beautiful women

I received a Powerpoint show in my email today, with the title 'The Girls We Loved Before.' It featured the sex symbols and internationally known beautiful screen women of the fifties and sixties: Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, Jane Russell, Sophia Loren, Shirley Temple. Not only that, it showed how they look now, when they're already in their seventies and eighties.

They are still beautiful. Well, cosmetic surgery and plenty of money may have played a hand, and they still lead public lives, so they still have to look good.

What I think is that they are no different from the ordinary woman. Everyone grows old, including beauty queens and film stars. Firm breasts will sag, glossy hair will turn white, alabaster skin will get liver spots. The women who remain beautiful are those who learned to age gracefully, those who carry their age with dignity, and those who do beautiful things everyday.

And it's not in the clothes you will wear or the jewelry you drape around yourself. I guess it will show in the people you loved, the lives you touched, the acts of kindness you gave. It will not matter so much that you have more wrinkles than the grand old lady next door, but that those wrinkles were caused by smiling more often.

I am a bit afraid of getting old and helpless. I would not want to be an invalid, senile old hag who pees on the bed and thinks that the cat is an enemy. But you know, to know that someone will remember that I have been a kind person, that would be a good way to face old age. To know that as you go through life you have tried to make a difference even in the smallest way possible, that would be an act of grace. And I would happily grow old, remembering that once I had been young and beautiful, and I could do so much.