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Get Used To It
by Nancy Gauquier

I can’t be a sweet little old lady!
I’m not little.
I’m not sweet.
I’m not a lady.
But when someone says to you,
"you are acting like an old woman,"
they don’t mean it as a compliment.
Why is it such an insult?
No one ever comes up to me and says,
"Nancy, you look so old!
How do you do it?!
Look at you,
you’re just glowing with old age!”
Why must we prevent ourselves
from appearing as old women, at all costs?
We have such a narrow definition of beauty.
You have to be so young and so thin
and have this nose and that chin –
must we all look alike?
The line between Michael Jackson and Cher
just keeps getting thinner;
they look like porcelain dolls –
like those dolls your mother bought you
and put up on a high shelf
so you couldn’t touch them
‘cause they might break.
But there’s so much pressure to stay young – forever.
Everything’s anti-aging.
Every day there’s another herb or vitamin
or cream or injection or treatment
that’s supposed to keep you from aging.
With all the money that’s being poured into reseach
to STOP AGING,
you’d think it was a crime against humanity.
Anti-aging?
How can you be anti-aging?
If you’re not dead right now,
you’re aging.
You’re either dead or you’re aging,
those are the only two choices
you get in this life.
You wanna know the only sure-fire way
to stop aging?
Die!
That’ll stop it in its tracks,
I guarantee it.
It never fails.
Otherwise, people are gonna get old,
and they’re gonna look old,
unless they are very rich,
and then they could look like generic clones
of anorexic super models,
so get used to it.