To Follow Fashion or Forge One’s Own Way?

        “I just don’t think those current hairstyles are becoming on anyone,” my mom often says. To prove her point, she’s maintained more-or-less the same bubble haircut over the past, oh, fifty years or so.
 
         I never agree with her out loud. Indeed, I do usually think the current hairstyles look fine on most people other than myself. Young, fresh-faced news commentators, actresses on my mom’s “stories,” and the younger generation of women at church wear these styles with aplomb.
 
        When I look in the mirror, however, I’m beginning to agree with my mother. Would I look better if I reverted to one of my older styles? Or were they becoming only because my face was once younger, fresher?
 
        I don’t think about this question too often, mainly on days when I’ve scheduled a haircut and need to tell the stylist what I want. This year, though, my son has planned a big wedding event and invited a lot of his California friends and fiancée’s family members I’ll be meeting for the first time.
 
       Staring at myself in the mirror, I ponder the question. Should I follow my mom’s habit and revert to an old hairstyle, or ignore my face and be more contemporary? And does it really matter? Ah, the vanity, the vanity.
 
        In my novel, Joy After Noon, Joy worries that she’s being compared unfavorably to Ray’s first wife, now deceased.
 
Joy After Noon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TL79RPJ
 
       Who among us doesn’t suffer the occasional pangs of self-doubt, whether they are about our weight, our face, our hair, our social skills, or our cooking? Only God ignores the outer shell and focuses on our inner being. Let us strive to keep it young and fresh.