I want to Visibly Age, how about you?

You would have to be living under a rock (or off social media/the internet completely, sequestered in a little cabin in the middle of a heavily wooded place untouched by the modern world) not to notice the current noise around aging. Don’t get me wrong, as long as I have been alive the noise has been there and the common theme has been the same: Don’t do it, don’t age. With the caveat . . . Well, if you have to, at least don’t look like you are aging.

My generation (age 45 to 60ish) of women is experiencing an especially interesting pitch within the noise; We are fissuring, splitting into two groups (with a myriad of splinters). We are either those who simply age or those who age, but whose faces (and bodies) remain frozen in some ambiguous youthful moment.

Just in the past few years, the conversation from the holistic/natural end of the spectrum has swung wildly from terms like pro aging, graceful aging, positive aging and healthy aging to just let me fucking age or more appropriately let me look like I am aging. 

Personally, at 45 (nearly 5 years ago!), I gave up trying to stop the clock. Prior to that I was a little obsessed; every new line (they started in my late teens/early twenties) seemed to be a warning that something was wrong. When I realized I would most likely have jowls by the time I was 50 (given my genetic predisposition for a weak chin and round cheeks) and puffy pillow like pads under eyes for the rest of my life, I fearfully pondered how I might tighten, lift and tone everything without surgical intervention (I’m a crunchy crunchy girl after all). There was a lot of gua sha happening at the time and even a little bit of face yoga. Pranayama and tongue thrust therapy were a vanity play more than wellness practices.

Working on Zoom during the covid lock down and into the following years gave me ample time to stare at my own face, lamenting its transformation from youth into something unfamiliar and almost sinister. I definitely felt like I had failed somehow. Acceptance didn’t come through a decision to freeze time, or even a profound realization, it came because everything snow balled and there was nothing I could do about it, it was just too much (innumerable lines, jowls, pores, weird long hairs, loss of other hairs, concerning patches, deluxe under eye puffs all blossomed over night it seemed). Altering any of it made no sense to me (financially or otherwise) and I was too tired. Abused and exhausted by the years of nonsense I had encountered as a female. Also, I’m here to live and if that goes on for long enough, I will age. There is simply too much suffering in the world to spend resources trying to make that look different than it does.

Social media, “iPhone face”, the pandemic fueled Zoom era of work caused other people my age (and much younger) to make vastly different choices: freezing nerve receptors, buffing out fine lines, filling and plumping here, removing and hollowing there, stretching, clipping, tucking . . . and it seems they never asked themselves why. Who is it really for? Is it really “just for me”? Or because “I deserve it”? Am I actually seeing my face objectively on screens/in mirrors? Why is visibly aging considered a failure?

Or is all of this aging without looking like we’re aging nonsense a perpetuation of something much deeper and truly sinister within our culture? As women we have been objectified our entire lives. Lately we’ve been shown (blatantly and undeniably) that beauty is tied up in worth and worth is tied up in youth and youth is attractive to men and men appear to be alarmingly pedophilic in their preferences.

Some say this era of mine (the peri and post menopausal) is the zero gives a fuck era. And it certainly fits the bill for me! I work with the skin. I love the skin! And yes I care about my appearance; I don’t want to accost anyone with the sight of an extraordinarily long mole hair, food between my teeth or crusts around my eyes, but I don’t care if age shows on my face or my body.

As far as my skin is concerned, I simply desire to keep it happy, hydrated and nourished. I also want flow. I want fluid to move. I want energy to move. I want people to know how I feel based on the expression on my face. I want to remember how I’ve lived because of the lines I see between my brows and in the corners of my eyes. I don’t want to forget that I am lucky to be here - I’m still alive baby! I want to remember that I am not an object whose worth dissolves when my skin sags and my eyelids crinkle. 

I used to try to stay in a neutral space around the question of aging. I would say to my clients “I don’t, but you do what makes you feel comfortable”. And though I can’t say many positive things about the internet and social media, they have connected me to people (younger, my age and older) who have visible platforms with large engaged audiences. People who are encouraging us to ask ourselves why? That’s all. Why isn’t it ok for us to visibly age?

I realize that neutrality in today's landscape is no longer a choice. Neutrality leads inadvertently to complicity. I choose not to be complicit with an insidious force that does not want me here unless I look and act a certain way. A force that does not see value in me unless I look like a teenager or twenty something no matter what I’ve been through or how long I’ve been alive.

So I am taking a stand. I want to visibly age! I want to take up space on the fringes of an industry that has made my life hell with its endless exhausting marketing efforts and insidious fear (not enough, too much) mongering. I want to show younger women (I want to show my daughter!) that it's ok to see the visible signs of age! I have officially given up the language that still gives visible aging an heir of “right way and wrong way” like “pro aging”, “graceful aging” and even my term “balanced aging”.

It’s just fucking aging

Oh and I am going to mist my skin with rose water all day long and massage it with oil for luxurious amounts of time without apology. 

That’s all

Want to join me?

xx

N