A Milwaukee article said men attendance is quickly rising for dermatological services.  Guys in their 40’s, 50’s and up want something tighten, reduced, eliminated and stretched to look young again.  (Again, with this youth thing!)  If it’s happening in Milwaukee, it’s even bigger elsewhere.

Why would someone want to look other than who they are?  It wasn’t that good the first time around so the second round will be different?  Somehow a 55 year old guy with a Botoxed face at a youth event makes me squirm.  “Do you remember ‘The Monkees?” told to a 25 year old would certainly make the evening come alive.

At a California resort I met a dermatologist and I thought I’d have the furrows in my forehead deep-freezed.  He instantly said to me, knowing I was a priest, that it was absolutely wrong.  “They wouldn’t know if you cared,” he said.  I smiled at him as I’m my facial lines showed.

I want to see the Depression line in her face as she talks about her family and how they supported themselves, the WWII lines above his eyes that tell me he was scared but still served his country, those aging lines around her mouth because she laughed too much in life (we should all be so lucky!), the worry lines that surface around the cheeks because of raising five children and hoping the best for each of them.  To take out one aging, earned line is to remove that experience or moment from your life.  It is to erase what you’ve witnessed and replace it with nothing.  Nothing but a smooth, artificial face that means you need to merit new ones.

“If you want to look 25, you can act like you’re 25,” a Broadway play says about a woman wanting a seat on a bus.  I love that line.  If you want to look young again then act young again with all the angst that you’ve already outgrown along with the doubts and inhibitions that you’ve spent years overcoming.  You’re a full blown adult now and you want to start all over again?  After the Botox treatment, the doctor should place strategic pimples all over your “been there, done that” youthful-new face.