Free Range Face

As a yoga teacher, one of my strengths is bringing humor to the class. I believe that laughter, just like movement, music, community and nature is a medicine. Yoga can feel serious when really we’re just making shapes and noticing our reactions to them. Yoga is meant to be an exploration and we need our full bodies, hearts and minds to do this. 

There is one yoga asana (posture) called Dhanurasana (bow pose) where I love to make a silly joke. In the posture, a student lies on their stomach, bends their knees and reaches for their ankles. From there, they lift their chest and thighs off the floor. This pose stretches the back, opens the chest, and improves flexibility. One of my favorite cues here is to say “your eyebrows won’t help you.” It’s because I have a highly expressive face that I often found myself lifting my eyebrows to the ceiling, as if that would help deepen the backbend. And I would laugh at myself, because of course the eyebrows aren’t necessary in the posture. As a teacher, I love sharing this small moment of laughter.

I realize, in yoga and nearly everywhere else, how much I need my facial expressions. I need my face to share joy and laughter, anger and sadness.  I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve, I wear my emotions on my face. I don’t have a resting bitch face, I have an active human face. This is what I like to call: free range face. 

In considering the free range face, I got to thinking about chickens. 

But I don’t want to be a Perdue or Tyson chicken, one that lives a sad short life in sub par conditions. These are the big brands that have become the norm, just like frozen faces of botox have sadly become normalized. These factory farm chickens are cooped up in an area that is too small with hormones and antibiotics in their food. They are forced to confirm and their worth is tied to their production. 

I would of course, prefer to be a free range chicken. They have space to roam and roast, to scratch and peck and hang out with a bunch of other gals. Free range hens are happier and also lay more healthy and better eggs. Free range chickens are more unique, not uniform so they can be sold in perfectly proportioned containers. 

And in a weird way, the feminine face is much like a chicken. You see, I turn 42 today and it seems like my face, with its wrinkles and creases is becoming a problem. So much of a problem that nearly every other IG ad is for a lotion, potion, device or procedure that will help tame my face. That like the factory farmed chickens, my face (and gray hair) needs to be managed and made more uniform to fit in. These ads promise, in the most convincing of ways, to take my face from its current free range status to factory farm. That is: I'll be put in a box so I can look younger. 

I've noticed, and you might have as well, that women are starting to look alike. Not just in how they dress but in their actual faces. The lip injections that make women look like they have a seafood allergy. The impossibly smooth foreheads. Noses and jaw lines that have been chiseled by a scalpel. Somewhere at the intersection of celebrity culture, Zoom meetings, selfies, medical advancements, consumerism and social media, fewer women, especially over the age of 40, have a free range face. The definition of beauty is becoming so narrow that those who haven't gotten cosmetic work done are becoming the outliers. We’re being forced into small cages…just like the hens. 

Allow me to introduce: free-range face. The free-range face is one that is natural without fillers, cosmetic surgery, injections, poisons or enhancements. It's a face that changes over time, because that's what faces do! They change! As does the tide, the moon, the seasons and the breath. We are literally changing all the time, this is the natural order of things. To look young forever doesn't make any more sense than a rose bush to be in bloom in February. 

Without plastic surgery or augmentation, I have a free-range face. And I feel like I'm in the minority. My face looks different because I'm not going to a plastic surgeon to ask for their opinion on how to "improve" my face. It's worth nothing that male plastic surgeons outnumber their female counterparts 5:1, so we're now outsourcing the definition of what is beautiful to the masculine perspective. 

Like the hens, I need a free range face because I love to explore. I need my face for living: to be able to make funny expressions at babies and have them laugh. To tell stories and have my eyebrows go up and not stay frozen in one place. I need my face to give the "WTF" expression every time I hear the latest ridiculous thing the current administration puts out into the world. My face, like my thoughts and activities, needs room to roam. I cannot and will not go back into the factory farm cage of beauty definitions. 

How odd that there are so many suggestions for ways to cage my face, to keep me cooped up.  How odd that the dominant culture praises women for looking younger, which further disconnects us from the truth that we are all aging, literally every day of our lives. Change is inevitable, but that doesn't mean it's bad. We fear change like we fear death, because it is the unknown. And so we cling to that which we know, a younger version of ourselves that is outdated. Consumerism thrives on fear: of aging, of not being good enough. So to have a free range face is to honor my changes while rejecting the consumerism that permeates American culture. 

My body, including my face, is for living, not for looking. I wear my wrinkles and the silver sparkles in my hair with pride and joy because I value the wisdom that comes from age and a life full of ups and down. I'm not going to live in a cage of beauty as defined by someone else. I will be free range and expansive, allowing my age to be worn like a crown. 

So no actually, I don't want to "fix" or "treat" my wrinkles. And no, I don't want to reverse the signs of aging (which we can't really do, even though this is what the slick marketing campaigns promise). Because I am aging, every damn day. I am living, every damn day. I am marching one step closer towards becoming an elder and that is something to celebrate! To be stuck in youth, without wisdom and experience is not the goal. To be trapped in my own face unable to fully express myself is not the goal. To be free range in my thoughts, words and yes, my face...that's the goal.

For all my selfies on social media I'll be using the hashtag #freerangeface to build awareness around the aging process. I’d love for you to join me and let the world see your free range face. I’m not the only one who feels this way and certainly not the only one with a #freerangeface. I can’t wait to see yours!