Of Beauty and Aging

For a while now, I've been toying with the idea of writing about beauty and aging. As a woman of a certain age, moderately vain, and involved with a younger man, these issues stare me squarely in the face every day.

Each day is different. Some days I remember who I am and realize that how I look is just a part of what makes me "me." I am able to make peace with the changes I see in my body. I thank God for good genes and for the many blessings in my life, including when I was born. I feel good about being me.

Other days I find myself loathing every line, sag, and spot, feeling energetically shriveled, and even worse - ugly. I hate these days. It takes a lot of energy to fight these feelings, and sometimes I just want to curl up in a ball and cry instead. 

Where do these feelings come from? What standard of beauty am I holding myself up against? Is it valid? Am I too hard on myself, or not hard enough? Am I seeing myself through my eyes, or through the imagined eyes of someone else? Who or what is this internal critic, and why is it so harsh?

I know I'm not the only woman who has days like these. But I didn't realize how serious the problem was until I read this column by Janice Turner in The Times.

Here's a humorous, pointy, and extremely eye-opening excerpt:

"While there is much anxiety about how teenagers are rendered anorexic by size-zero fashion plates, older women are reckoned too sensible to be sucked in. Except that according to the Mental Health Foundation a quarter of British women aged 45 to 54 suffer from depression, up by a fifth in ten years. That same age range has seen a rise in alcohol-related deaths and has become the principal female suicide flashpoint. Now I'm a hyper-sceptic of all gloomy stats, but separate studies in Australia and America have uncovered similarly deepening pools of midlife female misery.

Little wonder, perhaps, in this most cruel and judgmental of decades. Once a woman of 63 embraced elasticated waistbands: now she is supposed to despair because she can't rock a red bikini like Helen Mirren.

Once there was little you could do to hold age at bay: now the possibilities are infinite - so what's stopping you then, slattern? The current ad campaigns offer a tantalising deal to fiftysomethings: you can remain visible, as your mother never was, admired and lusted after, you don't even need to lie about your age, but only if, by means of self-punishment and perpetual vigilance, you never grow old."

That last line is a killer. You can be visible and desired - as long as you never look old. Ouch. 

Well, at least there is some recompense in growing older. We women of a certain age are no longer as likely to take other people's crap without saying something about it, and we are also happier sexually. 

"But this week I read a report that proclaimed women have “the best sex of their lives” in their forties. At first I snorted at yet another weary attempt to sex up older women, as if - like Madonna proffering her crotch to the cameras - knowing we are still foxy is the only way to prop up our self-worth. Yet the report suggested that why older women get happier in the sack could be chemical: as our production of caring-sharing oestrogen diminishes and we start pumping out stroppy testosterone, we suddenly start to put our own needs - sexual and otherwise - first. So it seems this being less nice is caused by growing a teeny bit more like a man."

Turner goes on to make the point that women of a certain age should be hired for important positions in government and business because of all the good things we bring to the table. Why aren't we? Good question. Do we need a touch more testosterone?

Ack, I think I've grown weary of worrying about how I look. Looks are so surface, and I've always been more interested in what lurks beneath - in what gave you those looks, how you earned them. So I'm not entirely convinced that I want to write about beauty and aging.

Then again, I may decide to take on our assumptions about beauty and aging and turn them on their heads. Yes, I think that's more likely. 

I'm going to leave you with one last, great line from Turner's column, in case you don't take the time to read it (though you really should). 

"Instead, let us grant women an age armistice, when they cease to be judged on appearance but for who they are. How rarely they get the chance, how magnificent when they do." 

Comments

[phantom]

Nicely done. Aging is a process. As opportunities afforded to one age vanish, they are replaced by different opportunities and will always.

[scentsignals]

Thanks, Phantom. I'm sure you're right. But I have to tell you, it's hard when certain doors close and you can't see new ones opening. And some doors you just don't want to close...