Young & Hot
If you met me in high school, I’d have told you that my biggest fear was “getting old;” an inevitable, (somewhat) invariable, perpetually occurring event. At the time, I was picturing myself as a little old lady in a nursing home unable to do anything for herself due to the physical limitations that age can bring.
Since then, my view of aging has become more complex. Of course, there are financial burdens and personal hurdles that we all experience as we grow up, like figuring out a career path, recognizing beliefs and values independent of how you were raised, and, the worst part, paying rent.
Lately the topic of aging has been the source of some anger for me. I can deal with the financial and personal changes that come with age, but I hadn’t considered the social consequences until recently. There's a glaringly fucked up double standard that we've set for aging: In many cases, it’s fine for men to show physical signs of aging. Sexy, even. When women start to show their age, however, we become ‘less desirable’ in the eyes of society.
While youth is commonly romanticized for countless reasons regardless of gender, a woman’s extrinsic value seems more closely tied to age than for her male counterpart. One of the compliments most-loved by middle-aged women is that they look young. Makeup stores are always stocked with various "anti-aging" serums and creams primarily targeting women. Women of all ages, many still in their 20s, regularly pay hundreds to thousands of dollars for botox. It’s clear that women are under pressure to look as young as possible for as long as possible. Why? Additional questions follow my initial “why:”
Is the youth beauty standard for the attention of men, because a younger woman is a hotter woman?
Is a younger-looking woman hotter because she’s child-bearing age?
Is this just humans’ evolutionary need to procreate manifesting itself in modern dating?
Does society, consciously or not, still view women as vehicles for bearing children, and therefore women must look up to the task for as long as possible to remain valued?
Is it a combination of a bunch of things and we might never really know why people do and think anything at all?
Yeah, probably some of all of that.
I’m not accusing all men of consciously objectifying women and reducing them to child bearers. It could be beneficial, though, to dissect why certain qualities, such as ‘looking young’ (to an extent), might be attractive to so many men.
The way humans set things up often sucks. It sucks for women in terms of aging, and it sucks for literally every social grouping in a unique way. However, no matter what, it’s impossible to go through life without aging. There’s no point in being afraid of it, but it’s a shame that the patriarchy has convinced women they’re more beautiful if they look younger than they are. Growing old is a privilege and should be celebrated, not dreaded.
Each year of life provides more experiences to learn from and memories to look back on. I’m much smarter now than my high school self who was terrified of my little old lady self. I don’t fear the old-lady-in-a-nursing-home future as much as I used to because I know that I’m more than what ‘society’ might view me as, and there are certainly more interesting things about me than how I look. Even if old lady me is physically withered, she’ll still have a lot to say. Maybe I’ll feel differently about this whole thing when I’m older.
