Wearing Wrinkles

Wrinkles are joined at the hip with eyes around it and the mouth. You like your grandmothers’ smile because the eyes light up, to support what the lips are saying.

You never think about wrinkles, but you do when you are online. Ads about arresting wrinkles interrupt what you’re watching every two minutes. They should make ads-only channels and leave us alone to enjoy movies. We pay for internet service anyway.

Where was I? Wrinkles. Besides ads that claim a wrinkle-free face, we also shudder when we see actresses who used chemicals or the knife to stop wrinkles. They don’t smile. No, they try but it looks like they are in pain. It must be awful. Being broke is terrible I admit, but I cannot imagine not being  able to smile or laugh. Surely, it must be the end of the world.

Women who still live off the land, farming, fishing, building houses, carving household utensils from wood and helping other women give birth don’t think about wrinkles. Life can never be on hold because of a face.

The majority of women who ‘fix’ their faces are camera addicts, like actresses. They were made by the camera. They re-marry for the camera. They show their kids to the camera an hour after they are born. They buy kids for the camera.

The internet makes it possible that they will be on camera till their dying day. That is why they check the mirror every day to check if anti-ageing creams or knives are arresting rude wrinkles, as promised. Life without the ability to smile or laugh? It’s not a laughing matter.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.