Page 30 - WTP Vol. IX #10

Wrinkles (continued from preceding page)
mother dressed both her daughters in the requisite white—the veil, the dress, the gloves, even the ro- sary—and, as if they were twins, had them take their first communion together. At the party afterward, none of the guests remembered my mother, instead passing her over to congratulate her older sister and give her the gifts they had brought. My mother re- members, much more clearly than the actual ceremo- ny at the church, feeling invisible, ignored, excluded. Her sister, once again, shone with the light of the sun, leaving my mother in the shadows. After all, it was just my mother and my aunt: two sisters, born close enough in time so that they were constantly com- pared—not quite like twins, but almost.
In the ten years leading up to her facelift, my mother had become dumpier: she had gained weight around her middle, and her clothes began to reflect her insecurities about aging. Because she was conve- niently in Lima on a visit to her sister, because her children were grown and no longer her daily re- sponsibility, and because the cost of the surgery was a bargain, the siren call proved too seductive. She decided to go for it, paying for the procedure out of her own money, and the accommodating surgeon threw in liposuction and a tummy tuck. On the phone the morning after, when she was recovering at my aunt’s house, she sounded weak and misera- ble. She told me, in a slow, slurring whisper, that she had never endured such pain in her entire life. That she hurt all over, but especially around her stomach. As if rebelling against its cute name, the tummy tuck had turned out to be vicious.
My sister and I were worried about the whole thing. About our mother in Peru, so far away from us in California, having a serious operation under anes- thesia. And one so unnecessary. What if something went wrong? We knew what had happened to the founder of the original “First Wives Club” who, after writing about being cast aside by her husband for
a younger, prettier woman, died on the operating table during a facelift. Plus, for a fraction of the price in the United States, could the surgeon pos- sibly be a good one? What if he was a hack? But
my mother, after two weeks of pain and healing
in Lima, recovered. I remember driving with my sister to the airport in San Francisco to pick her up. In those days we could walk straight to the gate to greet her. When she emerged from the jet bridge we almost didn’t recognize her. We were met with a marvel, a vision. We had dropped off a mother with a thickening waist and a softening face, wear- ing a chunky hand-knit sweater. We picked up a sophisticated woman, outfitted in camel-colored
slacks and a silk top with matching heels. Her waist was narrow, her figure svelte. She had had her hair done and the highlights shone in the sexy cut she had sported when young and single. And her face! She easily looked forty, a good twenty years younger than her actual age. I was so happy for her. I loved her
new look. My sister however, confessed to me later that she missed her “old mom,” the comfortable one, the more obviously maternal one. Our mother as a gorgeous, glamorous woman felt alien to her.
Here in California the pressure on women to look good is also palpable; we should present a certain ideal, a femininity that is thin and toned, as well as perky breasted, smooth skinned, and full lipped.
In certain circles, the cosmetically altered look, with fillers and lifts and lasers, feels more normal. Bleached teeth, Fraxeled skin, and Botoxed fore- heads are common. When I go from a walk in the morning with my friend who eschews any cosmetic indulgence beyond sunscreen to afternoon coffee with friends who run in the more looks-conscious circle, I feel like an old hag in comparison with their smooth, artificially maintained faces. That very word—hag—comes too easily to mind, show- ing the degree to which I have internalized a loath- ing of the feminine when it’s not up to the patriar- chal standards of the male gaze.
What does it mean for my aunt to be able to leave all that to one side? About ten years ago, she came out to California to help tend to my mother after she had a car accident. At the hospital, wrongfully assum-
ing the relationship between them, a nurse referred to my mother as my aunt’s daughter. Reminders of her diminishing looks and increasing age must have been common these past few decades. Yet my aunt feels she is enough, more than enough, in her own eyes and in the eyes of her husband, her children, her family. She rejects the conflation of looking younger with being better.
Thus even after she witnessed her little sister’s dra- matic transformation, my aunt did not get a facelift. She seemed an Odysseus who could see the sirens
on the shore, who could hear their irresistible song from the ship on the undulating ocean, yet, as if tied to a mast, did indeed resist the temptation to look younger and thinner, to smooth out skin and erase lines, to lighten spots and suction away fat. Why was this? How was it that she seemed to wear some kind of invisible armor without a chink, which protected her from the dermatologist’s laser and the surgeon’s knife? I think that it might have something to do with the great love, el gran amor, she shared with her hus-
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