Invisibility, midlife, and the pursuit of beauty

It might be our pursuit of beauty that leaves us feeling invisible

Trying to be pretty is exhausting.

I’m not just talking about the amount of time I spend working out or doing my skincare routine, though those can be pretty taxing. I’m exhausted by the amount of times during the day where I ask myself, “Do I look pretty?” 

Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay

It’s not just how I look to myself that matters. I obsessively wonder if other people in the world find me pretty. I spend hours of my precious day and energy trying to figure out how the world sees me and where I fit in.

There are days where my self-esteem depends entirely on the length of a strangers' eye contact. There are even more days where my happiness is based on the amount of hearts and view counts I receive at the bottom of a social media post.

The speed with which I can ricochet from thinking, “Oh, I look quite pretty” (yes, just like Keira Knightly says it in Love Actually) to “Ugh I look so ugly” can be a matter of milliseconds. 

And this doesn’t just happen a few times a day either. It is an all day, every day affair. And it’s fucking exhausting.

Why does it matter if I’m pretty? 

I watch my husband wipe a cleansing pad across his face and call it a night, where my skin-care routine takes as long as our toddler’s bedtime routine (for the non-parents, that is a really long time).

I see how handsome and distinguished my husband looks as gray hairs poke through his beard. The gray hairs sticking out of my scalp make me look as though I placed my finger in an electrical socket.

Who decided that men get more handsome with age? And who decided that women don’t? And if society tells us over and over again that “older women = not pretty” then why bother spending so much damn time trying to be?

Just last week, I spent an hour and a half getting my nails done and another hour getting my eyebrows done. None of this is counting my daily face-washing rituals, my lotion application, my eating healthy, water consumption, or exercise.

I spend over two hours each day working on my appearance.

And some would even dub me low maintenance.

But it’s self-care! You may be thinking. 

Is it?

Is it really self-care if it causes more stress and leads you to feeling worse about yourself in the long run?

What else could I be doing with all that time? That brain power? Two hours a day are spent chasing a target that only seems to get further away from me the more I try to chase it.

Things have gotten especially confusing since entering “midlife.” Suddenly, the pressure to be pretty feels even greater, and even less attainable. 

“Wait until you’re invisible,” declares my sister.

Invisible. As if I wasn't already anxious about being in “midlife.” Entering midlife feels akin to waking up on day three of a five day trip. Every second thereafter is colored with the sullen reality that you have to go home soon..except in this case “home” means you’re dead.

What could I be creating were I to shift the focus away from my looks? Who could I be connecting with?

When I’m lost in my writing or laughing with my family, I’m not worrying if I’m pretty. I feel comfortable in my skin, beautiful even, but the second I see myself in a mirror, especially a black one, I panic.

Photo by Fernando Cabral

It’s like I forgot I was supposed to be worrying about my appearance while I was busy connecting and loving. It’s like by not checking on what I looked like that whole time, I got to cease to exist momentarily. But this feels very different than invisibility.

Unlike being invisible, which can be painful and lonely, those moments of ceasing to exist are actually an incredible relief.

It’s like I am everywhere and nowhere all at once. Like, I’m all things and no things at once. Everyone and no one.

Of course, the second I see my reflection, I’m right back on the hamster wheel of trying to be pretty. 

I will turn on my phone and dive into social media–land where a like and a comment instantaneously reminds me that I do not only exist, I am pretty.

Yet just as quickly, an anti-aging ad or make-up tutorial will have me questioning it all again. I’ll hit purchase on a box-of-some-shit-or-other supposedly guaranteed to make me look (fill in the blank: Younger, plumper, sharper). Yet whenever the new product arrives, I feel inexorably worse, and a few hundred dollars poorer.

Why didn’t this cream smooth away my smoker’s lines? Why didn’t this contour make me look like Bella Haddid?

I still look…like...me.

But what is wrong with looking like me? Who am I trying to become?

Maybe it is in our pursuit of trying to be seen that we end up becoming invisible.

We scrub our true selves away so that we can be pleasing for another.

But who decides whether we are pretty or not? 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which means I hold the key to my beauty. I am beautiful, because I say so. 

And frankly, the times I feel most beautiful are the times I’m not thinking about my appearance at all.