It’s My Face and I’ll Do What I Want With It

When I think about my face, I think about that Bruce Springsteen song. It’s what I like to call a story-song. Like a vision, Mary dances across the porch as the radio plays. There was a bit of controversy in 2021¹ as to whether her dress waves or sways but who cares. There’s a bloke in her town full of losers who realises they ain’t that young anymore. He’s called round to tell her they’ve got one last chance to make it real. He wants her only and his car’s out back and they could jump in and case the promised land. “You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re alright,“ he says.The New Yorker said it was the worst compliment ever, pointing out that someone ain’t a beauty but then he was fairly self-deprecating too. He’s no hero but he has got a guitar and he’s learned how to make it talk.

But back to my face. It hasn’t won any prizes. It hasn’t been asked to sell anything. It doesn’t stop people in the street nor cause them to lose all reason. It didn’t inadvertently cause the Trojan war. I haven’t been described as sweet with coral lips and porcelain skin. But then you could be forgiven for thinking that all women written by men must be pretty unless they are needed as the comedic device or the spinster aunt. “She was beautiful but didn’t know it” is such a novel-writing falsehood because beautiful people always know it and they know what they can get away with. I can’t get away with very much. I’ve never been, nor am ever likely to be someone’s muse although I was once complimented on my chipmunk cheeks. No one has ever told me I have a beautiful face but then no one has ever told me I have a kind face either. They’re more likely to ask me to be less expressive. I may have realised quite early that my face wasn’t going to help me much in life and decided I’d have to be funny to get noticed instead. But even though I am still occasionally funny, I now have a middle-aged face. My chipmunk cheeks have disappeared. I’m grateful if someone thinks I’m alright.

I read an article last week by a serious woman. I mean a woman who wants to be taken seriously. She had debated whether to write her post because it contained themes coded as trivial and female. “Part of me still wants to be Taken Seriously as a Smart person by both men and women,” she said complete with capitals. She wanted to be taken seriously in theological circles because she writes about church and faith and that is the hardest place to be taken seriously, especially if you hope your sentences might gain the respect of men. It’s much easier to target the insecurities of other women via inspirational quotes in swirly font. It's quite common to tell them they are beautiful.

But this woman who wanted to be taken seriously was approaching her fortieth birthday. She was starting to notice people telling her she didn’t look her age and she was enjoying this unexpected success. She had wandered into Space NK² to check out the sale. Normally she would be deeply focused on big stuff like death, but she admitted she had a skincare hobby on the side. Her birthday presents were intended to keep her epidermis smooth and supple. In Space NK, an eight-year-old was counting out her Christmas money to pay for a resurfacing toner that was popular on TikTok. The woman who wanted to be Taken Seriously put down the bottle of serum she was holding, distressed at how young girls are steeped in self-improvement, considered cancelling her facial, concluded makeup was silly and girly and somehow “anathema to serious men in serious suits” and became incredibly troubled by the realisation that she was buying into the concept that women should not age. Being enslaved into maintaining the appearance of youth and resurfacing her face to remain acceptable seemed a bit off when Scripture tells us man looks on the outside and God looks on the heart, and I thought of that children’s song and how we should clap, clap our heart and extol loudly that “it doesn't matter how you feel. It's what's inside that counts for real”³ and I laughed at the ludicrousness of this because we all know physical attractiveness is very important in the real world and what’s inside can often be a lot more ugly. Anyway, the serious woman decided she was sub-consciously participating in a non-kingdom-based value system and she wanted a face that shone for reasons other than the oil slathered on to it. And I thought God has to be pro anti-aging. He must know how hard it is to pass a mirror post-forty. I might have mentioned it to Him.

I left her a comment⁴.

“I too want to be taken seriously as a smart person by both men and women (particularly when it comes to writing about faith) but I find the trivial is what connects us to each other. As a mother of four teenage girls who absorb Space NK/Sephora etc. etc., I occasionally wrestle with this obsession with appearance and occasionally lose it when they cover my towels with fake tan but then I remember alongside paying attention to my spiritual core strength, I am also trying microneedling next week... (my excuse is that I am ten years ahead of you and on a search for collagen)”.

Confessing to microneedling felt like I’d confessed to a narcotics habit. But then honesty has always been my downfall and I remembered what the beauty journalist, Sali Hughes, said about Botox⁵. “I think people need to stop telling women what they should or shouldn’t do with their faces”. The idea that it was somehow unfeminist to not age in the way nature intended was just absurd. No one was getting criticised for Invisalign. She wanted to write about it and give people printed permission to do what they liked with their own face. “The most unfeminist thing,” she said, “is telling women how to look”. In Wales, women texted each other to come round and look at their Botox but for some reason in middle-class England, they either looked down their noses and sneered at women who got it, or they got it themselves and lied about it. And I reckoned it wasn’t the cosmetic treatments that were the problem. It was the lying. And I thought of those makeup-free selfies where the foreheads look nothing like mine.

And I was glad I’d gone for microneedling which is also known as collagen induction therapy because I felt much more like a chipmunk again and I could smile at myself in the mirror and I noted that every time I typed middle-aged, it kept autocorrecting to Middle Ages and I wondered if maybe my face would have worked well in the thirteenth century because mean life expectancy then was about 43.6 and wrinkles weren’t such a thing.  

“There is a joy in getting ready, in looking nice, in caring about your appearance, in putting on your warpaint, glamming up and going out and having a good time,” said Sali Hughes. And whilst no one ever tells me I look beautiful, my husband always tells me I look lovely on a Saturday night. “You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re alright. Oh, and that's alright with me,” said the bloke with his car out the back. And I guess whatever you do with your face, there will always be someone who thinks your face is the most alright thing in the world.

P.S. The serious lady said men should have opinions on this too. I am always happy to hear from both men and women because I write for all of you.

My writing is currently free but you can buy me a coffee if you want. (You can also join me for the coffee too if you’d like. Just give me a shout!).

1. Thunder Road - The New Yorker

2. Retailer of beauty products.

3. Song

4. More Fully Alive

5. The Women’s Podcast