RSSWhy Do You Want To Look Younger?
June 27, 2008
Mary wrote a great comment at the end of the article This Month in Vogue : Sex in Magazines . She questioned why young girls today try so hard to be seen as sex objects. I define a sex object as someone whose only feature or purpose of interest is sex. Any other aspect of their being is expendable.
Linked to source.
This same question applies at the other end of the age spectrum as well, doesn’t it? Women have themselves carved up and injected … for what? What is looking younger going to get us?
Men, careers, and wealth
Will it get you a better guy? Will we beat other women to the available men?
If we don’t know by 40 that any guy whose feelings about you are dictated by your sexual attributes should be thrown back to the dogs, then we’ll never know. But we do know that, right? Why are we setting ourselves up to attract the very guy we don’t want, the one who cares what we look like?
Linked to source.
What Randy Travis sang (in the song “I’m going to love you forever”) was “I ain’t in love with your hair…If it all fell out, well, I’d love you anyway”. That’s the guy we want right? That’s the one we should be selecting. A man who wants you to “have something done” or likes you better after? Scariness.
Will looking younger get you more respect at work? No. Quite possibly less, though.
Will it get you better health? No.
A longer life? Nope.
Will you be more likely to achieve wealth? No.
Will you find more good stuff on sale? OK, I’ll stop now.
The real beauty of aging
Real, strong women want to radiate the gratitude, kindness, and intuition that we are so blessed with. Wrinkles don’t deny us any of that. We want to glow with spectacular health. Well, bring that on too. We can be better at it than anyone.
Just look around you at the women you know. They are all stronger, smarter, finer in every way. Our 20 year old selves couldn’t hold a candle to all we have become. So why regret this incredible progress?
Linked to source.
I am very strongly about tolerance and individual right to choose. If a plastic surgeon can make you feel wonderful about who you are, then that sounds like money well spent. My point is not that any of that is wrong.
I am saying that not having anything done, or even considering it, counterbalances all the publicity that says that we’re washed up over 40 unless we look 25. I absolutely reject that suggestion. I don’t intend to apologize for what aging looks like. What a waste of emotional and intellectual energy.
Toby Keith (I like Toby Keith, he has a good male voice ; the women depicted in his songs and videos, well, stereotypic bimbettes; those babes are downright interchangeable … talk about a sex object – anyway, back to our topic …) was wrong when he sang “I ain’t as good as I once was”. The song continues, “I’m as good now as I ever was”, but that’s wrong too. You are better now than you have ever been before. I can honestly say that of every woman that I know, that I have known for 30 years.
Linked to source.
The fact is, your light is shining more intensely than it ever has and it only gets brighter from here on in. You get stronger, happier, calmer, and finally understand what it means to be balanced and empowered.
We can be whatever we can think about being.
Comments
13 Responses to “Why Do You Want To Look Younger?”
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A Greener Tea
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This was very timely. As a reasonably intelligent woman who has a successful career and a family that I love so much I couldn’t have imagined my happiness when I was a 20 year-old, I alternately laugh and cry at myself when I see how much I’m struggling against turning 40. It’s not that I regret anything. It’s not that I want to go back to my 20 year-old self. It’s not rational–there is no reason that I’m scared of these two innocuous numbers. I think that what I don’t want is for time to pass. I wrote a recent blog entry about that, in fact.
Ok, so I’m not crazy about the wrinkles, but I’m using all the right skin stuff and wearing the sunscreen–I’m doing all I am willing to do about them. But how can I keep my 10 year-old folding his leggy self into my lap after dinner forever? How can I keep my 4 year-old crawling into bed with me and pretending to be a baby bird forever?
Change can be sad sometimes. To lose what you know you love in the face of uncertainty causes disequilibrium.
…Sorry to go on so long. I’m sure you know what I mean.
M
I surely do know what you mean. I think I had more trouble with 40 than I’m having with 50. Like you, I couldn’t even have told someone what the problem was exactly. It was partly just the transitional time, which is always destabilizing, as you say. And, of course, the notion that 40 is a special number, different from 38 or 44.
Once I got into my 40s, I learned a lot more about who I am, about what I can live with, about what I cannot live with, where I will draw the line on various issues. It calmed me down a lot.
Like you, I’ve experienced so much more than I expected. My 20yr old self was a pale and watery version of who I am now. I wouldn’t go back either, I would lose too much. We have to hold on to the special moments and know we will miss them – but not regret their passing, because new and more wonderful things will come along to replace them. We just don’t know what they are yet but it will happen, because that’s been the pattern so far.
Hollis shared the following comment by e-mail:
What a ridiculous article, whose simpering tone is presumably intended to ward off possible criticism of the underlying ideas. I have understood, at every stage of my life, that looks are important although they are not the ONLY thing that counts. Yes, Christine, good-looking people DO tend to earn more than people who don’t look good – it’s been widely documented. Age discimination in the workplace is rampant, and won’t be solved by an individual’s dogged refusal to “play the game”. And, after the age of about 25, good looks are more a reflection of discipline and savvy than they are an indicator of nature and luck.
I respectfully submit that youthful good looks DO make it easier to find stuff on sale because you are likely to look better in more of the things you try on. Remembering to floss your teeth and apply sunscreen will make you look better and will, in fact, lead to a longer life. The same discipline that drags you to the gym works darn well in managing your investment portfolio, too. It’s hard to tell what role my looks have played in hanging onto my husband of 20 years but, heck, I’m not going to take any chances! Looking good at 20 is different than looking good at 50 and at 80, but each age has its own form of beauty, and youthfulness is an integral part. So, I’ll continue to try to look good AND younger at every stage of my life, because… it works! Younger IS better…
Hollis
Hollis,
Thank you for this. You bring up some crucial points here.
Prevention, health, longevity, discipline, savvy – if I had one message I could send out there, these would be the basis of it. They don’t only apply after 40. They should be just as much a feature of a 25yr old’s choices, though they often are not because at 25, you feel a little more bulletproof. They certainly deliver different results at 45, and one of these is a younger appearance… but there are other results that are more important, internal results. Obviously you already get all this, as your sentence of transferring the gym discipline paradigm to portfolio management illustrates.
I use sunscreen, in part to delay the inevitable wrinkles. I wear makeup. Where is the line in the sand that distinguishes makeup from Botox? It’s all appearance enhancement by artificial means. In some societies, Botox and surgery are as everyday as mascara. You’re the odd one out if you’re not having something done. That’s not where I live, but it’s still fine.
Of course, age and appearance discrimination occur, both inside and outside the workplace, just as you say. “Looking good for your age” helps. What I hate to see is women who feel that not looking 28 at 50 is something to apologize for (is that where the discrimination originates, in our own admission that there’s something wrong with not looking our age?).
My point was that not looking 25 is balanced in spades by the growth in confidence, happiness, emotional strength, and calm that takes place. There is so much personal enrichment that comes with aging that it makes a woman in her 40s a powerful being. As Winston Churchill said, [This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. This is simply the end of the beginning.]
Comments from email subscriptions do not appear on the site. I would love to post your comment for other women to read, and my reply as well. Do you mind? I can copy it in for you, or you may prefer to add your comment yourself, as it appears in the original, or changed if you prefer.
Again, thank you. Excellent comment.
Hollis replies:
Thanks for your gracious reply, Christine. I agree with everything you’ve said below, and I stand by my original comments. I’m delighted that you want to share them with your readers (although I now regret my use of the word “simpering”, which seems like my knee-jerk overreaction to an attitude I have sniffed from other commentators on the same topic. I do hate melodrama, and I should remember not to dish it!)
“Good looks”, as defined by every culture and generation, have been engineered by the unseen hand of evolution. To the extent that they spell “fertility” and “health”, they drive us to the best partners and keep the human race in business. We can both drink some green tea to that, I am sure! One must assume that the urge to make life better, and the discipline and moxie to act on that urge, are part of our evolutionary “toolkit”.
I also believe, on a spiritual level, that a Loving God wants to perfect His creation, and by hopping on the beauty bandwagon I am essentially declaring my gratitude for this life and trying to “win one for the (Big) Gipper”. If God wanted me to be a purely spiritual and/or mental being, He could have kept me in gas form, but He did NOT, and that is a whopping message right there. While in this body, I intend to max out on the (good) things a body can do. It is such a privilege to be alive, and I want to look the part!
I clearly represent the side that believes that “getting a little work done” is a mightly fine thing. When I die, I probably won’t decompose, I’ll just disassemble. And I think I look exactly like what a woman my age should look like. Having tried the full gamut of beauty products, I can vouch that two of them actually work – sunscreen (I think) and dental floss (I know). I respect the decision of all men and woman to live life as they see fit, as they must respect my choice to keep slugging it out with Mother Time.The glory of our abundant, prosperous society is that we all DO have that choice, along with the miracle of a free and robust press that made our dialogue possible.
Feel free to share my comments, Christine. Perhaps you’ll agree with me that sharing the entire Point-Counterpoint dialogue might be even more interesting to your readers. Here’s to a better life, and a Greener Tea!
Hollis
Hollis,
The dialogue is what makes the whole thing worthwhile. My opinion is just a point of view. Knowing what other women think is just as interesting (or more so).
You provided me with a good reality check because the world works more as you describe than as I do. Sometimes I spend too much time in the world of possibility instead of reality. I seem to like it better but it implies an idealism that isn’t always representative of the world we actually live in.
Interesting what you say about the cultural definition of good looks. It made me think about cultures where people marry young and how those people have evolved to be at their physically most attractive in their teens. In cultures where the tradition is to marry later, it seems that the population is most physically beautiful later in life. I think it probably is a real evolution, not just a coincidence. We’d need an anthropologist to tell us.
I love your comments about dental floss and agree that it is more than just a personal belief you have. If my day job has taught me anything, it’s that the 2 secrets of aging well are to be thin and have good teeth.
Our society’s most indescribably empowering feature is the freedom and we all share it. Using it to feel the best that we can about ourselves allows us to make the most of the precious time we have here.
Thanks, Hollis, for taking the time to comment. It is much appreciated by me and all the women who will read what we said.
I’m just enjoying reading and soaking in the back ‘n’ forths of others. I dearly appreciate what ya’ll have to say. I’m 41, and I’m afraid I’m not accepting it very gracefully. Probably because even at 16, or 22, or 30, I wasn’t “cute” and thin, either. I feel like I never had “my day”.
Thanks for referencing Randy Travis. He’s among my very favorites. And, he married [much] older. So he knows of what he speaks when he sings about a woman aging, and his undying love for her. Funny, as I was reading, Toby Keith was on, singing, “I Ain’t as Good . . . ”
Speaking of bimbos in videos . . . Trace Adkins, Toby, Gary Allan, Brooks ‘n’ Dunn . . . I love all these guys, they’re good men; I wish their “people” would give us a freaking break on the blonde bombshells in the videos. ;P
P.S . . .
1) Christine, you are just cute as a button.
2) I love Paula’s Choice. I love Paula! Besides using her products, I subscribe to her http://www.beautipedia.com. When I do choose to purchase drug store cosmetics and skin care, her reviews have saved me tons of money and wasted product.
Tracy,
Welcome!
I’m beginning to think a group of us is going to have to get together and rewrite Toby’s song for him.
I mean really – “I used to be hell-on-wheels…” – used to be? Not any woman I know. We sisters over 40 are doing it better than ever.
I hope when you say “cute as a button”, you’re looking at my 2yr old self picture. Between the fat cheeks and the bangs cut almost at the hairline, what’s not to like? Still got the fat cheeks but I’ve let my bangs grow out. Thanks for the compliment ! : )
I have a great deal of difficultly telling people my age (I’m 50). I’ll go to great lengths to avoid it. Any help or advice please? I feel it will stigmatise me as “past it” for people to know.
I forgot to ask to be e-mailed if there are any follow-up e-mails to my comment.
I don’t think you’re alone here, Debby.
There was a time when I might have suggested something like “examine your feelings to find the true obstacle” or “develop a passion to enhance your self-esteem”.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my obstacles, self-inflicted though I recognize them to be, and have decided that there’s no point. I can’t figure it out and I’m wasting time trying. My new approach is “get it done” and forget about worrying about the specific reason why I hesitated in the first place.
There’s no doubt that the only one who’s worried about your age is you, right? And no one will think you’re past anything, even though you do? Maybe just making yourself say “I’m fifty” enough times, it won’t seem such a challenge. “I’m fifty and wouldn’t want to be a day less” might be better. Say anything enough and you start believing it.
To get to the core of the question might be worthwhile though. Do you actually like 50 or would you prefer to go back? Do YOU think you’re past anything or just getting started? Who really cares what anyone else thinks at the end of the day? Do you see your friends who are 50 and more as having had their day?
This is such an interesting conversation and one I really want to think about with women. The media has taught us to apologize for the change in our looks. But what on earth makes us so worried about our years? Especially now that women have more money, power, recognition, independence,… It’s just so good to be our age at this time in history. We are admired, strong, achievers at home and at work. It’s the 30 year olds who should be looking at us saying “I hope to be there one day”.
Keep talking. It’s my new crusade and I’m loving it.
PS – I can’t subscribe to comments for you but I’ve made myself a note to email you with any follow-ups in a few days.