WASHINGTON, August 13, 2011—So here’s the thing: I’m not embarrassed about my stretch marks.

This is aberrant thinking according the geniuses on Madison Avenue who write commercials. I’ve seen a slew of ads for creams that promise to erase “embarrassing” stretch marks. Never mind that they promise stretch mark erasure in 12 weeks, and stretch marks probably go from red to white in three months on their own, even without moisturizing.

No, the real point is that advertisers are are heavy-handedly spewing forth the message that stretch marks are horrible blights on the body, and you need to battle them with every over-the-counter weapon in the dermatological arsenal. Any woman with those red and white seams marking her body should be cowering in shame, afraid to show her skin to the world because of embarrassment of letting anyone see that she does not have the dewy fresh flesh of a Photoshop project.

I don’t buy it. I’m not embarrassed about my stretch marks. I’m not embarrassed about my c-section scar. I’m not embarrassed about the freckles that have been seared into my skin since the summers of my childhood and adolescence spent in sunny horseback riding rings. I’m not embarrassed about the tattoos and piercings I picked up in my experimental post-college years when I was expressing myself with my every move. I’m not embarrassed that my face folds into well worn creases when I smile. I’m not embarrassed that my rear end is permanently widened from years of roadtrips, and working cool jobs, and bearing a child. I’m not embarrassed that after nursing my son, my breasts look like tube socks with oranges in them. Ok, fine. Clementines.

Lived-in skin isn't a curse; it's life, stretched across your body. (Photo: Meena Kadri (Flickr))

I really resent the implication that women are supposed to get through life entirely unmarked by it. The rise of computer-aided perfecting in publishing has erased the humanity from media images of women. Even the most perfect skinny, dewy, lovely young woman posing on magazine covers is altered in post-production to look skinnier, dewier and lovelier. Then her perfected image is presented to the rest of us as a feminine ideal.

Cosmetic makers pick up where photo editors leave off by selling us products that are supposed to stall the aging process, cover the effects of childbearing and weight fluctuations, and erase the evidence of life-well-lived. I’m just waiting for the day when someone tries to sell me a full-body, breathable latex overlay that makes me look like my entire body just emerged from a session with the Photoshop smoothing feature. I’m totally not buying one when that happens. Can you imagine wearing something like that in the middle of a DC August? That’s a recipe for massive BO or a yeast infection or something. Yuck.

And do I even need to mention that you don’t see ads for products that make men look younger, dewier, and less rugged? No. You just see those ads for hair replacement. That’s the only mark of time men are supposed to resent. Baldness. They’re not expected to slather themselves with grease to look like adolescents. And the products aimed at actual adolescents? They're usually hawked by girls. Have you ever seen Justin Bieber in a zit cream ad? I didn’t think so. That’s Katy Perry’s turf.

I understand that the marketing of youth-retaining products is a symptom of the evolutionary drive to be sexually attractive by appearing to be young and fertile and blah blah blah. But theoretically, we all have the intellect to not fall for it. We should be smart enough not to let some nameless ad-writer instill a sense of shame in us about the state of our skin. We can’t live our lives in a hyperbaric chamber that leaves us unblemished, untouched, all in the quest to look more touchable.

I’m not a collector’s edition Barbie doll that has never been taken out of the box. I’m the Velveteen Rabbit, so worn and loved that I’ve become real. I wouldn’t give up my worn patches and split seams for anything in the world; they tell the story of who I am and what I’ve done and who I’ve loved along the way. And while my vanity might drive me to the aisle of Target where the hair dye is, shame doesn’t drive me to try and erase all the marks my life has put on me. I rode horses, crossed the country, inked my skin, bore a child, and laughed long and often. Not only can no cream take those marks off me, I wouldn’t want one to.

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