Character

I've been searching unsuccessfully online for my favorite Lynda Barry cartoon ever. I have a copy of it that I clipped out of a weekly newspaper back in 1995. It's pretty ratty. At any rate, it's a typical LB creation full of words words words and her clutter of dreamy, smart, unpopular kids. This one is about botox. The line I remember best is Marlys holding up a misshapen can and saying "the thing making this can bulge will make you beautiful!" and in the last frame, an off-panel voice says "immobilized foreheads turn me on!" Someday, my jowls will fall around my mouth, and my tiny chin will be no more. My eyes will have lots of smile wrinkles around them, and the line between my eyebrows will be permanent. My hair, which has been getting fuzzier and thinner for a few years will probably look tufty and patchy. I will look OLD...but I will have character. I will look like myself. And someday, this will happen to everybody you know in some way. We'll all get stranger looking, less tidy, less snugly wrapped in our skin, and more stretchy and Martha-Grahamy in our bodies. Our necks will be loose, our arm skin will wobble, our knees will look strange and our hands will look knotty and gnarly. Our voices might shake a little when we talk. Or...we will start injecting toxins and plastic into ourselves to make it stop. I think a lot about it. Aging. Changing. Wanting to be young for my kids, but happy with this body in all of it's many permutations. Here's my girlfriend Sarah again: