Anti-wrinkle creams rub pro-wrinkle attitude

Wrinkles are not insurgents who creep into the territory to attack you. They become legal citizens of the facial landscape. So what does anti-wrinkle mean exactly? Use before wrinkles appear? Stop them? Delay them? Smooth them out?  

Scowling and grimacing while using them posed a bigger threat for me.

For someone who grew up watching skin care routines of egg whites for mom’s face and no soap policy on my grandma’s face (both had fab skin), warming up to such army of cosmetics wasn’t natural. A spoonful of saffron, milk and honey on the face is.  

However, I bought chemicals laden creams for skin tightening, eye-lifting, under the eye and over the cheeks. Tiny bottles stood at my command, guarding my skin.

I wonder why did I purchase them? I use foundation on my face and lipstick and eye shadow for a nice evening outside the humdrum of every day life.

Now, I had to dab my face with these potions with specific finger strokes and finger numbers as the labels instructed every day twice a day—in the morning and bedtime right in the vortex of the humdrum life.  

So if I was used to throwing my socks away before getting into bed, now I had to use these products one by one with utmost care. I scowled and grimaced. And then I reminded myself of what Maria, the beauty rep told me. “It is preventative.” Voila, that is why I had handed her my wallet.

Preventative? Such as DTP vaccines for Diphtheria, Tetanus and Polio?

Meanwhile, Maria had rubbed creams gently over both my wrists till the forearms were covered up to the elbow.

She came out from behind the counter, put her arm around me as if to address my wandering mind and said, “Oh I will help you -- we are neighbors.”

What’s a little Pakistan on the map between friends? I thought.

Republican vice president nominee Sarah Palin called Afghanistan a neighboring country to U.S. in a speech in 2008, according to Reuters.

Afghanistan and India. Mahatma Gandhi vs. Osama bin Laden, fertile paddy fields vs. rugged mountain.

Maria was 50 with flawless apricot skin, almond shaped eyes.  I wondered what my face would look like at her age. Rugged wrinkles crisscrossing or smooth well hydrated paddy fields?

She called her friend with a term of endearment, ‘Salma jaan’ for dear Salma.  

Salma was big and stout and bombarded me with heavy firing of the grueling regimen: put the skin tightening, rejuvenation on top of moisturizer and the SPF, then the eye cream.

I tried doing this for two days and no more.  I detested them—the tingling, the tightening, the headaches, burning in my eyes, the sensitivity my face complained about.

I stopped using them and returned them.

I can’t be happier to be back on my routine and let the skin cells be on their own routine.  I am not ready for anti-wrinkle serums. They are not for me. My olive toned skin is.  

My skin and I signed a peace treaty with some almonds crushed in yogurt and rosewater.