Personal Space

Am I the only one who does NOT like massages? A stranger rubbing their hands on my body just isn't my idea of a good time. Relaxing? I think not. All I can do is worry about whatever zits I might have on various body parts, or what if I suddenly have to fart?

I would not mind a massage from DH, I'm sure. But I'm afraid that no one else on the planet has leave to touch my person.

I've actually had 3 massages in my life, and while I wasn't totally traumatized by any of them, I also didn't just dissolve into a pool of bliss that left me pining for a weekly appointment with a local masseuse. I politely endured each one, trying desperately all the while to focus on the pleasant sensations my muscles were feeling, vs. the personal space violation that my brain was screaming about. It was a struggle each time.

I also have a hard time with any kind of assistance in personal grooming. This includes haircuts, manicures, pedicures, dental cleanings (or any kind of dentistry), and eye exams. I do force myself to endure the dentist and the eye doctor...I do want to keep my teeth, and I do enjoy seeing things. But the other stuff is unnecessary--based on vanity only. I can probably count on two hands the number of times I've had a professional haircut (and yes, my appearance reflects that, but I don't really care.)

I went through a fake nail phase for about 8 weeks. For much of my younger life, I tried to maintain long, painted claws. I was pretty good at it, too, if I do say so myself. I'd file and polish a couple of times a week because I couldn't stand any of the nails to be uneven, and chipped polish was right out. Then, in my early 30's I started to study karate, and long nails became a thing of the past (you can't make a decent fist with your own claws digging into your own palm). But 7 years later, we moved from Seattle to Santa Fe, where there was no good karate school, and so I stopped practicing. I was also pretending to be Career Woman, and so I bought a bunch of suits, got a professional haircut, and went to a salon to get some of those fake nails that are/were all the rage. At first, I enjoyed my new claws, and had a refill done after a couple of weeks, and then had them re-done completely after another couple of weeks.

But the experience was to be short-lived. You see, even though the salon person was only touching my hands (and so my personal space-o-meter was not sounding the alarm), she made the mistake of commenting on my cuticles. Her English was not the greatest, but I could still easily understand that my cuticles were out of control and completely unacceptable, and she would be unable to do the fake nails again unless I first had a manicure.

I interpreted this as a personal insult and took great offense that this woman felt free to criticize me in any way, shape, or form. I left the salon and never went back.

I've had parallel experiences with almost every hair stylist I've encountered. They invariably feel free to make suggestions for my appearance ("Gel in curly hair is really in style now!") or my grooming habits ("This style will only take 5 minutes a day to blow dry...surely you can spare that?") Or they don't understand my hair, which is fairly curly, but also very fine. They see the curls and think there is more mass than there really is, so they hack it all away, and I'm left looking like a complete pinhead.

I've never tried a pedicure because let's be honest...if I'm going to start feeling vane about something, it's probably NOT going to be my feet. Trust me, I have bigger fish to fry in the area of appearance.

Now that I'm 45 and really indulging in the whole "one of the benefits of growing older is that I can stop being even remotely concerned about what other people think of me" thing, here are some my thoughts on my appearance:

1) Hair: It's always going to be about shoulder length, and when the ends get too scraggly, I will trim them off myself. My hair is curly enough to hide any uneven cuts I make, so why pay a stylist to perform this service? For the privilege of hearing comments that are only designed to errode my self-esteem and make me feel even more dependent upon others to provide me with a socially acceptable appearance? Ah, no. My hair is also going to go gently into its natural shade of gray. If I go gray now, I figure that for the next 15 - 20 years, I will constantly look as if I'm about 55 years old. While that's kind of a bummer now, when I'm not that old, I'll be reaping the benefits for many years after I am that old. See, I'm planning ahead.

2) Nails: Since polish won't last more than 3 days, I choose to forego it comepletely. I'm defaulting to my karate nails. Trimmed short, filed round.

3) Teeth: They will be clean. My gums will be maintained. And no, you new dentists, hygenists, periodontists, or anyone else looking into my mouth for the first time, I am NOT going to fix the spaces between my teeth. Thirty plus years ago, when I was in junior high, I would have given anything to get braces, and I would have cherished my resulting Crest smile. I did, in fact, suffer considerably because of what I perceived to be the fatal flaw in my appearance. The sad truth is, when you're the youngest of 9 children, and your father works in a paper mill earning less than $20K per year, and your family doesn't have dental insurance, you do not get to spend the $1100 it would have cost to fix your teeth, no matter how sad this makes you, no matter how much it might affect your fragile childhood self-esteem. But, those days are over. I am 45, for doG's sake. I have been happily married for 20 years. I have long since learned to smile freely, openly, and without reservation, flashing my spaces for all the world to see. Am I now, for no apparent reason, supposed to subject myself to the pain and suffering (and cost) of braces? Heh. Right.

4) Body: I am out of shape, and this bothers me less and less for appearance's sake, and more and more for functionality's sake. I can't run as far as I used to, I get winded going up stairs, and my knees are breaking down. If I want this body to last another 40 years (which is not at all unreasonable in my family), I need to keep all the functionality that I possibly can. Losing the extra 20 or so pounds that I'm carrying around and getting strong again are my priorities.

I like knowing that, aside from teeth cleanings every 6 months, and eye exams every 2 years, I don't have to let anyone touch me. Well, except for DH...and that, of course, is a choice I make very happily. Because he's a nice man. Because he would never make an unkind comment about any part of my person. Because my whole self--brain and body--agree that it feels good when he touches me.