I'm going to say something controversial. Lots of people will probably gasp in shock and take an affronted step back, or call me a radical and a crazy person. But this is how I feel, and I just want to get it out there:
I don't want to look younger.
I am almost 30. I am nearing the age of no-longer-a-fresh-faced-20-something. And I like it.
One of these days I am going to get grey hair. I look forward to this, and while it may impact my income to the point doing so becomes necessary, I would prefer not to dye it.
I don't want to hide my fine lines and wrinkles. I'm okay with getting age spots, so long as I'm taking care of my health--to me sunscreen isn't an avoidance of wrinkles so much as an avoidance of cancer. And yes, I probably will wear makeup on occasion--because it's fun to do so.
Age is beautiful. Truly, awesomely beautiful.
And Americans fear it.
If it seems American women fear it more than men, well, maybe they do and maybe they don't--but they'd have a right to do so, as ingrained prejudices make it harder for older women to support themselves financially, to find role models in fiction (our cultural narrative) that aren't evil or crazy, to be considered savvy and beautiful and valuable in a society that often seems to value women for beauty more than any other form of competence.
But when people get older, they generally become more confident, more capable of seeing the bigger pictures, more willing to laugh. They're funny, they're often wise, they're usually more emotionally resilient.
Yes, there are the negative stereotypes, as well: the fear of the body's slow decline, the greater fear of the loss of ability to learn. The danger of becoming stuck in a certain way with the assumption it's the only right way. But I know more people who avoid these stereotypes than fall for them, and I wonder if we pushed ourselves as a culture to make age about learning and accepting, if we couldn't even reverse the stereotypes completely. Because I know plenty of older people who are open-minded, tech-savvy, and if not cutting-edge, then at least willing to learn.
Which is as much as can be said for any other age range of people.
If we tell people that with age comes the ability to love more, and that growing old is accompanied by the responsibility of accepting that others who are different are not innately wrong--would that make it so? I don't know, but I hope so.
When I say I don't want to look younger, when I reject the fear of age and instead welcome it, it's because I see in it a stronger, more powerful beauty than youth. Because unlike youth, age doesn't fade. It only enhances. Because the stereotypes we give it are flimsy and avoidable, while naivete and inexperience are both the hazards of and part of the definition of youth.
I want to celebrate surviving this world as long as I have. I want to celebrate my experience, and all the things I've learned. I want to celebrate age, not hide it. I find it beautiful and rich and brilliant, a trophy of passing time and a marker of things learned, mistakes made, people known and loved. No, I don't want to hide my age.
In short, I don't want to look younger.
I don't want to look younger.
I am almost 30. I am nearing the age of no-longer-a-fresh-faced-20-something. And I like it.
One of these days I am going to get grey hair. I look forward to this, and while it may impact my income to the point doing so becomes necessary, I would prefer not to dye it.
I don't want to hide my fine lines and wrinkles. I'm okay with getting age spots, so long as I'm taking care of my health--to me sunscreen isn't an avoidance of wrinkles so much as an avoidance of cancer. And yes, I probably will wear makeup on occasion--because it's fun to do so.
Age is beautiful. Truly, awesomely beautiful.
And Americans fear it.
If it seems American women fear it more than men, well, maybe they do and maybe they don't--but they'd have a right to do so, as ingrained prejudices make it harder for older women to support themselves financially, to find role models in fiction (our cultural narrative) that aren't evil or crazy, to be considered savvy and beautiful and valuable in a society that often seems to value women for beauty more than any other form of competence.
But when people get older, they generally become more confident, more capable of seeing the bigger pictures, more willing to laugh. They're funny, they're often wise, they're usually more emotionally resilient.
Yes, there are the negative stereotypes, as well: the fear of the body's slow decline, the greater fear of the loss of ability to learn. The danger of becoming stuck in a certain way with the assumption it's the only right way. But I know more people who avoid these stereotypes than fall for them, and I wonder if we pushed ourselves as a culture to make age about learning and accepting, if we couldn't even reverse the stereotypes completely. Because I know plenty of older people who are open-minded, tech-savvy, and if not cutting-edge, then at least willing to learn.
Which is as much as can be said for any other age range of people.
If we tell people that with age comes the ability to love more, and that growing old is accompanied by the responsibility of accepting that others who are different are not innately wrong--would that make it so? I don't know, but I hope so.
When I say I don't want to look younger, when I reject the fear of age and instead welcome it, it's because I see in it a stronger, more powerful beauty than youth. Because unlike youth, age doesn't fade. It only enhances. Because the stereotypes we give it are flimsy and avoidable, while naivete and inexperience are both the hazards of and part of the definition of youth.
I want to celebrate surviving this world as long as I have. I want to celebrate my experience, and all the things I've learned. I want to celebrate age, not hide it. I find it beautiful and rich and brilliant, a trophy of passing time and a marker of things learned, mistakes made, people known and loved. No, I don't want to hide my age.
In short, I don't want to look younger.
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