Worrying about how I look is making me boring

I (and you) have better things to do.

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Like most women, I’ve spent a disproportionate portion of my life (forty-six years this month) thinking about how I look.

There have been periods, like the blissfully long era of early childhood, and another 5-6 year stretch as an exhausted young mother, where it either didn’t occur to me to think about my looks, or I didn’t have time even if I’d wanted to.

Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash

And then there’s been…the rest of my life. Weeks or months or years when those quick glances in the mirror have more often than not turned into long, critical stares. And in my mid-40s, I find myself having more and more of those moments: noticing that my mouth suddenly turns down at the corners in an involuntary, grumpy-looking little frown, or that my midsection seems rounder and higher than it used to, while my bust is simultaneously lower and saggier (when will they meet in the middle, I wonder?)

That’s not to say I spend all my time obsessing about my looks. I’m not that vain, or so I like to think. But in my mid-40s the changes to my body and face have seemed to speed up and it’s hard not to notice, especially when “noticing” feels necessary.

I got married in May after a six-week engagement, and the moment I popped my first wedding-related search term into a browser, I started experiencing “life event” marketing targeted to my status as a bride-to-be. And make no mistake, judging by the ads I was fed, 95% of a bride’s job is to look the best she’s ever looked…which is quite a loaded expectation when that bride is a decade or two older than the norm.

And while I tried to keep it all within bounds, on some level, I admit it: I bought in. In addition to my bridal gown, I upgraded my makeup, replaced my lingerie and sleepwear, bought new jewelry and hair accessories, searched for hairstyle tutorials, read dozens of shapewear reviews, and engaged in multiple home try-on sessions of all of the above, in front of a full-length mirror with my camera on a tripod.

By the time I got to the wedding day, I’d been giving serious thought to how I look or might look, every single day, for long stretches of time. And then there were the photos to sort through and all the gut reactions to how I looked on the big day (I think I look quite pretty! But I’m also not thrilled with the performance of said shapewear, nor the placement of my body parts in it. Such is the relentless cruelty of a self-critic.)

Make no mistake, 95% of a bride’s job is to look the best she’s ever looked…which is quite a loaded expectation when that bride is a decade or two older than the norm.

The other day, on a seven-hour drive up north, during which time I could neither look in a mirror, nor take a selfie, nor look at any other selfies to compare myself to, I marveled at how differently I experience life when I’m looking out at the world instead of back at myself.

Since I also couldn’t scroll Instagram ads selling me serums promising to remove years from my skin, I listened instead to podcasts about Michigan history and Nordic culture, and mentally sketched out the structure of a book I plan to write. I hashed out plans for hikes and other adventures, and considered some big career questions.

I forgot my looks entirely, and it was the most interesting I’d been in months.

There’s nothing wrong with caring about how we present to the world. Or buying makeup or clothes or skincare or lingerie.

But this intense and concentrated period of being so conscious of my own looks left me feeling tapped-out and hollow. For two months, my head was so full of the external trappings of “womanhood” that there was barely any mental space left for the actual woman inside to learn, play, express herself, and just experience life.

It turns out, spending a lot of time thinking about the least-interesting thing about me - how I look, that is - was making me bored of myself. I can only imagine that being stuck there too long would make me less interesting to others, too.

What a shame it would be if I spent this magical period of my life, the middle years when so much is still possible, so wrapped up in trying to hide or avoid a squishy tummy or saggy skin that I forgot to take hold of this life and make it my own.

How bored and boring that would make me.

Let’s not do that to ourselves, friends. Life has so much to offer us if we keep looking out at the world, instead of always - with a critical eye - back at ourselves.