With the ever incredible Emma Watsons recent milestone of 30, amongst being stuck at home with nothing better to do than obsess over my growing face oil collection, the concept of ageing has been on my mind!
I mean when you really break it down, ‘ageing’, in a very basic way, stripped of its social implications, is really just about the accumulation of years and experiences!
In fact, when the Pew Research Center asked a group of American senior citizens what they thought about future inventions, only 3% of those polled had interest in time travel or the reversal of aging. The were fundamentally happy just the way they were.
So why are we continually bombarded with anti-aging products, youth restoring plastic surgery and new medical innovations to reverse the clock?
As modern women, we enjoy more freedoms, power and experiences than any other women before us, yet the inevitable fading of beauty still manages to lurk around the edges of our progress and success.
According to Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, this is due to the fact that “The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us.”
It’s as if the success of a women in any part of her life is still always hinged on whether she is capable enough, and that capability is determined by age, of which ‘beauty’ is considered the main marking criteria.
Which begs an even bigger question again … Is the idea that women become less ‘beautiful’ with age due to the fact that we grow more powerful and capable with time, and our culture simply does not yet find power in women attractive?
We may never be able to answer the question, but we can change how we look at ageing, whether we are 13, 30 or 83 – Age merely signifies your growing experience, aptitude, attitude and power. All things which should be celebrated and certainly never feared in my opinion!