Presto Chango

It was a boring summer afternoon. The tween downloaded a new app for the iPad, a fun little photo editor. It was free, and it was a tween dream. You take a picture of yourself, your friends, your cat, whatever, and then you embellish it in all sorts of crazy ways. You can change eye color and hair color and style. You can add make up and fake eyelashes. You can edit out your acne and uneven skin tone. You can even do some sort of fake face lift thing to change your face shape and make you look like someone else entirely.

I’m sure it has more practical applications as well, but for the tween, it is a great way to see how she will look in make up since she is not yet allowed to wear it. Especially since I took it all away from her when she wore it anyway and lied about it, as if I don’t know what under eye raccoon circles are. Her make up collection is for experimentation, not snagging pre-pubescent boys at school.

She spent last night with one of her besties, and I am pretty sure all they did is photo editor makeovers on her iPad. When she came home today, she was ready for round two of photo editing. She redid a couple of her pictures, changing her eyes to gray, her hair to blond, and her face to WASP. She redid her sister next. I don’t want to see a picture of my ten year old all tarted up like it’s Alabama pageant time, but I had to admit she looked beautiful in an unnatural whorish way.

I encouraged her to put down the iPad and find something else to do. Something productive. Write a song. Read a book. Send an email. Dance. Take a nap. Scoop the kitty litter. Play piano. Anything that doesn’t involve that damn iPad. She agreed, but only after she made over me.

As I was rolling out dough for tonight’s dinner, the tween approached me with the iPad.
“What color would you want your eyes to be?” she asked.
“I like my brown eyes,” I said. I do. I describe them as shit brown, but honestly, I love them because they looked like my dog’s.
“Well, you have to pick another color.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Just do it, Mom. Your life depends on it.”
“Whatever, I’ll take green,” I said.
“Why green? Why not blue?” she asked me. This is a game the tween has played with me ever since she was a toddler. When she was two, she would walk up to me with an object in each hand, hold them up, and say,” This one or this one?” I would pick one of her hands and she would say,” Wrong! You want this one!”

“What difference does it make? Just give me whatever eye color you want.”
“Fine, green then. What about your hair? Do you want Lady Gaga pink?”
“I don’t know, how about blond? I’m trying to make dinner here,” I said.

She got quiet, her little fingers working on the screen as I filled the dough with sliced roast turkey and Havarti cheese for the stuffed bread I was making for dinner.

“All done,” she said happily, about five minutes later. “Wanna look?”

I wiped my hands on a dish towel and walked over to her. On the screen was a picture of me, only not me. I had bright green eyes and short platinum blond hair. And OH MY GOD, I almost looked just like my mother!

“Aahhh! Stop that! You’re freaking me out!” I screamed at her. “I look like your grandmother. My eyes!” “It’s not that bad,” she said.
“You stop that right now! Get rid of it. Give me back my eyes!” And my identity.

The tween was delighted with herself. She conceded that yes, I did look more than a bit like her grandmother, who incidentally has blue eyes, not green, but the light hair and eyes were disturbingly familiar.

I don’t want to look like my mother. She isn’t an unattractive person, but her horrible behavior over the years has certainly made her less appealing. Looking like my mother is too close to turning into my mother, and nothing scares me more than that.

One time I looked in the mirror and I saw my father’s mother, which is almost as scary. If I started wearing blue eye shadow and hot pink lipstick, I could be her doppelganger. Does that mean one day I too will traumatize my grandchildren by removing my brassiere in front of them?

Privacy was not apparently an issue with my grandmother. Neither was natural looking makeup. And for the record, my grandmother wouldn’t just pop out her titties in front of children for fun. She was undressing to take a bath, and my sisters and I, who were quite young, wanted to keep her company. I recall her breasts flopping down to her knees, and later, when she was in the tub, floating like islands on top of the bath water. I am haunted by that memory to this day. Thanks to that memory, I don't even like to look at myself in a bathtub.

Who knew a free app came with such a high price?