Introduction





My name is Karen Edwards, I am 42 years old and have a 16 year old son called Mitchell. I live on a potato farm in the beautiful Kamberg Valley which is some where by Giants Castle in Kwa Zulu Natal, south Africa and work as a freelance photographer. After leaving school 25 years ago I found myslelf with the oppertunity to go back to school and re-educate myself and this blog is a diary of what I learn in the next year of mature student life - and no I did not ever think that I would ever be refered to as mature anything!

The blog is also where my lecturer (Phillipa Cameron) checks up to see if I understand anything she is trying to teach me - Good luck Phil!

so here goes Karen E 101...

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Story - From super model to middle aged by a middle aged ex fashion model

From super model to middle aged by a middle aged ex fashion model
 
 
From super model to middle aged by a middle aged ex fashion model
I started off life as one of those buck teethed, Pole thin, lanky ugly kids ; I stood six foot tall at fourteen years old and my mother who was the worlds worst hair dresser insisted on cutting my thick thatch like hair, which only gave me the appearance of a concentration camp survivor.       
Luckily for me my parents invested in a full set of metal braces to sort out my protruding teeth, I begged my mother to stop cutting my hair and to take me to a real hair dresser which really did help, then with a little push from nature my hips and breasts evolved and by the time I was 16 I wasn’t half bad looking. Having shown no real talent for anything but causing trouble at school my folks decided that as I was so tall, okay looking and not very bright I could be a fashion model.
Next think I knew I was sent off to a modelling school in London for a week and then to a Modelling agency in Spain, where to mine and everyone else’s  total surprise I made a successful career out of modelling and ended up working and travelling all over the world for  nearly 15 years. I retired at the grand old age of 31 feeling very old, tired and worn out.
But in the real world, as opposed to the fashion world which marches to its own ever youthful un-ageing beat, thirty is still considered young; No need to concern yourself with the television adverts which promise that you could look 10 years younger in 7 days if you are prepared to smear some sort of age defying snail goo all over your face. You can still wear wonder bras and skin tight jeans comfortably .You feel sexy, young, in control and immortal.
As I understand the ageing process it is a bit like taking an original document and doing a photocopy; then you take the photocopied document and copy that; then take that copy and copy it again and take that copy and copy it etc. And you will find that by the 20th copy the writing is dull and has lost some of the original print, it may be a  bit fuzzy around the edges but you can still sort of see what it used to say.
The same happens to the cells in your body, from the moment you are born each cell photocopies itself which then photocopies that cell and the process continues until you die. When you start to go grey it is because your hair cells have basically run out of ink and can no longer copy in colour. Wrinkles are just cells duplicating the way you hold your face most of the day; Did you ever notice that parents with young kids always seem to have a bit of a furrow  wrinkle between their eyebrows? I think this illustrates the constant confusion which young parents are subjected to: You always seem to be scrunching your face up saying something like ‘No’ or ‘because I said so’. It would seem that as your children grow up, so your facial expressions change, you get new wrinkles; great horizontal lines which cross your forehead gained from lifting your eyebrows to the heavens while asking your teenager “What have you done now?”  Or ‘How much?’  You should note that the horizontal lines do cancel out the furrowed wrinkle, but you will be left with permanent laughter lines around your eyes as this is one of the many physical by-products of having children.
Wrinkles are not the only dilemma; sagging skin is an additional quandary. While pottering around the farm on my motor bike one beautiful sunny afternoon; with the wind blowing through my hair and the sound track from the movie easy rider playing clearly in my head; I felt young and gorgeous, then I notice a movement in my peripheral vision, to my horror it was the back of my upper arms which were flapping in the wind! Shocked and frightened I slam on brakes and came to a screeching halt, ‘Where has the muscle gone and what is the purpose of this superfluous skin’ I cry, then as the dust settled I realise that anyone who can remember the sound track to easy rider is pretty old and probably should not be making such a scene about a little bit of loose arm skin!
My former super model body now faces its 42nd year of the cell facsimile process and am definitely showing a some duplicate damage, I  have a forehead filled with wrinkles,  crows feet which wrap their way around the side of my face almost reaching my hair line, all  little gifts from my  darling adolescent! There is the odd grey hair to be found if you look closely and I now wear a bra which comes with shock absorbing abilities rather than push up promises.  I am eternally grateful to the person who invented stretchy Lycra jeans which prevent my now my gravity challenge glutimas maximus from resting on the backs of my knees,  but I remain unsure about the anti wrinkle mollusc slime products – I am not that old yet!






 

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