Patty’s Day at the Beach

This is how I hoped Sand & Sables
would make me feel, young, thin, glamorous…
smelling of coconuts and hopefully my coconuts closer to my neck — like they were 20 years ago. March’s pick of Sand & Sables was pretty good. It was my runner-up and almost the winner until I spied Antonio languishing at the bottom of a shelf in Rite-Aid. I was so shocked because I thought this would have been in the locked cabinet, but no, so I was not cheating by buying it, though it was in the $20 range instead of the $5 range that I probably should have stayed.

I was glad I found it because I knew March would pick the Sand & Sables.
It was the only decent choice in a Sea of Musk and strippeddowntohorrificcheapreissuesfromformerlyoldclassics. Do I like Sand & Sables? It’s not a bad little perfume. It’s definitely beachy smelling, it’s not offensive to my nose or to others. It comes in a cheesy bottle, but almost everything in the drugstore does now. You can’t gift drugstore perfume without looking cheap.
Spirit by Antonio Banderas was way sweeter on me. I don’t have that incredible sweet-eating skin like March has. It’s not so sweet that it is offensive, and I could wear either without apologizing. The problem with both is that they are so inoffensive as to be forgettable and quite ordinary.

Did this picture scare you? The main reason I had to get the Antonio Banderas perfume is so we could talk about something really important, unneeded and bad plastic surgery that is destroying our society and women’s faces, as evidenced here with Melanie’s plastic surgery disasters. I’m getting older, I have wrinkles and things settling in places I didn’t know they were able to go, and I really don’t have a fundamental objection to plastic surgery for those who really want it. I’ve seen good surgery that has made people feel great about themselves, but their goal wasn’t to stay looking like they were 22 forever. But, Melanie, sweet Mother of God, you were and are a beautiful woman without the size 14 lips and the skin pulled so far back that you probably have a banana hairclip on the back of your head holding it that tight.

How could you think this is an improvement? Cheap perfume would not hurt this look at all.

And another Jessica – Ms Lange – Stop. For the love of all that is good and beautiful about women, please stop committing this violence on your face! Eyebrows do not belong halfway up your forehead, seemingly held up by invisible wires, looking like they belong to the person behind you.

Many years ago I read an interview you gave, and this was when you had wrinkles starting. You looked like a woman should look, and you were still incredibly smoldering. In that interview, you stated you would not do plastic surgery, that wrinkles were a part of you and your life. Apparently you changed your mind… the one that is tucked and sucked behind those overarched, way-too-high caterpillars masquerading as eyebrows.

Ladies, get a mirror, you look awful!!!!

Thank you for indulging me.

Does this make me a perfume snob? Yes, probably, but I will always long for the days when a trip to the perfume counter at the drugstore was an adventure in scent. For the price of a Cherry Sprite and an hour of your time, you could walk out reeking of perfumes that were really pretty charming, many of them classics. A time when women with wrinkles and sags were charming as well, classics, never trying too hard to be what they were not, content to be Women of a Certain Age, women to look up to who wore their years well, for all the laughter and sorrow was etched on their faces, the signs that they had truly lived and loved. It is the attempt to render the life out of classic perfumes and women that make them cheap and, well, ordinary.