I’m beginning to look like an iguana.

This is a story about losing excess weight. Not a huge amount, but enough to make a significant difference in my life. I’m 64 and due to a recent encounter with the nerve pain of sciatica that left me with almost no appetite and depleted my energy as I used it to endure the pain, I ended up losing over a period of about four weeks, the 10+ pounds I’ve been trying to shed for what seems like forever. I’ve gone from 140 lbs. to 129 lbs. It’s not a weight loss regime I would recommend to anyone, but it has been extremely effective. I no longer have the same level of appetite I had previously and now that I’ve reached the weight that feels healthy and comfortable, the weight where my body and I are integrated and I’m not wearing my body around like a heavy winter coat in the summer, I am unwilling to overeat. Eating is still a pleasure but it has been out compassed by the joy of being mostly pain free. Not to mention the economic incentive of being able to once again wear the clothes in my closest.

My body looks better. I’m enjoying wearing favorite items of clothes that likely thought I had ghosted them. Those bones that show up on women’s chests just below the neck, the ones that are buried by even a little extra weight look lovely and sculpted now. It makes me feel beautiful. But just above those bones is my neck, which is covered with reptilian looking skin that looks even more leathery without extra fat cells to plump it up. And when I smile the cording in my neck looks like an iguana reaching for a tasty bug. Other parts of my body have also been affected. My legs and ass look much more marvelous at this lower weight. My face looks a tad more haggard, a touch older. But my neck wins the prize for scaring off anyone afraid of aging or compelled to give older women advice about how to look younger.

I should mention that I choose to walk everywhere in all kinds of weather. My Italian ancestry means that I don’t burn and have never used sunscreen. I could pass for someone who worked laying the Russian railroad. The first person I married had a grandmother that actually did this. Her face was a roadmap of lines. I thought it was stunning. She wore the same pair of ruby earrings every day of her life. I’m not sure if she ever took them off. I think she felt beautiful.

Here’s the thing, so do I. My crepey reptilian skin is the topographical snapshot of all of my life decisions. My skin is still ridiculously soft. It always has been. It’s a light shade of olive in the winter that makes me look as if I’m coming down with a little something and a glorious shade of tan in the summer that looks almost golden.

I don’t want to look 18 or 20 or even 40. I’m grateful for everything I’ve learned in this life, not for what life taught me but for what life invited me to learn from if I was willing. I was and I still am.

I believe in entertainment value. I can laugh at my neck at smile at my gorgeous ass, which does look much younger than my 64 years. Both make me smile. I am not vain but I will not try in vain to be something I am not. Getting older is a privilege. If we don’t get that now in our current 2020 situation we may never get it.

I choose to refuse to internalize the expectations of men who see women solely as objects for their enjoyment and the judgments of women who have cattily bought into those expectations.

So go ahead, feel free to take a look and appreciate my ass but understand the neck comes with it.

Kurt Vonnegut famously said when he was 80 that he was beginning to resemble an iguana. I’m only 64, but just the other day my neck achieved iguana level.

2020