Natalie Brooks Facebook ad: “I bought one ticket to the World Cup”

About this ad

Meta Ad Library ID

3248333788670167

Platforms

Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, Messenger and Threads

Relaunches

3

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Ad text

I bought one ticket to the World Cup. Not two. Not four. One. My husband said soccer's boring. My kids were "so busy this summer." My best friend needed "more notice." For forty years, that's where my plans went to die. Not this time. Let me explain how a sixty-year-old woman ends up alone at a World Cup match, screaming her head off, having the best day of her decade. I have spent my entire adult life waiting for someone to go with. To the beach. To Italy. To the jazz club downtown. To the restaurant I have been mentioning, out loud, to my family, since approximately 2011. I planned everyone else's things. Four decades of birthday parties, graduations, holiday dinners, other people's dreams executed flawlessly and on budget. My things went on a list. The list was called "someday," and someday was always defined as: when the kids are older, when work slows down, when your father retires, when someone, anyone, says "yes, I'll come with you." Here's what I finally understood this year, and I'm going to say it plainly in case you need to hear it the way I needed to hear it: Nobody is coming. Not because they don't love you. They do. They're just busy living the lives you helped build for them. So in March, when I saw that the World Cup was coming to America (once in my lifetime, probably never again) and my husband said "you don't even watch soccer" and my daughter said "aw Mom, that sounds fun, this summer is just crazy for us"... I opened my laptop. And I bought one ticket. The panic arrived about an hour later, if you're wondering. Who goes to a stadium alone? A woman my age? What do you even do at halftime? Who holds your seat? Who do you scream with? I did what I always do with panic: I googled it. That's how I found a Facebook group dedicated to solo travel in your 50s and up, used by thousands of women who go places alone on purpose, and let me tell you, that group is the best-kept secret on the internet. I posted my situation. One ticket. First time doing anything like this. Terrified. The comments changed my life a little. "You'll never scream louder than at a match alone. Nobody's watching you. That's the secret." "Solo at the stadium is the best seat in the house. You'll adopt a family within ten minutes." And then, buried in the thread, a comment from a woman named Diane in Arizona that had nothing and everything to do with the World Cup: "One tip from a veteran: when you start doing things for yourself, do ALL of it. I started solo trips at 57 and the same month I started actually taking care of the skin I'd been ignoring for 30 years. Not for anyone else. For me, and for the photos, because YOU will be taking your own photos now. Wear sleeveless. Evora Botanical Body Oil, two pumps every morning, two minutes, done. There's a page with up to 50% off but if you lose the link you pay full price on their site." Two hundred women liked that comment. I understood exactly what Diane meant, and if you've spent forty years at the bottom of your own priority list, you understand too. It was never about the body oil. It was about the category of person who has a body oil. A woman with her own ticket, her own itinerary, her own two minutes every morning that belong to nobody but her. A woman who wears sleeveless because she wants to, not because she's checked whether her arms are hideable that day. I had never once been that woman. I ordered it that night. Same laptop. Same chair. Same decision, really. It arrived that week. Two pumps, arms and chest and the backs of my hands, every morning after the shower. Two minutes. Two minutes doesn't sound like anything. But when you have spent four decades doing everything for everyone, two daily minutes that are exclusively yours feel almost illegal. And my skin… my ignored, invisible, bottom-of-the-list skin, especially my upper arms that I hadn't looked at directly in the mirror in probably five years… woke up. Within a week the crepey texture across my upper arms had visibly softened. By match day, three weeks in, the woman in my mirror had the arms of somebody I hadn't been in years. Bright. Firm. A little bit lit from inside. She looked like a woman with her own ticket. Match day. I wore a sleeveless red, white, and blue jersey, and zero foundation, and I drove myself to the stadium, and I want to tell you exactly what happened, because I know some of you need the report from the other side. The women in the Facebook group were right about everything. I was adopted within ten minutes. A family from Ohio in my row, a grandmother, two daughters, and a teenager with a flag, took one look at me alone in my seat and folded me in like I'd come with them. The U.S. scored right before halftime and I screamed with sixty thousand strangers, and the grandmother from Ohio grabbed my arm — my bare, no-cardigan, oiled-that-morning arm — and nobody anywhere was wondering why I was alone, because I wasn't. Then a red card. Thirty minutes of ten-man agony. I have never been so stressed about anything that mattered so little to my actual life, and it was GLORIOUS. And when the late free kick went in, the teenager put the flag in my hands. Me. The stranger. The solo woman. After the final whistle, the whole stadium sang, and the grandmother (Susan, sixty-three, widowed, also there on her own steam) took a photo of me with the flag, mid-song, tears and all, arms raised over my head. "You HAVE to post that," she said. "Your arms look incredible. Genuinely. What are you using on them? Ask me why I'm asking. I'm asking for me." I laughed and told her about Diane from Arizona and the two minutes. She typed "Evora" into her phone right there in the stands. That night, in my hotel room (my own hotel room, booked by me, for me) I did something I hadn't done in years. I posted the photo. Of myself. Alone and beaming, flag up, arms bare. Caption: "Bought one ticket. Best decision I've made in forty years." My daughter commented first: "MOM?? Okay first of all I'm crying. Second of all you look INCREDIBLE, what is happening?? Also since when do you wear sleeveless???" My husband, a man of few words, commented a flag emoji. From the couch. Where soccer is boring. And the solo travel group, where I posted it to, gave me eight hundred likes and a comment section full of women asking two questions: Where's the next match? And what are you using on your arms? I gave them both answers. Here's what I want to leave you with. If your dreams live on a list called "someday"... If you've been waiting decades for somebody to say "I'll come with you"... If you can't remember the last time two minutes of a day belonged only to you... If you can't remember the last time you wore something sleeveless because you wanted to and not because you checked whether your arms were hideable that day... Stop waiting for the yes. Buy the one ticket. Whatever your version of the one ticket is. And take Diane's advice, which I now pass down the chain, exactly as it was given to me: When you start doing things for yourself, do all of it. There's a page running up to 50% off but if you lose the link, you pay full price on their website. Don't lose the link. Two pumps. Arms, chest, hands. Two minutes that are nobody's but yours. Nobody is coming. Go anyway.

Where the ad sends people

evorabody.com

I bought one ticket to the World Cup

Step 2: Apply straight after, while your skin is still warm. 2–3 pumps onto your arms, chest, or wherever you need it most.