Saw an ad on TV the other day for wrinkle removal. They called them crow’s feet or laugh lines.
I’m not going to get into the larger women, appearance, society conversation as there are better posts by smarter people covering that topic.
What I want to do is write in defense of laugh lines.
First, the name “laugh lines” actually indicate a significant cause: laughing. I think this is a good thing. Someone who laughs more is going to have laugh lines. Someone with laugh lines probably has spent a lot of their life smiling. Yes, they can be caused by squinting, but unless you are Clint Eastwood or never got the glasses you should have had, chances are they are caused by smiling and laughing. I also rule out psychopaths like the Joker for obvious reasons.
I have kids and that brings me to my second point. How do I know if I have been a good parent? Obviously, there is no test, no true/false checklist to answer that question. Realizing that there are lots of valid definitions of good parenting and lots of opinions, I humbly submit that someone having laugh lines by age 40 is part of my definition. A person that has smiled enough to earn them, is a person that has a decent chance of being in a good place.
My kids are not 40 yet but they seem on their way to earning laugh lines.
I hope when they get them, they don’t view them as a defect or something to fix. I hope they view them as a signal to the world that smiling and laughing is a regular part of who they are.
Comments
3 responses to “Laugh lines by age 40”
Reblogged this on Saint Paul By Bike-Every Block of Every Street.
John, for us, laugh lines are well earned and the more, the better. I just hope that your children’s laugh lines are from laughing with you, not at you.
Yeah, well, there is definitely laughing at me, but, yes, hopefully a bunch of laughing with me.
Although there is great fun to be had in being the uncool dad that embarrasses their children. They don’t usually laugh, but I do.