Potato Face!

The potato face of my potato people

My favourite way to describe my face is that it’s akin to a potato. It’s round! It’s sturdy! It has eyes! I love potatoes, and I’m fine with my face! The only time it has ever been thin was when I avoided collaborating with food in any real capacity. On me, a thin face tends to signal that something’s amiss. I have never been in a terrific place when my face loses its potato-ness, nor when I all-of-a-sudden have defined cheek bones. At no point do I look at photos of myself, sans potato, and think, “Damn — what a great time.”

After all, I am a potato person from potato people. My mom’s side is Lithuanian (please enjoy this recipe for kugelis, the love child of potatoes, potatoes, bacon, and potatoes), and my dad’s side is Irish (enough said), so I am the product of an extremely starch-focused lineage. This is wonderful news because I love potatoes (and I love starch!), and whenever I order French fries, I remind myself I am simply doing right by my ancestors. I am Marge Simpson, proudly and forever holding a potato: I just think they’re neat.

Yet when I bring up my potato face, I’m usually met with pushback. “No! You’re not a potato!”, while kindly intended, only serves for me to push back and re-iterate how wonderful I think potatoes are, and that my chubby cheeks have ensured that until I open my mouth or do anything outside of sitting down, I can pass for a little younger than 38.

Not that it matters, because age is a privilege and I’m excited to see how I’ll end up looking as years tick by. Which is a pretty new development: we all like to be told how young we look or how young we seem, and embracing one’s descent into old age is usually met with a head tilt and an, “Aw, well you don’t look it!” That’s cool if that’s true! But it’s also cool if it’s not! The passing of time is a pretty big feat, and while I’d really like my body not to remind me of how tired I am or how irresponsible I used to be, I’m fine with it being a scrapbook into which I have many good memories.

Plus, 38 isn’t old. 98 is old. And even then, who am I to say so? Even my doctor told me that 65 is the new 25, and while I don’t think I’ll ever have the stamina to be my quarter-century self, I’m not about to run into a retirement community, point to an elderly person and tell them they’ve lived a good life, so TTYL.

But in my head, age and weight have always been tethered together. I didn’t want to be a walking testament to the way our systems slow down or my inability to eat 12 McNuggets before bed and wake up feeling amazing. For many, many, (too) many years, I equated what I used to look like (a teenager) to what was an acceptable way to look in general. I’d pour over photos of myself when I was wee and chide myself for looking different in my thirties. Ironic, especially, since I hated how I looked when I was wee — something always needed to change to make myself “better,” which we all know is a trap. What is “better”? It certainly wasn’t my gaunt 18-year-old face with the gel-scrunched curls and perfectly ironed side-bang. (Which, at the time, I thought made me look exactly like Carrie Bradshaw — a 30-something-year-old woman.) I mean, I feel better now: I wear clothes that make me feel comfy, cool, and powerful in the sizes that actually fit me (fuck “staying” a size — wear what fits, baby!), I eat what I want when I’m hungry; I own the greys I’ve found, and I’ve given up and embraced the circles I’ve earned under my eyes. My last hoorrah and/or foray into youth was this week when after trying in vain to sculpt my face (!?) via TikTok tutorial (lord), my physiotherapist had to do major damage control because I’d fucked up my neck and jaw so bad I was living in TMJ hell. “You Anne’d it!” she declared before telling me never, ever to do anything I found on TikTok again.

Fair.

The thing is, I know that I’m writing this on a day where I’m sitting outside and it’s nice out and I’m wearing a new top and my favourite pair of pants, and my hair’s done exactly what I’ve asked it to. I’m also crush-free, so my feelings aren’t being defined by some dude I’m waiting to hear back from, or what I think he expects women to be. (This is a rare and beautiful moment, and I will embrace it with my whole heart! It’s called growth, and it’s new for me!) I know that I’m typing these words when I’m feeling like a million dollars, and there will come a day (or an hour) where I feel the opposite, and will question everything about myself.

But that’s life, and that’s how it goes, and the key isn’t to deny those thoughts/feelings, the key is to remind myself (ourselves?) that my (our?) potato face is my own, and I only get one. Even in moments when I look back on my tiny teen self and wonder how I ever took so much youth and metabolism for granted and what I’d give for any of it back, those retrospects only last so long before I’m grateful I’ve made it this far, that my cheeks chose to return after my cruel attempt to banish them, and that I like potatoes far more than I like chasing a version of myself who was desperately trying to grow.

Potatoes forever! (Please sponsor me, Big Potato.)

• A.