I love it when people say I don’t look my age. LOVE IT. And it’s really easy to curate an online persona that could be any age. Just post glossy selfies taken with the portrait app in golden lighting, eyebags smoothed out. And while there’s no fudging the actual numbers, does it matter when you can fool them all the same?
During the early parts of lockdown, when we had nothing but time, I perfected my version of Zoolander’s Blue Steel. Head tilt, eyes cast slightly upward, phone held above my head. A series of selfies that look exactly the same but for the hat I’m wearing.
So when things started opening up again, and I could meet the friends I’d made over social, or people I hadn’t seen in a couple of years - I got nervous. What would they think when they saw me in person (either again or for the first time) without the benefit of my tools and tricks? What would they think of the real living breathing human who stepped out of their phone or computer and into the harsh daylight?
I sometimes find myself distracted on video calls by my neck, the loose skin from aging and weight loss that mocks me. I go to a mirror after and pull the skin back tightly, scowling at how much ‘better’ I look. I apply another layer of the neck cream I bought for its promise to tighten and tone.
Occasionally during a moment of weakness, I double tap an IG anti-aging ad, maybe for facial yoga promising to restore a youthful appearance, or a new serum. I’m then tormented by re-marketing ads, each of them confirming that yes, I am an old crone, but with their (dubious) products, I could be OK again. I have to click on all the sweaters and vegan food posts to purge my feed of these demons.
I’m embarrassed by how much I care about this. There’s some irony in it too, as I suffer from terrible urticaria, particularly in the winter. My face is often covered in painful red welts that no doctor has been able to fix. So what’s a wrinkle, or puffy eye compared to that? And yet.
Being a woman means being perceived. We are raised being told that we don’t exist outside how people (mostly men) see us. We’re inundated with it. The movies where the nerd gets the prom queen. The ‘funny guy’ with the hot wife. That friend who points at his partner and boasts about having ‘outkicked his coverage’. And that no matter how beautiful a woman, there will be someone who will say ‘nah, she’s nothing special’.
I can’t imagine how it feels for those who aren’t cis, or fall outside what we’ve defined as gender norms.
Our value is so wrapped up in our looks, and not our achievements. As a kid, I was keenly aware that it wasn’t the most accomplished female athletes who got the endorsements, but the prettiest.
Even the saying ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ is a subtle nod to this - no matter how you look, someone will find you attractive, and therefore acceptable.
Women become invisible as we age, for every Angela Basset or Jennifer Lopez, there are countless others who become unseen, no longer viewed as desirable and so no longer viewed at all. And it certainly doesn’t help me that society sees a woman my age who’s single as a ‘failure’.
I think that’s at the root of my insecurities about getting older. This was especially exacerbated during lockdowns, when I was haunted by an acute sense that life was passing me by. I think what I’m most afraid of isn’t looking ‘old’, but of being forgotten.
I worry about the time I have left, which none of us are promised - and if I have done enough to be remembered. I want to stop focusing on wrinkles, or the new grey hairs that seem to crop up daily and start being more present.
The other day I needed my passport for something, and thought the photo - which I loathed at the time it was taken - was actually pretty nice. But moreover, that it didn’t matter if it wasn’t. It was going to be glanced at by some border agent, and then it would take me on a new adventure. And that being remembered didn’t matter if I wasn’t making memories of my own.
I’m going to try to start living more, and fret less. But maybe be better about wearing sunscreen.
On Aging
This came in right as my both and I were trading ailments on slack. Fitting.
Your selfies are bombdiggity. I can confirm two things, I think: 1. the fretting lessens as the visible signs of aging accelerates; 2. some days you simply cannot let the fretting go, and that's OK. Tomorrow (or later) will likely feel better, with improved perspective.