'Wrinkle Tour' puts new perspective on age lines

Like most people my age, I have a wrinkle collection: laugh lines, crow's feet, a furrowed brow and what an advertisement informed me are "parentheses" around my mouth. According to the American beauty industry, I shouldn't have wrinkles if I want to be beautiful. My answer? Of course I should. They're normal. What aren't normal, though apparently not physically dangerous, are extreme measures to eliminate them. Why have we decided wrinkles are a bad thing? Maybe it's all in how you look at them.

Wrinkles map out the life you've lived. While genetics play a significant part, so do geography, culture and lifestyle. Smokers get more wrinkles than nonsmokers. One study says that 80 percent of wrinkled smokers also have lung disease. Yet, many models representing "beauty" smoke to stay thin. The Mayo Clinic advises that lifetime sun exposure increases wrinkles along with skin cancer risks. Too little sunshine and you'll have   and look unfashionable. Americans spend millions on tanning beds and self-tanning lotions to look like we've been in the sun when we actually haven't. It's a little kooky. Why isn't healthy, natural-colored skin the gold standard for beauty? Especially when anything more than mild sun exposure is dangerous.

Middle-aged American women are the target-market for thousands of anti-aging beauty products and treatments. Miracle creams claim they'll shave years off my face. When I took my teenager to a dermatologist for acne, I was told to "come in anytime I want to freshen up my youth with a little Botox." Why have we decided only young people are beautiful?

I'm all for moisturizer and sunscreen, but I won't be purchasing a bankroll's worth of beauty-in-a-bottle. I'm not worried about a few lines. Instead, I'll spend my money revisiting the parts of the world I've traveled to that have healthier ideas about beauty.

But first some locales that aren't about "age is beautiful," Los Angeles and New York. While visiting those cities recently, and hitting celebrity-dotted cocktail parties, I noticed that both places boast high concentrations of ladies who "spa." Botoxed beauties dressed in couture with perfectly coiffed hair held tight, frozen expressions. While many looked lovely, they didn't look "normal." They looked anxious, pinched and uncomfortable.

Eighty percent of cosmetic procedures are done on Caucasians; 90 percent on women. They schedule facials, lunch-hour facelifts and microdermabrasion as tightly as business meetings. They nip, tuck, inject, laser, and slather on gallons of creams and cosmetics in going for a youthful look. One of the biggest catch phrases in marketing, though, is "natural beauty."

Next on my "wrinkle stop" tour: an international convention in Washington, DC, where a collection of senators, doctors, scientists, musicians, actors, educators and students gathered to discuss hunger, climate change and poverty. Women (and men) of all nationalities were dressed in their convention best. A few had that "fresh from the spa" look. The majority, however, looked "normal": well-dressed and well-groomed, but with a full array of facial expressions, minimal makeup, a healthy dose of gray hair and the attitudes of people who weren't overly worried about wrinkles. They looked intense, intelligent and exciting. Their bright minds and ideas were simply beautiful.

A European vacation busted my pre-conceived notions that European women are inherently more beautiful than the average American. They're not. They're just more carefully dressed, better groomed and more polished, without being buffed, pinched and pickled. Beauty had a different context when steeped in history, literature, philosophy, art and some of the world's best music, food and architecture. People were focused on what they were thinking, discussing and eating, as opposed to worrying about forehead furrows and beating back the years.

An assignment to the mountains of Peru revealed the most beauty I've ever seen--women with complexions clear and brown as milk chocolate. Their strong bodies were covered with soft natural fabrics, long skirts, and shawls that kept babies strapped to their backs. Old women had deeply lined faces, sun bronzed skin, bright beautiful eyes and thick long braids.

These Quechua women spend their days farming and working in small shops with lifelong friends and family. They're out in the full sun day in and day out, but they are sheltered by broad-brimmed hats. Their glossy hair is braided in the same style worn through many generations. No one wears makeup. Their faces express happiness, sadness, mischief, hardship, eagerness, shyness and fun. With the help of a translator, we talked about what constitutes "beauty" in their culture. A young woman giggled and said, "Hatun Siqui." "What's that," I asked? "A fat butt," my translator explained. A much older companion teased, "Yours is too skinny. You need a fat one like mine." Now, that's beautiful.

What I learned from my round-the-world beauty tour was that beauty is as beauty does. It's not about the lines on your face. It's about how you express yourself. It's not about how much you spend on your skin. It's about being comfortable in it. Don't worry about the parentheses around your mouth as much as what comes out of it. It's about thinking beautifully, not beauty treatments. It's our lives that make us beautiful. It's good to get older.