No make-up me

I was getting my hair done yesterday, and the woman who has cut my hair for about eight years asked me how old I am. I asked her to guess.

She started at 33. When I raised my brows, which she was just starting to wax at the moment, she said, "Oh, you're not that old, are you? What? 31?"

I shook my head, and she kept guessing. She never got above 34.

I laughed and told her the truth: 39. And I was tickled. It's the second time in a month that someone guessed my age at least five years younger than I really am.

For me, this is a huge turnaround. Just two years ago, I was regularly being confused for XGF's *mother.* No doubt, part of the change is due to what I've been doing to my hair: keeping it longer and keeping it colored. I used to be exceptionally grey for my age, and wore my hair like a featureless little helmet.

Thus, it was all the more amusing to me this afternoon when one of the clinicians at my internship site told me she figured me for 34. When I told her I was 39, she seemed surprised. But it helped explain why she, who is 28, and I do not have even remotely similar musical influences in adolescence.

This evening on my dog walk, I was musing about how radically different people perceive my age to be than they once did. And as a tangent, I got to thinking about a woman I know who wears a lot of makeup. When I crossed paths with her recently, the lighting of our location and the closeness with which we stood gave me an unusually close look at the quality of skin beneath her makeup. She's just a year or two older than me, but she is hiding a lot of lines.

I'm not so much happy about being mistaken as *younger* than I am as I am for finally not being mistaken for being so much older. Especially not for my partner's mom. That was bad. It was also bad for my outlook. Looking more my age seems to have encouraged me to be more active and to put a little more thought into how I dress.

But the one thing I haven't started doing -- and don't imagine I will anytime soon -- is wear makeup. I tried to use it a couple times in high school, mainly to cover pimples, but I never really took to the process of putting on makeup.

The other week, HGM came over to play and to do a death & dying interview one night, and we started talking about Halloween costumes. He went to my medicine cabinet, looking for some makeup to prove to himself that he could turn me into Betty Page. When he learned I had nothing but a tinted tube of Burt's Bees lip balm, he was appalled. "How can you not have *any* makeup?" he asked, sounding sincerely shocked.

I was shocked that he would find it surprising.

I was thinking about that on my dog walk, that and the woman with the extra heavy makeup. I realized that I've been blessed with something special: Even though I haven't had great self-confidence about my appearance in terms of bone structure and body fat, I have never felt like I need makeup. My complexion has always been a pretty pleasing color, and my eyes have always had enough presence to stand on their own.

Sure, you might somehow make me look "better" with a load of makeup, but I have *never* felt like I needed it. That's a nice thing to realize.

The rest of me still needs work, though. And you can be damn sure that I'm gonna keep coloring this sweet hair of mine.

I'm just saying.