looking at various profiles in social networking sites, i do notice that people can’t help but accumulate favorite things. They can have as much as twenty favorite movies, even more favorite music, the sheer volume of their favorite tv shows will make you wonder if they are permanently bolted onto the couch doomed to watch series after series of shows ’til eternal repose.
ours now is a world of indecision, where young people are exposed to a blitzkrieg of stimuli from all directions, flung into fields from a million different angles. we can aimlessly flick through a multitude of cable channels and sift through the richest mine of the continuously expanding cyberspace. if this is how pop culture molded us as individuals, of course it would be too mind-numbing to choose only one favorite.
strangely though, i can name just one single favorite of many items:
book: the passion by jeanette winterson
song: when smokey sings by abc
visual artist: michael parkes
movie: il postino (dammit, not the kevin costner fluke, please stop asking! i may be tacky sometimes, but i’m not that tacky!)
animated film: a chipmunk adventure
singer: madonna (hey, i’m a popster at heart, and nothing beats the madge. though this would have been a toss-up between her and michael jackson. until jacko turned wacko and disappointed us all)
band: beck (and the coolest website too)
girl group: pussycat dolls
food: tofu
drink: coca-cola
fragrance: lacoste pour femme
cigarettes: philip morris (so?! eh jologs ako, paki alam nyo? you’ll never see me spend more than 35 clams for these cancer-inducing bad habits)
apparel: tyler
and so many other things to which i’d give one (just one!)answer when asked what of it is my favorite. without batting an eyelash too. this proves how tenacious a stickler i am. how single-minded and focused, how zoned-in i can be. how fiercely loyal i am to certain brands (heck, even my underwear drawer strains under the weight of just one brand).
but for the life of me, i can’t seem to name just one single favorite color. and that had chief flying off the handle there. which is a different story for a different entry.
…so you shouldn’t show you age.
this very day, i arrive at the lastest of my late twenties. one more year and i am officially doomed to obscurity. unless i do something about it.
first things first: vanity is a priority. yes, i plead guilty to the facile form of the highest capital sin. narcissus better scoot over that lakeshore so i can peer into my own reflection. and because i may have some sort of body dysmorphic disorder, i can sweat over the shallowest of things and suffer chronically of an insecurity against the rest of the beautiful populace.
i have dry skin. which was fantastic growing up because while classmates labored over clearasil, astringents and oil blotters, i had absolutely no worries about breakouts. i never used face powder until i started working. but late twenties/early thirties will more than make up for what i lacked in blemishes. fine lines. the gradual appearance of the horror that is wrinkles. which i can overdramatize into a disaster now: tenacious creases under my eyes, the multi-pronged semi-dignified crow’s feet, a furrowed complex between my eyes and eyebrows, and these hairline canals of laugh lines in places that, at a younger age, indicated my joy.
my problem is… i hate face gunk. i don’t like the feeling of moisturizers, no matter how light they claim to be. they’re all the same heavy, humid, gluey stuff to me. heck, i don’t even use body lotion despite my scaly surface. so how to battle (or at least delay) these signs of aging without the aid of gelatinous substances? i suppose there’s no easier way.
so for the first time in my superficially insecure life, i used toner and moisturizer. i started using them about three weeks ago, after one of the consultants in our beauty department persuaded me into investing lunch money in moisture (“you will thank me for it, trust me. how you look in your 20’s is a gift from god. how you look in your 30’s is your gift to yourself”). he drove a very convincing argument there, so off i went to buy a set of facial wash, toner and moisturizer from the next personal care store i stumbled upon on my way to food (i’m afraid i am not ready to splurge on our own brands; it takes genuine enlightening experience for me to be persuaded into buying thousands of pesos worth of skincare).
three weeks after i diligently applied these compounds onto my screwy face, i still haven’t figured out how women built a habit of it. application is superfluous effort, takes away good sleeping time each morning.
when i visited one of the stores last weekend, the supervisor drew close to my cheek and suddenly says, “you’re skin is so nice today. what did you do?” and before i can even reply, she walks two steps into the stockroom, brings out one of the store staff and says to her, “look at her skin. isn’t it nice?” then she turns to me again, “what did you do?”
our beauty consultant was right. i will thank him for it.
