Tag: physical appearance

I Know That Face

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Split picture showing Grandma Bert, a white woman in her fifties with short, wavy hair and a big smile. She's wearing Santa Clause earrings, a red blouse, and a flower print vest and Kiki, a white woman in her forties with short brown and silver hair and a big smile. She's wearing a white shirt, a black vest, and she's got sunglasses on the top of her head.I do not look like my parents. I don’t look like my sister. And my sister doesn’t look like either of our parents. Growing up, I heard, “you don’t look like your mom” and “you don’t look like your dad” a lot. I once had someone tell me that one of my friends looked more like my sister than my actual sister does. Our family portraits look like Olan MIlls grabbed four randos off the street to create a sample family portrait to lure legitimate families in for a sit.

This isn’t a case of adoption or babies swapped in the hospital (I maintain that my mother made us do the ancestry DNA thing because she was sure that she’d taken the wrong babies home). We aren’t total strangers. My eye color comes from my dad and his dad. I sound like my mom’s sister and sometimes my sister and sometimes my mom. But, the point is that I’ve gotten used to not seeing myself in my family. I’m not like my cousins or my friends who ended up being carbon copies of their parents, or have children that are replicas of themselves. I look like me and no one else.

Except maybe not so much anymore.

A long time ago, my dad’s aunt told me that I had the same kind of cheekbones as my grandma. I dismissed it at the time because I didn’t really see it. I’ve always had excellent cheekbones even at my heaviest and I admit that my grandma had some fabulous cheekbones, too, but I never thought they were similar.

Carrie once told me that she always wondered where my nose came from until she saw a picture of my grandma. I never thought our noses looked that much alike, so I dismissed the notion of similarity. After all, I’d always looked like me and nobody else.

And then one day, a friend of mine and I took a selfie and when I saw it, I immediately thought, “Holy shit, I look like my grandma”.

Because I kinda do.

It seems that as I’ve gotten older, I’m aging into resembling her.

This is not a bad thing. I think it’s a good thing. My grandma was a beautiful woman. It’s just not something that I anticipated happening. I spent my life only looking like me. It never occurred to me that I might age into looking like someone else in my family. Obviously, I’m not evolving into her mini me (except maybe in attitude and willingness to use a fly swatter as a weapon), but the similarities that we do have, the features that I did inherit, have become more pronounced as I’ve aged. It’s honestly kind of wild.

My grandma died in 2004 when she was 65. I was 24 then. I’m 46 now. I admit that sometimes when I catch sight of myself in the mirror or in pictures and I think I’m look like my grandma, it’s a little bittersweet. ‘Cause I miss her.

I can only hope that I continue to age well in her honor.

I Am Poorly Put Together

~ Kiki Writes ~ 5 Comments

My DNA assembled like a Voltron bought off Wish and it’s the cause of so many of my problems*.

First of all, I’m too short. Yes, I realize that at 5’5″ I’m the average height for a woman, but I feel like a lot of my problems could be solved if I were taller, say 5’8″ or 5’9″. Maybe even 5’10”. The point is that if you stretched me out some, I’d be in a lot better shape. Just being taller would go a long way to solve some issues. Like needing to climb on the counter to get stuff on the top of the cabinets because I’m just a little too short.

My hands and my feet are too small and everything else is too big. I’ve somehow created the illusion that my fingers are longer than they are, probably because they’re more on the slender side and I paint my nails, but trust me. My hands are too small. My ability to play the guitar is severely hindered. My handfuls of anything are miniscule. Small hands on the ends of chunky arms with voluminous bat wings is just not a good look.

Speaking of, the arms are a bit too short, which adds to the chunkiness. Longer arms would give more space for that fat. Oh, and you want to be able to reach something with your teeny grubby chubbies? Tough luck lady. Better get to climbing with your too-short legs ’cause you got alligator arms. My belly dance moves always look less graceful without the long arms and adult-sized hands. I’m like a flailing toddler over here.

I am violently pear-shaped. Big hips, big ass, big thighs…and then small feet. I come to a point. I look like a waffle cone with a fat belly (2 scoops!), manageable breasticles (thanks to reduction surgery), and broad shoulders stacked on top, all of that a little mashed because I’m short-waisted. You want jeans that fit? Good luck. You want to be able to wear certain shirts without Hulking out of them? Keep dreaming.

When I was getting my physical therapy assessment done to prepare for my patellar tendonitis treatment, the guy doing the assessment said to his student, “You see how she’s got wide hips like that? How her legs come down like that? Yeah, that’ll cause knee problems.” So, what you’re telling me is that my body actually assembled itself to cause itself pain. Given my brain’s reluctance to make happy chemicals, I suppose that tracks. I still don’t appreciate it, though.

But this goes back to what I said earlier about being too short. If you stretched me out a bit, my hips wouldn’t be so wide and I wouldn’t have knee problems. Science.

Also, the thing with the small feet is that while I can wear boys’ shoes and that’s pretty great when you’re in the market for some Power Ranger velcros, these tiny dancers don’t fit this big frame. Even without the excess weight, I’ve got broad shoulders and big hips. I need bigger boats for all this freight. It’s like moving a refrigerator on roller skates. Funny, but not necessarily functional.

It’s frustrating to be so poorly drawn, looking like a lot of bad ideas somebody scotch-taped together. The fashion doesn’t wear as well. The odds and ends, what’s left in the bin approach to assembly has caused some unfortunate wear and tear. Damn shame about the warranty. And to be completely shallow, it’s not that aesthetically pleasing.

Is 43 too late for a growth spurt? Asking for my two-scoop waffle cone shaped friend.

*Petty ass complaints about mostly insignificant things with the exception of the petellar tendonitis because I’m tired of my knees hurting and I’d like to be able to squat down again, thank you.