I Am A Dirty Word

What's the "dirtiest" word in our society?

Old.

We are so scared of this inevitable experience that we spend millions of dollars trying to hide the fact that we are ....gasp....getting old. And don't think I'm any more able to stay away from the little magic potions in an attempt to halt the march of time and even though I keep swearing I'm just going to stop dying my hair and "just let my freak flag fly"...I keep on doing it.

A few years back I organized an erotic art show as part of a wine festival up this way. (NOT pornography...look up the word EROTIC) I got intrigued by nude paintings and in the course of researching this genre, it occurred to me that , allowing for body image change across the centuries, there are NO older women portrayed. After an exhaustive search I found maybe 2 (?) artists of our common era and they were women themselves, painting the older woman nude.
Makes you wonder.
So I decided to paint myself in the nude. It was quite interesting to see the reaction that painting received. It certainly wasn't horrifically graphic, quite tasteful truly, but maybe the fact I put it in front of my town's people (just a bit too over the top for most of them) that may figure into the reaction, however, still and all it was an older body.
I mean there's a lot about my body I wish wasn't there but I'd like to think at 4 years away from 60, I'm not doing too bad.
I'd like to think that we would look at our body changes as marks of our journey through life but most of us just feel ashamed.
What is it going to take to change this I wonder.

I am planning another nude myself.