Hey, all:

Sorry to have been gone so long. I've been too screwed up of late to be worth much.

I was hoping to cry out for help on something that's troubling the (bad word) out of me. Please forgive any typos -- I'm a broken-down MESS as I write this.

This is triggered by my stumbling upon a personal image/style book by a New York image consultant. As might be expected, the author claims he's helped many people to achieve unbridled success and wealth simply through an image change. (One supposedly even found the love of her life after he overhauled her "husband-hunting" outfits.) Every alarm on my bull**** detector should be screaming red at stuff like this ... but I've hated my appearance for a long time, and this time I flashed back on a memory from my teen years when I had a chance to do something about it.

This was the mid-70's, and I still wanted to wear my hair long at the time, plus I was still thin. So I saved my money for my first visit to a high-end hair salon. I came out of there looking miraculously transformed just by a haircut. The stylist took a broken-haired mess of a home perm and made a treasure of it, and when I looked at myself in the rearview mirror, I was delighted, overjoyed and dazzled ... for about ten seconds. Then massive guilt and shame at having been so vain and self-absorbed set in (not to mention having spent seventeen mid-70's dollars not including product, on a paperboy's income!), and by the time I got home, I was crying hard and openly declared to my mother that I was "sub-human."

For the first and only time in my life, she didn't tell me to "man up," but to go ahead and cry things out so I'd feel better. This, of course, rang hollow, given how often she berated me for selfishness (we native Minnesotans really do live by the catchphrase "Who do you think you are?"), so I stuffed my feelings, continued berating myself for my shallowness, and of course had to endure my Greatest Generation(tm) father hitting the ceiling at my conduct. (He was from the era when a shave and a haircut really was "two bits" (25 cents) and always groused about having to pay $6.00 at the barbershop in modern times.)

Of course, I hadn't the discipline to maintain a salon look at home, and two days later I looked my usual boring, characterless, undistinctive self. Only once since then have I looked that good, and every night can't be your wedding night.

To this day, I wonder how my life would have been different if I'd cried my heart out -- then embraced appearance care from that day forward as a matter of habit. If I'm to believe this consultant's pitch, I may well have become a ragingly wealthy success (giving the ulcers instead of taking them; say what you will about Chainsaw Al Dunlap, he's rich and happy, while I'm poor and despondent) and been worth far more as a husband than I am. (Of course, I could just as easily have become a complete (bad word) about the matter and been an image Nazi, and viciously imposed the same pressure on my wife ...)

On to the present time: I'm now 55, locked in a dead-end non-management job, and have not enough hair left for a high-end stylist to do anything with (too wide a bald area for hair transplants to work). My grooming routine is a haircut every eight weeks and beard trim every three weeks at Supercuts; it's acceptable-looking, but won't dazzle any ladies anytime soon. No executive I've ever seen wears a beard, but shaving turns my face into the pitted, scarred surface of an uninhabitable planet. I'm also fat because I hate all forms of exercise -- it's boring, painful and smelly, and brings back memories of how I was called "******" and "p***y" in high school all the time because I was no good at sports or any physical activity. Plus, I have a LARGE hernia which would "spoil the line" of anything an image consultant would dress me in. As it's caused me no physical pain for over twenty years, my insurance would likely declare the repair "cosmetic" and refuse to pay for it.

Sex with my wife is a distant memory, and no matter how much she reassures me, I don't believe for a minute it has anything to do with the changes wrought by menopause -- she'd be perfectly aroused if the right (rich, thin, handsome, sane, perfect) man (or woman) came along. Yes, marriages can and do die after 30+ years. (If anyone remembers my first post here: I'm a staunch defender of absolute monogamy. Say what you will about the moral worth of that stance, in my case it's self-righteous and not particularly courageous, given that no other woman could want me as I am, and I'm losing the one I've got. It's easy to spew virtue when you've never been tempted or tested.)

Is this the depression/abysmal self-esteem talking? I'd like to think it's what's inside that matters (as I was raised all my life to believe). Plus, I hate the thought of colluding in a system that oppresses both women and men over "beauty" in the name of Glorious Free-Market Profit(tm). Usually I can easily call bull**** on this stuff, but not this time. Alternate history pounds at the door of my mind and will not be silenced.

Thoughts?

Thanks -- DSM-3.1415926

P.S. I'm taking the liberty of cross-posting this at the Depression forum. Would it be against forum rules to also post a condensed version at experienceproject?