My grandmother is almost 99 years old and her face doesn’t look 99 at all. I’m not talking about “good for her age” or “well-preserved” in that condescending way people talk about old women. I’m talking about the fact that when you look at her face, thirty years of sagging is missing. The things that are supposed to be there aren’t there.
Where are the deep nasolabial folds that turn the corners of your mouth into parentheses?
Where are the jowls that drag everything south?
She’s got fine lines, obviously. She’s 99, not a vampire. But her face has this tightness to it that makes me laugh because it seems physically impossible without intervention.
Here’s what she didn’t do: surgery, Botox, fillers, silk pillow cases, LED, lasers, vampire facials, stem cells, or any of the shit we’re all investing ourselves into now.
It’s not retinol.
It’s not sunscreen, though she wears that too.
It’s not some European cream that costs $400. It’s not drinking water or sleeping on silk pillowcases or any of that shit influencers sell you.
I started noticing her doing this around 1986. I’d be at her house and she’d be doing Jane Fonda’s Jazzercise in the living room, leg warmers and all. Before that she’d spend time in the bathroom doing this thing to her face. I’d sit on the edge of her bathtub watching her, thinking she was performing some kind of magic spell. The repetition of it. The precision. It felt like watching a witch at work.
She started at 51. I’m in my forties now. She’s had 48 years of results. If I start today, by the time I’m 99, this will have been my face’s job for decades. Or I can ignore it and wonder why I look like a Shar Pei at 70.
Fifteen minutes every day. That’s 5,475 minutes a year. Ninety-one hours. Almost four full days of your life annually.
THATS IT.
But look at her 99 year old face.
Her lips have stayed near her nose.
Her cheeks are not terribly sagging.
There are no smiling lines with cheek falling over… it’s just, her face.
Like she had a facelift in 2008 and is just riding it out… but she didn’t.. she does this, every single day…
