Meet Paula

Long before my project began, I can remember Paula exclaiming, "I think wrinkles are great!" I giggled at her spunky outspoken wit. Little did I know that I would have the opportunity to test her resolve by examining her through my lens. I had hoped to get an image of her snarling at aging, but I only found a sense of peace. I saw no fear, no apprehension, no self consciousness. She is truly one with her wrinkles.

In talking to Eleanor before, during and after this shot, I remembered a pivotal wrinklequest moment. At the time I was a 20-something Masters student at the University of Texas, El Paso writing a thesis on women's liberation documentary films, full of vim and vigor and a little political movement energy. Our Bodies Ourselves had just come out and I was engaged with the notion that growing older was mostly about becoming wiser. The secretary in the Journalism Department, Jean, had the most exquisitely lined face I had ever seen, and was stunningly beautiful. Though I don't have a photo of Jean, her face is indelibly etched on my memory. I thought, when I am older "I want to look like her!" This image has replayed itself again and again as I have gotten older. Maybe it's similar to how young girls look at models in Vogue as their ideal body image model.

Wrinkles don't scare me. I see them as earned markers of maturation. Though I don't want to judge others, the concept of having this face un-wrinkled seems such a waste. I do notice the necks of women who have had the tucks, and the age is still evident there. For me it's the more the merrier. In my early 40's when traveling in the Southwest through Navajo and Hopi lands I ran across a lithograph (artist unknown) of an ancient shamanic woman
wrapped in an Indian blanket, wearing a beautiful clay pot on her head
with canyon lands in the background. This has been on my wall/office since then. She is magnificent.

Recently, when I was visiting family in Hawaii, I showed them this picture of Eleanor's of my wrinkly face. I was laughing about it and looking at the contours of the wrinkles as an almost geographical landscape. They weren't laughing and said, " I wouldn't want that done to me." But I am delighted to be a subject of Eleanor's.

And the shoot was such fun! There she is lying on her back, balancing one lamp between her legs, and another behind her, me hanging off an exercise bench "trying" to wrinkle my face. Ironically, my face is pretty much a rubber-face. I make faces and am totally unaware of what face I just made. Eleanor kept trying to capture a "face" she had seen before. I could not do it, much to her chagrin. I would make an awful photographer's model because I can't at-will recreate a "look". Clearly the mind/brain doesn't remember how it created the face. I hope that Eleanor's blog will help us all to feel the inner giggle in the process, that we can all let go of any expectations we might have had about "getting on" in years. There is no rule that says that wearing your battle scars cannot be a really fun and funny ride. I agreed to do this in my own personal pact to take myself LESS seriously. Cheers to the wrinkle brigade!

Paula Michal-Johnson Ph.D.
Moving Body Mind Spirit
Fountain Hill, PA