Remember when I talked about women having this bonding ritual where they over expose each others to their insecurities and "wrong ugly things" about their bodies to the point of creating and putting new insecurities on themselves and their friends etc, how we see it all the time on social media for example, how my friend talking a lot about her "ugly looking big nose" (it's literally normal it looks like any average nose) and how much she thinks about surgery, how only after that I noticed I was unconsciously staring at my nose in the mirror and measuring it.... yeah.
Lately my friends and cousins and some women from work have been leaving comments on my face and lack of wrinkles, I'm well into my 20s so it's not like I'm 40 but obviously a lot of women are now obsessing over wrinkles from a younger age as we all know and see on social media and around us, but apparently I don't have any wrinkles or fine lines yet, like only if I scrunch my forehead as hard as I can very close to the mirror two fine lines will appear, and the more women around me and on social media keep talking about wrinkles the more I start noticing them on people when I never paid any mind to them or even thought about them before (like I said at one point we ingrain these beauty standards and insecurities into each others until we become highly observant and analytical about ourselves and other women), and ESPECIALLY since more and more women around me lately including women around my age are doing work, botox and fillers etc, it literally keeps increasing and is talked about more and more everywhere I go, so yeah I kinda started noticing these things more, and how women my age and sometimes younger already have some visible wrinkles and fine lines and like yeah of course that's absolutely normal, not sure why I still don't but I spent a lot of time in the sun growing up and rarely wore sunscreen, I still like going on walks and hikes a lot and don't wear it all the time.
Now the funny thing is after all that and everyone's comments about me I went and looked for the first time ever at my mom's face to "analyze" it, she's obviously much older and didn't wear much sunscreen and spent a lot of time under the sun, she loved hours long walks too etc and most she'll do is wear a hat, her skin is littered with sun spots sure, but I actually noticed for the first time ever how smooth her skin is for her age, I asked her to raise her brows and scrunch her forehead as far as she can and she barely has one wrinkle in sight, literally just one lonely wrinkle, even women younger than her or women using tret retinol etc have very prominent wrinkles all over, and again of course it's normal and natural etc, but all I'm saying is maybe it's a genetic thing I got from her lmao.
Anyways back to the point, so they recently kept telling me how smooth my forehead and my skin are, and they've asked me how I did it.... did what?? Yeah like I said I noticed women my age with visible wrinkles but again I'm not even 30 yet, like I still have plenty of time to get wrinkles, the women from work keep saying girl we know you use retinol it's alright and I'm like no I don't, then they asked if I use tape and I'm like whatt??? My cousins and friends keep asking what I use for my skin and what I'd recommend them, all of them are now telling me I'm lucky..... and it's getting really weird, it's starting to feel annoying honestly, and what's more annoying is when they told me I'm lucky with that self deprecating tone like they want me to soothe their insecurities for them, when they would throw "friendly jabs" about the unattractive things about me and my body, like don't you sometimes keep mentioning my stomach and "oh you look a little bit pregnant so cute haha but have you considered losing some weight it doesn't look very flattering, you'd look better with a tiny waist" and other specific things about my appearance, or about me not conforming to beauty standards like "arm and leg hair don't look good, you know it wouldn't hurt to wax or shave"... but now you're saying I'm so lucky because of some wrinkles that I don't have YET.... oh ok.