Have you noticed that there are certain famous people now well into their 60s who look like they’re in their 30s?
As I myself age (I’m 44 now), I’ve been noticing it a lot.
How does Demi Moore, who I watched as a child in Ghost as an actual 20-something, currently look younger than me?
A new Devil Wears Prada is coming out, and none of the characters appear to have aged a day. Have they been cryogenically frozen all this time?? It has literally been 20 years since the first movie came out. Truly, what is happening.
Some people are extra conspicuous.
Cher, I’m convinced, is a real live vampire. I don’t think we’ll ever hear about her death, because it won’t happen. She’ll merely fade out of the news for a while, and then maybe re-appear as a brand new young star 70 years from now.
Madonna flat-out scares me. She’s always kind of scared me, but at this point I find her apparent youth and strength disturbing.
I mean, really…what good is looking young and fabulous if the main response it will garner is people squinting their eyes, cocking their heads, and saying, “Huh?”
Or perhaps they’d say they made all those changes “just for them, nobody else.”
Now there’s something I’ve never believed.
You’d be right to detect some jealousy in my joking.
We women panic more about our looks than men do, and for good reason: while men struggle little to stay “relevant” even when they get grayer and fatter and more wrinkled (just yesterday I saw a man at least 70 years old making out with a woman in her 30s who was wearing hot pink sneakers), women seem to become gradually invisible.
It’s the reason my weird dad has always been able to find a girlfriend no matter how much of a misfit he may be: he sees and pays attention to older women. And when someone hasn’t felt paid attention to in a long time, even he can sweep her off her feet.
Come to think of it, I’m actually more jealous of men than of women rich enough to prevent themselves from visibly aging. Men aren’t paying millions of dollars and enduring painful procedures to make sure people don’t stop seeing their value.
“Letting yourself age naturally is now the real punk.”
I read this at some point last year, but I don’t remember where. It’s made me seek out and really notice especially those women who are simply letting themselves get to the point that plenty of people in Hollywood (and outside of it) would classify as “letting themselves go”:
Claire Danes in The Beast in Me. Toni Collette in Wayward. Pretty much all the actors in The Last of Us.
It’s so goddamn refreshing after looking in despair at Jennifer Aniston.
Famous people with lots of money can do what they want. But it’s hard to look at them and not feel weird when they’re still looking camera-ready to play a fresh-faced just-out-of-college character while your own face slowly crinkles and droops before your very eyes.
Sometimes, of course, the “work” people have done is cringe-worthy. I recently saw John Fogarty, who’s now in his 80s, perform on Tiny Desk Concert with gleaming white teeth and a tanned, wrinkle-free face that made it look like he’d been pre-embalmed.
Again, he can do what he wants. But what’s with the desire to go through pain to achieve such an unnaturally youthful look?
Is looking one’s wise old age that bad?
I rarely look at myself in the mirror anymore, or take selfies. Part of the reason is because I do not love the way I look. My neck is getting crinkly and saggy, as are my eyelids. My forehead is filling with wrinkles.
I don’t necessarily feel bad about these things happening — it’s natural, after all — but I’ve always been pretty, and it’s a strange experience to see myself getting slightly not as pretty (I also seem young for all this sagginess? Perhaps it was too many bad sunburns in my youth). Will people still pay attention to me? Will my perceived charm diminish as my youth does?
Because let’s be real: there are plenty of people (well, men) out there who just really do not like women, and are only nice to them when they think, if they play their cards right, that they might be able to have sex with them. How many people have been nice to me based on that?
More than I’d like to know, most likely.
But there’s another change that I like, too: I simply don’t care as much as I used to. I go out regularly without makeup, and don’t feel (too) self-conscious. I no longer feel like “looking my best” is a gift I owe to the general public (to be clear, I do feel like I owe it to not smell bad).
Of course, I’m only 44. I’ve got a long way to go — hopefully — and a lot more wrinkles and sagginess on the horizon. Time will literally tell the extent to which it effects me…my own self-esteem, and how others treat me.
But I have hope. Mainly, I just hope I can stop caring.
I guess, most of us have to come to terms with decline as we age. The important thing is that we don't wake up and pontlessly ask the mirror, "What the hell happened here?" Let's take things like the grown ups we are and not try to look weirder than Trump. If you're reading this Donald, for God's sake just quit torturing your f'ing hair. If we must do something then we need to eat and socialize well. If we get some laugh lines, well no worries.
Well based on your picture you still look great. And take it from a 76 year old man, you've got a lot more aging ahead of you, so get used to it!