Seriously_.I'm Kidding - Ellen DeGeneres [2]
To me, beauty is about being comfortable in your own skin. It’s about knowing and accepting who you are. I’m happy being who I am. I’m confident, I live honestly and truthfully, and I think that’s why I was chosen as the first fifty-year-old, openly gay CoverGirl. It’s just a bonus that I have devastatingly blue eyes.
But we really are a society that focuses so much on physical appearance. I realized this recently when I accidentally looked into one of those mirrors that magnify your face to five hundred times its actual size. They sell them at Bed Bath & Beyond in the “Things That Make You Feel Bad About Yourself” aisle. They’re right next to the bathroom scales, usually on a shelf you’re too short to reach. I’m sure you’ve all looked into one of them at some point. On one side, it’s a totally normal mirror. And then if you turn it over to the other side, your face looks like the surface of the moon.
Portia and I have one in our shower. I never look in it because it’s usually blocked by the person who washes me. But for some reason I looked in it one day and, oh Lordy, that is a horrible invention! Who invented that thing and why haven’t they been jailed? Those things need to come with a warning. Car mirrors have warnings that say, “Objects are closer than they appear.” Magnification mirrors should have warnings that say, “Objects are not as attractive as they appear.”
They show you things you didn’t know were there, that no one can possibly see. I looked at my hairline and I found a family of doves living in it. It was shocking. The only people who need to see things that close up are surgeons who are performing delicate operations and jewelers. That’s it. No one is gonna see you the way you see yourself in those mirrors unless you’re married to a surgeon or a jeweler and they come home from work still wearing that apparatus. “Honey, I’m home. Oh my goodness, your pores are huge!”
I don’t know why we ever need to look into those. They’re not accurate. They point out every single one of our flaws. We don’t need that. That’s why we have mothers. The fact of the matter is that everyone has flaws. No one is perfect, except for Penélope Cruz. Our flaws are what make us human. If we can accept them as part of who we are, they really don’t even have to be an issue.
I feel the same way about age. I’ve never been someone to lie about my age. I don’t understand it. Actually, I don’t know how people can lie about their age anymore now that the Internet exists. Not only can people easily find out what year I was born, they can find out what time, what hospital, how long my mother was in labor. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was footage on YouTube of the doctor spanking me. The only reason there isn’t is because YouTube didn’t exist when I was born.
Our age is something we have absolutely no control over; it’s just a fact of who we are. I enjoy growing older and wiser and learning from my mistakes every single day. I’m happy, for example, that I no longer eat paste, like I did when I was twenty-four. And I’m happy that in a few years I’ll be able to get half-price tickets to movies and museums. Considering how often I go to the movies and museums, I could save upward of thirty dollars a year.
When we were kids, all we wanted was to be older. When we were seven and a half and someone said we were only seven, we were furious. We probably even cried about it. Can you imagine doing that now as an adult? “This is Marsha. She’s forty-two.” “Forty-two and a half! You always forget the half! I’m practically forty-two and three-quarters!” I don’t know at what age people stop wanting to be older. People seem to enjoy their twenties and thirties. It must be around forty, when you’re “over the hill.” I don’t even know what that means and why it’s a bad thing. When I go hiking and I get over the hill, that