I recently read that "research" shows one in eight women worry more about how their hands age than their faces - which if you flip it around shows that seven out of eight women worry more about their faces than their hands and is a classic piece of advertising jiggery-pokery.
If we worry about our hands ageing at all, I can't imagine any of us worry enough to have fat sucked out of our thighs and pumped into the backs of them. At least I sincerely hope not because if you do I'm not sure we can still be friends. This senseless procedure will set you back two grand and require a commitment to "topping up". It's an arse-about-face world (sometimes literally) and no mistake – just google "hand rejuvenation procedures" and look at what you come up with, but probably not while you're eating. I haven't been able to track down this particular piece of "research", which tells us one in eight worry about their hands, but it sounds like another of those daft statistics advertisers stick on the end of their spiel to panic the credulous into buying a product. Take this one for example: "82% of UK women agree* …" which sounds impressive until you check the * and it says "194 UK women". 194 women? That's not quite what was implied by the bright red 18-point font at the top of the page.
Anyway … hands. Hands must take almost as much of a battering as feet. My hands have always looked as though they belonged to a middle-aged woman. As my dad pointed out: "They're practical hands, they are." My mum would snort with contempt at any woman with long manicured nails: "Well, they don't see much washing up." We were very much a roll-your-sleeves-up household so I spent much of my childhood completely unaware that Marigolds even existed and sawing bits off my thumb when cobbling together a new rabbit hutch. As soon as I could hold a pen I developed an ink-stained writer's bump that Jo March would have been proud of because I was eternally scribbling. And so it goes on – the knocks and bumps and breakages that are the natural consequence of living a normal life.
Hands are hands and that is all. Having said that, I think most of us will have lusted after beautiful nails at some point and that's another feminine foible that has spawned an enormous and largely pointless industry. Like a lot of people, I've experimented with nail wraps, gel nails, false nails and growing my own nails but the day I ended up in A&E having a nail splinted after breaking it very painfully (sanding a sideboard if you must know) I decided that long nails weren't for me. Long nails stop you doing stuff, in much the same way high heels can. If they're an indicator of status, then sod status.
I am relieved I have outgrown expensive hand maintenance and that sensible prettily painted nails are now winning against the nasty curling Howard Hughes ones. However, just because I don't care enormously doesn't mean I don't care at all and, yes, of course I feel ever so slightly aggrieved that age has ridged my nails and my hands are looking the tiniest bit knobbly and freckled but I absolutely do not worry about it because I'm busy getting on with things. Life is too short for anything much more than basic upkeep. I hate the papery feeling of dry skin so there's hand cream in every room, a pair of rubber gloves for washing up and gardening gloves for gardening. I wear gloves in winter. If I have got snaggy bits on my hands I rub them with olive oil and salt. Most evenings see the application of cuticle oil and nail cream and together with an occasional manicure I think that's quite enough. I like that my hands have got leaner because they better suit the rings I like to wear. I like it when my hands get tanned in the summer and I can paint my nails bright red. What I don't like and what does worry me is promotion of the idea that hands can be "rejuvenated" as though age is bad and ageing can be stopped. It isn't and it can't and I wish more people would develop some backbone about coming to terms with it.
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