The hair dye might help but you must also be drinking at the fountain of youth.
Nevermind sharing the bags and having bag envy, whatever it is you are doing you have to share that because I need some of it! I might need to get one of those portraits done and keep it in my attic.
Here are the reasons I look like I do. You asked and I will tell you.
I was blessed to be born to good looking parents with no health problems. Both parents were naturally thin. I am not as thin as I was most of my life, and I have a muffin top, but by other peoples standards, I am still thin. I wish I were thinner because I have a closet full of fabulous clothes that are a size smaller than I am.
I have English Scottish skin and I burn very easily. As a result, I avoided the sun most of my life. I joke that I lived a vampire lifestyle. No sun prevented a lot of sun damage.
I did not have children. That averted a lot of aging. It is not that I avoided having children to save my body. DH and I did not meet until I was 40, so that ship had sailed.
I have always eaten healthy, not smoked, and drank very little.
I moved to CA in my forties. CA is the epicenter of all professionals whose goal in life is help you look better. Everyone in CA is very body conscious and no one thinks twice about getting assistance with their appearance.
I got a chemical peel on my face and neck which gave me a lot of collagen and gave me smooth, clear, baby skin. I was a hot mess for about three weeks after the procedure, as the skin peeled and healed. I looked like a burn victim. After it healed, my skin was amazing.
DH had a major jaw surgery (to correct sleep apnea) and required some very focused fillers to deal with some of the scarring and gaps in the bone of his jaw. His post-surgery remediation put me in touch with a very conservative plastic surgeon that did little things rather than extreme things.
I developed bags under my eyes at about 45 and looking at them made me feel old. I had the surgeon remove the fat pads under my eyes and he lazered the the under-eye skin which made my under-eye are smooth and flat and wrinkle free. I am not enthusiastic about lazering, especially by a plastic surgeon. If I were to have it done again, I would only trust a dermatologist. I wish I had not rubbed my eyes ever again after that but I did.
Then a couple years later, I had a mini face lift. My goal was to stay looking like myself. I sort of viewed it as the same as when the elastic in a skirt waist stretched out too much and you have it altered to make it fit again. I wanted my skin to fit me. I didn't want to be one of those people who had major work done at 70 and looked like a totally different person. Little interventions kept me looking like me.
Then the last thing I did was my nose. I had a really cute nose. It was a great nose in fact. Then one day I reached down to pick up something off the floor in front of the mirrored closet door. In doing that, I saw my nose from the side. I experienced total shock. WTF? What happened to my nose? My nose had grown. It was noticeably bigger. You can make Pinocchio jokes, but I don't lie. Lying was not the cause. Your nose and ears keep growing as you age. That is why old people have such big ears.
At the time of my nose discovery, I was getting botox from a dermatological nurse who worked with a lot of plastic surgeons. All plastic surgeons have their specialities. She referred me to one who loved to do noses. Boy was he excited to get his hands on my nose. He did a great job. It turned out very slightly better than my original nose as he took a tiny bump out of it besides whittling it back down to its original size. That was about 17 years ago.
My nose was the last thing I have had done except for some hair removal. At 65, started getting the bearded chin. Let me tell you, that really makes you unfeminine. Because I had excess testosterone levels, I was turning into the breaded I couldn't tweeze fast enough to keep up with the hair growth. I threw enough money at that to kill almost every hair follicle not on my scalp.
It is always something.
I am a project oriented person. I do lots of large, labor intensive projects. I prefer to do them myself because I am such a perfectionist that no one else's work suits me and I end up correcting it. Plus, for the work in our business, my hourly rate is impossible to beat. We don't pay me, but I like my bag budget.
Really long hours in my last real job and big projects in our current family business have kept me from taking care of myself over the last 20 years. I keep thinking that each major project would be the last and I could turn to myself. I no longer believe the "last project" lie that I tell myself. I really worked my arse off thorough the pandemic and I am fed up. I decided that this was going to be the year of me.
This year, no matter what, I am paying someone else to do it, and re-do it, until it suits me. My job is to exercise, diet, lose my muffin top, moisturize my skin, bleach my teeth, start using Retin-A again, wear my contacts, actually put on make up, etc. All my life, I was able to slide on my good genes, so I am not used to doing normal maintenance on me.
All my weight gain is in my middle. To get rid of that little bulge in the middle of my tummy, I had my stomach lipo suctioned in my 40s. What happens after lipo suction? The fat goes somewhere else. Now excess weight starts creeping on above my waist, then goes to my boobs, and finally to my face. In comes off in the reverse order. I have to lose the weight (about 20 pounds) very slowly so that my skin can shrink instead of sag.
I really want my face back. I used to have very sculpted checks. The fat I now have at the bottom of my face is what gives me resting ***** face. The fat in my checks pulls the corners of my mouth down. After I lose the weight I am going to see if the same dermatologist will give me another peel. Chemical peels are a very old school technique but I believe it will give me more collagen than anything else I could do. I am also considering micro needling prior to the peel.
Dolly Parton said "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap." In my case, it took a lot of work to look this natural.
Most of it was in my forties. Now that I am 71, it is time for another round. It is like when your car hits 70,000 miles, a lot of stuff breaks, you replace it, and keep on driving. In my case, the 70,000 mile work was in my forties. Now I am going for a round of 140,000 mile work in my 70s.
I doubt I would have done the interventions had I lived anywhere but Southern California. The infrastructure was there to do little interventions over the course of a decade to allow me to continue to be me. It doesn't seem abnormal there. In almost any other state, it would probably seem extreme and self absorbed.
The good news is is possible to improve even at my age. I started taking private pilates lessons about 2 years ago. I have more core strength now. The saggy butt I have had my entire life has been replaced with a new and improved bubble butt that DH loves. That new butt appeared without me even noticing. I expect to live another 20-25 years and if I don't do some exercise remediation now, being old is not going to be good. I feel like I am at the last chance saloon.
I wish I could tell you a few easy tricks for looking young, but it is lifetime of choices.
Regarding the portrait artist, I have contact info for her. I will post it soon.
The bag looks lovely on you and is such a pretty color. Enjoy!
