) that you're ten or fifteen years older than you are. 

I'm going to try it with you right now. I'm 85!

 Love, 

PS I'm no longer going to offer audio CDs for The Mouth Trap: the butt stops here! and The GOOD Book: Get Out Of Debt. Until supplies are gone, if you purchase the audio CDs I'll give you the printed book free! Just tap on the book you want and order the audio CDs. 

Start standing up for your age. It's perfect for you. Don't let the media tell you differently. Here's a blog I wrote about saying "No." Just click on the bear.