My wrinkles are my stripes

The other day, 62-year-old Anne-Marie was in the locker room when she heard two ladies talking. One of them said,”Oh my God. My skin looks terrible. I’m getting old!” while the other woman shrieked, “Oh, just look mine, I have so many lines!”

The whole time Anne-Marie was imagining two older ladies, probably the blondes she saw in Aqua Zumba earlier. But then, as Anne-Marie went around the corner to use the mirror, she spotted them – two young thirty-somethings examining their still-young complexion.

Grrrrr… Anne-Marie was fuming. She said,” Don’t talk to me about ageing if you’re just twenty or thirty.”

While the two women were distraught at their “fate”, Anne-Marie on the other hand, can’t be more proud of her lines. She says, “My wrinkles are my stripes,” and that they remind her of the wonderful adventures that she’s had.

What Anne-Marie said clearly echoes the words of over-60 Instagram star, Sarah Jane Adams who started the #mywrinklesaremystripes movement.

A photo posted by Sarah Jane Adams (@saramaijewels) on May 17, 2016 at 1:44pm PDT

One day, a young lady approached Sarah and put a blob of something onto the back of her hand saying, “I’m just going to apply this to your eyes.”

Sarah then asked the lady what it will do? The lady answered, “It will completely remove all your wrinkles for approximately one week.”

At this point Sarah grabbed her bag, and politely told the lady that actually “I love my wrinkles and have no desire to get rid of them. Thank you.”

“It was on this day back in January 2015 that I decided I had to put my hashtag #mywrinklesaremystripes out there.

“My dob is 16.04.55. The hashtag started as a ‘tongue in cheek’ reference to the fact that I am considered by many to be too old to dress in some of my favourite clothes.

“I regularly post pictures on my instagram @saramaijewels which are bare-faced, untouched and truly show my face. My clothes reveal what is going on in my head,” said Sarah.

“My wrinkles do not scare me; they show me and therefore my experience. Hopefully there is a little wisdom which comes with these stripes.

“I see them as a badge of honour and a mark of roads travelled and experiences had. Why would I not be proud and happy to show them? I am growing into the face I deserve and the face which reflects who I am and what I have been.

“It is not a mask. I am not a puppet.

“There is a new generation of folks out there who are learning to accept themselves for who and what they are. This exhilarates me and drives me on with my mission,” Sarah said.

Sarah says that she believes that you should accept your true self, love your true self, smile and laugh often, gather those laughter lines and creases which come when you share a joke. “They are you. The world needs to see more of YOU,” she said.

Do you agree with Sarah?