Ever since noticing certain Perimenopausal Shifts in my own body, I’ve been surreptitiously researching other women’s bodies/faces at the grocery store, at Target, at the library, etc. Now that I am looking for it, it’s very clear: older women have, in general, substantially different bodies/faces/skin/hair than younger women. Even if we use unrealistic societal ideals, a slim, very-exercised, well-moisturized 60-year-old model does not look remotely the same as a slim, very-exercised, well-moisturized 20-year-old model. It is right there before me, clear as day, just as clear as the difference between the young women and the children who have not yet gone through puberty: there is a second dramatic BODILY SHIFT, later in life. Maybe a third. Everyone changes, and then everyone changes again, and maybe again. This has not been kept a secret; I just wasn’t paying attention because it wasn’t yet happening to me, and because it wasn’t a situation where EVERYONE WAS CONSTANTLY TALKING ABOUT it, the way they were with puberty. ARE YOU THERE, GOD, IT’S ME, MIDDLE-AGED MARGARET
Why HASN’T it been clear all along? My mind first went to the knee-jerk response about older women being invisible, but that didn’t sit right with me. I think that expression can be useful for describing how older women might be invisible TO MEN and TO MARKETERS, and CULTURALLY of course; but I don’t feel as if older women are invisible TO ME. After a little more thought, I realized what it was (in addition to a SHAMELESS lack of scientific research / medical information), and it was a happy relief of a realization: it’s that their bodies/faces/skin/hair look ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. They look NORMAL and RIGHT. They don’t catch my eye in any way, because WHY WOULD THEY? They look the way they are supposed to look. Younger people look like younger people, older people look like older people; the snail’s on the thorn, all’s right with the world!
It is only when those changes started happening to MY OWN PERSONAL BODY that it felt Wrong and Uncomfortable and Highly Noticeable. The CHANGE feels uncomfortable, as any change wrapped up in identity might feel—particularly if it’s a change that our…is it safe to say “entire world”? I think it is: that our ENTIRE WORLD associates with a loss of attractiveness, however much we want to kick that perspective in the entire world’s nuts. Plus: the exhausting reevaluation of clothing. I don’t enjoy figuring out clothing even under the best of circumstances. Today I am wearing a t-shirt I bought at Old Navy when William, now a college graduate, was a toddler. It has quite a few snags and holes in it by now, but it’s comfortable and familiar and I can’t buy an exact replacement so I’ll keep wearing this one until it falls off me. I don’t want to have to re-figure-out EVERYTHING THAT TOUCHES MY WAIST.
Doing my surreptitious research about other women’s bodies has led to some discoveries about their fashion. It’s different fashion. Some of the women do not seem to give a damn about their lil tummies; some of them do seem to give a damn. Some of them are going for snappy little coordinated separates; some of them are going for monochrome. There are some tum-hiding fashions at play that some of us may want to investigate; there are some yes-there’s-a-tum-what-are-YOU-looking-at-ASSHAT fashions that others of us may want to investigate.
I recommend, as an exercise, looking deliberately at some of the women you interact with. Quick glances, maybe, so you don’t freak them out with your peering. Did you even notice their wrinkles, and the variety and depth and specific locations of those wrinkles, before you made yourself look deliberately? Did you evaluate their necks, the way you evaluate yours? Did you count their grey hairs? Did you scrutinize the texture and color of their skin as if from six inches away, and compare it to the smoothe glow of a 20-year-old model’s digitally-corrected skin? If so, I am sorry, and I can tell you it is a blessing to go through life without clocking those things in that way, and I have appreciated (and continue to appreciate) that blessing of relative obliviousness. I am sure my friends don’t appreciate it when they lose 20 pounds and I don’t even notice let alone comment; but I hope things balance out when they gain 20 pounds and I don’t notice then, either. I am not in general noticing/counting their veins; I am not noticing/measuring their forehead lines; I am not noticing the specific depth/width/darkness of their undereye sags; I wish I could be the same when I look in the mirror.
It is reassuring, though, to think that WE TOO must be going through life with other people not noticing or caring about our stomachs, our necks, our wobbly upper arms, our thinning hair, our thinning and irregular skin. We just look RIGHT to them. They already know what we look like, and how old we are, and our whole package deal looks normal and right to them. WE ARE GETTING OLDER. AND SO IT LOOKS RIGHT THAT WE THEREFORE ALSO LOOK OLDER. I AM TRYING TO FORCE THIS TO SINK IN.
Oh my god this whole post. Yes. I so often catch myself looking at an older woman, thinking she looks great! And then I catch my reflection in a mirror and think I look like a troll. Do I in fact look very different from the woman I was just admiring? No. But I do look different from how I looked at age 30 and I’m mad about it despite knowing PERFECTLY WELL that 51 year old women simply do not look 30! Even women with very good trainers and plastic surgeons!
I have always thought that it is a good practice to only say things to myself that I would say to other people. Because I am only mean to myself; I am nice to other people all the time in my head. I have made it a practice to find something beautiful about everyone I spend any iota of time looking at (I am trying to be embodied and that means I need to feel some form of comfort with my own body and that maybe means trying to change what I think it beautiful and it turns out that if you just practice, you can? I hope that makes sense.) but I have the hardest time doing that for myself.
Sigh.
Why do I feel a little choked up reading this?! Love you and your insights, Swistle. ❤️
Love this take!
Thank you, middle aged Margaret! I needed this so much!
YES — as you say, I am currently rethinking everything in my wardrobe that touches my waist, and it is exhausting and horrible and also frustratingly expensive. Especially considering I’m paying for clothes I don’t even like better than the old ones.
Also, thank you so much for the comments about not noticing other people’s wrinkles. My 13 yr old daughter has just recently caught up to roughly my (pre-wardrobe rethinking) size, and now I suddenly have a sort of younger self to compare myself to every day. I didn’t really think about the gradual accumulation of wrinkles etc in the mirror until I saw at the comparison, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I needed to hear your kinder perspective.
UGH my 17 year old daughter is a mirror of me when i was 17. I thought i was so fat! And yes the comparison… like, oh here’s where my eyelids should be, that’s what my jawline should look like. I’m taking her with me for reference when i do a facelift consult LOL.
Swistle, I feel like I could have written this entire thing, word for word. I think it was last year when I was teaching my senior ladies’ yoga that I noticed…hey, all these ladies have slim little legs and wide torsos and tummies. I had never noticed before. They just looked like themselves. And then I thought, hey, look at my waist disappearing. THIS IS HAPPENING TO ME. And of course I felt distressed and upset at first, and I still kind of do if I try to put on some old jeans that no longer fit, but mostly I feel like, hey, I look like I am supposed to. I am just in a new stage of life, just like I was excited to have a tummy when I was pregnant, shouldn’t I be excited now (I’m not, but I’m more at peace).
Since then I have looked at (hopefully non-creepily) ladies of a certain age with interest, and have noticed things on them like a wider waist, like thinner hair, like a certain look around the neck. And you know what, it looks great on them and it’s looking great on me, and I’m sure it looks great on you because that’s just the way it is.
Probably 20 years ago my MIL told me that she saw a candid photo that was taken of my FIL and thought “who is that frumpy old lady in the background” before realizing that frumpy old lady was her. Like I said, this is decades ago so she was probably 60ish. She said she couldn’t reconcile the photo with what she thought she looked like. I thought she was crazy then, but now I think – YES. I understand completely.
Also, that same MIL said a couple years ago, when I mentioned wrinkles, that when she looked at me, she didn’t see anything (she has cataracts, but moving on), she said I didn’t look older to her, I just look like Nicole. And I thought that’s the way I look at my friends too. They just look like themselves.
I also think that when you see people you have known for a long time, you kind of see their young face superimposed onto their older face.
This resonates so much. I try not to look in the mirror very much, only when necessary. During COVID the family was on a zoom call and my Mom turned to my sister and said who is that old lady? It was her. They laughed about it later, but was kind of disturbing at the moment.
When I look at “older” woman I am usually more interested in whether they are smiling, what is coming out of their mouths, and if they look ill or frail. Maybe because I am an “older” lady at 63 (but I was just 30 yesterday)
I’m not quite at this age yet, but enough to notice. Especially with all the 30-year olds getting botox and other cosmetic procedures that makes me think NOT FAIR! You’re making ME look older because you look younger.
My nice reminder to myself is “The other option to not getting older is TO BE DEAD and you don’t want that. Aging is a privilege many do not have.”
I heard this recently: That we should appreciate our today body and buck the endless hamster wheel of never liking the way we look. Twenty years ago I bemoaned my ample hips. Now I look at pictures from that era and think I looked pretty darn good! If I fastforward twenty years, my 60 year old self would wonder what present-day me is complaining about. It never ends!
Maya Rudolph sings ‘I Love My Body’. I don’t do tik tok, but it’s there, and on Spotify and Apple Music and probably lots of other places. I can’t remember how I came across it, but it covers this issue.
I am a thin person. When I was young my mother told me not to wear a sleeveless top because I was too bony. Those lessons go deep, don’t they? Now I’m 70, and wearing sleeveless is both an act of defiance as well as acceptance.
I have always avoided jumpsuits because I felt that they accentuated my very round tummy. Then recently I had an epiphany: my tummy IS round! Do I think somehow people miss this fact when I drape a tunic over it? No! They don’t. It’s round, irrespective of the clothes I think I’m supposed to wear.
So anyway I started wearing jumpsuits and they are so fun.
THIS>>>>>>>”I am not noticing the specific depth/width/darkness of their undereye sags; I wish I could be the same when I look in the mirror.”
How do we get ourselves to that?!
This past weekend I went to a remote cottage with three other ladies in their 50s. We were all in and out of the lake sans clothing all weekend and you know what makes women our age look fantastic? Being naked! No clothes that used to fit us digging in and pushing up ridges anywhere, just lovely roundness and gentle slopes everywhere.
I’m in my mid-40s with graying hair and my dad keeps making comments about it. My mom used to dye her hair at this age but I don’t want to get into an endless cycle of dyeing hair, and at this point it would be really obvious if I started dyeing it. So anyway, I’ve basically accepted my aging appearance but my 80 yo dad hasn’t! I could do without the health stuff that comes with aging though…
Do we have the same dad? Mine told me “Your mother never weighed that much.” It’s hard to get those voices out of our heads. My response now, on repeat is, “my weight is the least interesting thing about me.”
I hate this so much for all of us. <3
Thank you for talking about this. It’s needed and helpful. I’m in my early 40s and have found myself wondering when the tipping point will be. When will I be unable to hide (with hair dye or make up etc) the normal signs of ageing? Do I want to? It’s such hard work!
Being a woman is exhausting. I wish we were all kinder to each other. Aging isn’t a competitive sport.
I had to go into the office the other day to meet some big wigs and one of them is an Older Lady ™ meaning older than me. I think she looks great but she has a habit of wearing a very particular sillouhette (sp) that has other women joking about her 24/7 pirate costume. I can’t lie, her outfits are swashbuckler-esque, but… good for her? Rock on, Anne Bonny, VP of Buried Treasure, Caribbean Ltd.