Hello all,
I’m Aphrodite’s bastard child and I’m staying with Ashley for a bit until my mom gets her shit together (she wouldn’t upgrade my ios or let me use the car this weekend). So I ran away, I’m here, and I’ve hijacked Ashley’s page while she’s out running errands. I’m not going to be here long because all she eats is the food my food eats. However, I’d like to use this time to talk to you about something important I’ve been seeing slowly evolve or de-evolve: the ugly cry.
And how much worse face-work makes these atrocious moments.
You see, because I’m a goddess, I never cry.
Even over my mom bogarting the car.
Other things I also never do are age, gain weight, or have burning diarrhea the morning after a nice meal slathered in hot sauce. But most importantly, I never cry. But you know who does? Your wannabe Hollywood gods feigning my natch status – who only got godlike through your validation which made them famous.
For me it was just an effing birthright.
Sure, your glistening false idols may do a very good job at maintaining their porcelain images. They walk the red carpet on shoes that could undo the screws holding the glasses together that I don’t wear because I have perf vision, with posture meant to hold an African pot on their heads. And they float through life – each a bony ghostish hostess at the cult cocktail party called celebrity. Mayhaps they even wash their faces with the tears of third world children. But they’d needn’t – ‘cause they’ve got enough of their own – going home each night and crying about the lie they’re all living. Peeling off their MUA’s mask and morphing into Meryl’s Death Becomes Her and pouring pain from their eyes.
They forget – I can see it all happen with mine.
And I say good.
Because when you were raised on Mt. Olympus and mastered the art of shooting lightning at mortals like Daryl of Dead does walkers by age five, it’s a real slap in the face. It’s painful. It’s like watching a poorly executed parody of yourself. Or maybe how posh people of Chelsea feel when someone born sans silver cutlery in their oral cavity (wouldn’t that really hurt for the lady who expels you from her uterus?) wins the lotto and tries to move into town. I say “maybe” because I personally have none of these mortal feelings. So I can’t empathize.
And thank grandfather for that. Because, like most gods and angels, there are some times – like today – that I like wander down to terra firma Dogma style, rent a flesh puppet to live in, and enjoy some good old fashioned touristy cammy snaps of my travelings to Instagram for my friends to see an be jealous of (even though most of them are selfies). But of all the wonderful emoting I can enjoy during my human holiday, you can bet your ass that the moment I catch a case of the feels, I’mma step in front of the Shanghai Maglev.
Before this happens:
Easy solution, my poor ephemeral creature: stop feeling.
The problem when you’re a celebrity is that the proverbial tangled web you weave sits in the middle of your weave – your face. Because of your baller status, there’s the insatiable desire to have that with which my ilk was naturally gifted – ageless beauty that seems to defy life’s impermanence. Painlessness. Detachment from all things negative. A world where nirvana and narcissism aren’t matter and antimatter to one another, but copulate like hippies. The second problem is… none of you have that. So, much like anyone entering a state of denial, celebri-sapiens buy the best faux finery to maintain some semblance of an illusion as their supple frame fades. Then the sad nine-to-five people who shoot for the disappearing ozone layer (you) because the moon (me) seems too far-fetched a goal, try to follow suit.
The result is a thing, I believe you call … discount botox? But even the jobs your pricey surgeons offer are pretty awful. In a just world, I would have smote (smited? smitten?) them by now, but that would be selfish of me because I’d be depriving the prime-time mindless from seeing what happens when the butcher from Texas Chainsaw gets a side gig as an L.A. surgeon who decorates the outside of human trash cans. So, in an effort to deter you, we’ll have a quick course from the cosmos (me) to the commoners (you) on the science of the ugly cry after adjustments.
I like to call it “face under pressure”.
You see, under the freeze and filler is a whole process happening.
(Yes, Virginia, there is a scientific clause to botox).
Fight or flight kicks in and blood shows up in your lacrimals for some fight of its own – like a blacklisted guest barging through the red ropes. And those red ropes arrive in the form of streaking vessels in the eye. But that’s not all. It also causes the face to become puffy with all that redirected fluid – made worse by the extra salty fluid (remember your osmosis lessons?) being released into your eye and nose. So when your face puffs up, those marshmallow easter eggs you latched above your maxilla last year start to droop down it and up it and puff out even further. This mild inconvenience morphs into an abomination revealing the aesthetic lie because while one part of the face is go-go gadget zygomatic, the frozen botox part remains still – a horror storm’s eye as your real ones betray you.
But with your tissue highways clogged up with more plastic traffic than the 405 (or the 5, whatever), all that salty shiz can’t even out.
And before you know it, you’ll almost miss your wrinklier pre nip-tuck weep mug.
So, my suggestion is to age gracefully – mostly – and then pick your battles. Like retro Li-lo. Had she stopped here, with the “Margot Robbie if Margot Robbie couldn’t move her face” spesh, it would’ve been just fine.
This wasn’t even a really bad cry face, in my ethereal opinion. But sometimes we all go a little Michael Jackson. I give her a pass because she was coming down from drugs when she made those surgical changes and withdrawal can convince you that you’ve been dismantled and put back like a Picasso character. Sadly, that doesn’t change the painful looking results. But she still gets my heavenly nod of approval for trying to get clean. For now.
Anyway, in sum, I’ll say this: live fully, love deeply, and give selflessly. That way, the only wrinkles you’ll have when you’re 70 will be the good, grandmotherly I-baked-cookies-and-my-house-always-smells-like-Thanksgiving kind.
That – or you could just botox your lacrimal glands and find a friend with whom you can have botulinum sleepover parties and blissfully ride the denial wave…
…all the way to the grave.
Anywho, Buzzkill McPants is back. I can totally hear her clumsily dropping the keys outside the door. (*eyeroll**) So we’ll end it there for now. Until my mom’s and my next fight, remember to smile – and don’t actually cry on the inside.
You might implode.
And that’s not cute, either.