Smiling is good for us, it makes us happy and those who
receive our smiles, whether a closed-mouth lifting of the lips or the full
gnashers, feel better, too. Even better is to laugh – giggle, chuckle, snort, guffaw.
However, as the muscles move the skin in repeated patterns,
faint lines appear. With age, and more smiling and laughing, the lines deepen
to creases and wrinkles. Lotions and potions, creams and unguents are applied
with increasing desperation to hold back the march of time, to no avail.
The most
desperate among us – and usually those with abundant funds – seek medical aid
to turn back the clock. The surgeon’s knife is brandished expertly and bloodily
to return sagging skin to a semblance of unlined youth.
Those who find such intervention abhorrent may choose another solution
– Botox – Botulinum Toxin. The syringe-wielding physician injects Botox to
paralyse the muscles and iron out the despised furrows. The effects may last
for as long as eight months or may need to be repeated sooner.
Conversely, with the loss of the creases comes a more significant
cost. The paralysed muscles can no longer convey to the brain the sense of
happiness that comes from smiling and the now line-less patient suffers
depression. That seems a rather extreme price to pay for vanity. How must it
feel to be unable to smile? I suppose it must be like a permanent face pack,
when the mud has hardened to a mask.
Omnia Vanitas
- All is Vanity
'All is Vanity' (1892) by Charles Allan Gilbert (1873-1929)
Image courtesy of Wikipedia
As a strictly medical treatment Botox can be usefully applied in
the treatment of movement disorders like those displayed in Parkinson’s Disease
or cerebral palsy, for chronic migraine, for muscle spasms like Blepharospasm
(excessive blinking)
For the rest, I’ll live with my wrinkles and creases – after all,
they don’t bother me unless I look at myself and I do that less and less these
days J
I think it's sad, sad, SAD that so many people do not age gracefully and want to remain eternally young. I don't like my double chin (I have a short neck) but over the years I've gotten rather used to it.
ReplyDelete@EG - I agree. I point my nose so high in the air to counteract the double chin(s)that I look incredibly snooty.
ReplyDeleteFor painters a wrinkless face is a catastrophe ! It has no character. Wrinkles are natural and they don't disturb me at all. I don't want to look as wearing a mask and the skin stretched from one ear to the other ! More important is, that you don't have wrinkles in your head because there you have to be young !
ReplyDelete@Gattina - too right:-)
ReplyDeleteI'm happy to say that after I took my shot of the the blue boy, I smiled and he smiled back. That is the universal language of love. :-)
ReplyDeleteLuckily, I smile a lot, which makes everyone look younger. I love when you said you put your nose in the air!
ReplyDelete@Francisca - a smile says so much.
ReplyDelete@Belle - somehow that doesn't surprise me (that you smile a lot) :-)
Indeed, I don't look in the mirror as often as I used to either; that way I can maintain my illusion of 'youth.'
ReplyDeleteI truthfully prefer the look of a person with wrinkles to the look of a plastic surgery stretched face though.
The key is to laugh lots, and get those "good" upward looking crinkles! And there is much to be said for growing old disgracefully. :)
ReplyDeleteHave a wonderful New Year jabblog!
@Mary - plastic faces don't give much away - apart from vanity;-)
ReplyDelete@Frostbite and Sunburn - laughter lines are much to be preferred to frowns - or no lines:-)
I'm afraid I'll have to live with the lines too and I have many of them. Sigh...
ReplyDelete@Kay - you look very good on them, I have to say:-)
ReplyDelete