Ode to the Upper Lip

On beauty at any age. A piece written for myself as much as anyone.

Image credit: Skip to My Lou

Last night, I switched on a comedy film when, to my horror, another 50-something female actress had altered her facial features, specifically her lips, in such a way that she was no longer the same human.

Saddened, I promised myself I’d finally write the piece I’ve been thinking about for months. This one.

I watch a lot of silly comedies on airplanes, when I travel (which is much less these days). A couple of months ago, in one of these films, yet another comedienne, whom I have loved for years, had clearly undertaken the lip augmentation route. I was shocked. This actress was one of my favorites. So funny, so candid, quirky and humble. Now, she couldn’t really move her face.

At first, I couldn’t tell if being stoic was a part of her act of being funny; but no, she really just couldn’t move her face.

Gone. Another lip bites the dust.

I don’t want to name names. It feels insensitive. Perhaps women are doing it in hopes they will appeal to a certain market. Perhaps, they have been told – or believe – that if they have plastic surgery, they will remain relevant. Or they have been subtly and not-so-subtly told that they are no longer attractive.

I write this “Ode to the Upper Lip” to remind myself as much as anyone else – male or female – to cherish that lip. To not fall prey to the pressures to give oneself duck lips.

It just. Doesn’t. Look. Good.

In my opinion.

I want to remember this when I’m pining away in the mirror, wondering where my twenty- and thirty-something lips went.

Lips? Who Notices Lips?

I recall one visit in my early thirties to see my German father, living in the south of France. I didn’t see him very often – every few years or so. He said to me, wistfully and out of nowhere, as we chatted over coffee, “You have very nice lips, Erin.”

Lips? Who notices lips?

“Why thank you,” I replied, having learned to graciously receive compliments. Yet, I couldn’t get over how funny that sounded to me as a young woman. Who notices lips?

Older people think about lips, that’s who!

Since hitting 50 a few years ago, I realized I’d begun looking at other lips, at photographs, at younger women, in a different way. I also looked back at pictures from my teens, 20s, 30s. And there it was – a full and expressive and plump upper lip. Fully ready to proudly sport bright red lipstick, not disappearing into a thin line.

One starts to wonder, If I hold my face a certain way, will my lip remain? If I use collagen powder? If I stop wearing lipstick? If I only wear lip balm?

What about if I never frown? Only smile, like Kim Cattrall aka Samantha recommended to her gal pals in Sex in the City?

What if we start normalizing natural, healthy, graceful aging?

I feel sad as I notice more and more famous (and everyday) women taking the bait. Do people realize that they no longer have the same facial expressive capacity once they go for the Duck Lip look? That it’s still obvious that they are middle aged, or older? That they look inauthentic, or simply like they are fighting a no-win battle against time? Perhaps they truly love the look. To each their own.

I remember the first big case of Duck Lip, around the early aughts. An adorable actress whom I won’t name (you can contact me directly if you’re aching to hear who I’m writing about, like Hot Gossip) appeared in the media after getting her lips “done.” There she was, in her early 40s, no longer recognizable with her adorable natural spunk and charm. I thought it was a fluke, a botched job, a passing thing. Then, I started to see women in their 20’s with Duck Lip. Naturally beautiful women, who will never again have access to their original face. Oops. Another has fallen.

I’m not entirely sure it’s the same for every type of person, but for me, I tend to trust obviously augmented faces less. It might be the same reason I cannot relate to individuals wearing masks – we can’t really suss out who the person is, on a deeper level. We need to see social cues. Micro-movements in the facial muscles give us information. We know what is going on subconsciously by noting the subtlest shifts. If a face doesn’t move because of Botox, collagen, or other alterations, deep inside we aren’t sure who they really are or if we should believe them.

And for actors, not believing them does not bode well. It seems to me a sure way to count oneself out of a potentially lifetime long profession. It seems a person will only be stuck in roles that ask for a “middle aged woman obviously trying to hang onto her youth.”

Let’s have more role models for graceful aging. Women who take care of themselves without being neurotic about it. Laugh lines and other facial changes should signal to us that a person has, hopefully, gained some wisdom along the way.

Free to Be You and Me

Everyone is free to alter their bodies in whatever way is suitable to them, of course. Go for it, if you really, really love it. Yet perhaps we can pause a whole lot longer before changing the entire structure of our visage. We can ask ourselves, why am I doing this? Who am I doing this for? What about my natural, goddess-given face is not enough?

I don’t want to be hypocritical here – I do color my hair (grumpily), I wear makeup some days, I tweeze and wax and pluck a hair here and there. I’m simply highlighting an important point about a trend that is truly disconcerting.

One of my heroines, Patti Smith (musician, artist, and a magnificent writer; if you haven’t read Just Kids, know that it’s one of my top ten, or five, books of all time), has been au naturel during her entire career. I can’t tell you how lovely she is to behold up close – lucky for me, recently at her 76^th birthday concerts in Brooklyn last year, pressed right up front before the stage. I’m not saying we all need to be so punk, or bohemian, or down to earth. I, too, love fashion, dress-up, fancy nights out and the occasional fine dining experience. And, I believe we can look smashing at any age.

Can we support beauty as a simple way of life? Can we stop indirectly encouraging actors do to this to themselves by instead loving and praising women who look real?

Yes, my upper lip is disappearing and my trademark red lipstick highlights that fact. Do I switch to a banal beige, a gloss, a lighter pink to give a plump impression?

Again, women and men, do what you will, whether it’s tattooing your face, shaving your head, coloring your hair, giving yourself an eyelid lift or a tummy tuck or a lip injection or a partial rhinectomy (nose job). I’m only speaking to myself, for the future. To remind myself, that, as my lip mysteriously recedes, remember that:

-          a natural face is truly beautiful

-          a natural face is trustworthy

-          a natural face expresses a wider range of emotions

In the meantime, I’m wearing the red.

Me, the Stones, and all the lips that can fit.