Lately I've been taking a stab at productivity by only allowing myself to watch TV shows when I’m at the gym. I take my phone and catch up with "The Flash" while I run on the treadmill because I am the ultimate cheeseball. Throughout my 45-minute run with Barry Allen, there is a sprinkling of commercials. I don’t know if the commercials are chosen by some "Matrix"-like algorithm that knows I sometimes fall into a blackhole of makeup tutorials on YouTube, but most of the commercials I have to watch are for makeup companies. Here’s the one that I’ve been seeing the most lately:
Around the fifth time I had to watch this commercial, I started to get frustrated. According to this Olay commercial, the “number one beauty victory” is not looking like you’ve aged. Apparently it’s not cool to live anymore. Better just plastic wrap your face as soon as you come out of the womb, because “we are in the age of ageless.”
I don’t understand what is so wrong with aging. There’s such a stigma about grey hair and wrinkles, but it’s only natural. We aren’t supposed to look like we did in high school forever. It’s a little frightening to see a 70-year-old woman that looks like she could still be in her 20s.
Some of my friends have already started complaining of feeling old. These friends are in their early 20s. What are they afraid of? Feeling too old to shop at Forever 21? There shouldn’t be such a fear of our bodies changing. We’ve been through the worst of it; we’ll never have to go through puberty again. It’s not like looking older will ruin your life. Remember that there is quite a craze over cougars right now. Being old is hot.
A life well lived should be celebrated, not feared. As Brandi Carlile sings in her song ‘The Story’, “All of these lines across my face / Tell you the story of who I am”. Somebody whose face looks like a roadmap has lived a full life. I’ll bet that person has some killer stories.
And I can’t help but think of the badass women that I look up to who are older. Meryl Streep, Dame Maggie Smith and Carrie Fisher all have some wrinkles, but that doesn’t stop them from being awesome.
When the movie "Mad Max: Fury Road" came out there, was a lot of talk about how it was a revolutionary feminist film. But one of my favorite parts of the movie was how it highlighted a bunch of older women who were strong and cool and wrinkly!
Audrey Hepburn is another actress that I, and many others, admire a lot. The other day I was scrolling through Tumblr and saw a picture of Audrey Hepburn when she was about 60 years old. I realized that I hadn’t seen many pictures of this iconic woman after she had aged. I reblogged the picture thinking that more people needed to see her as a beautiful older woman.
If you want to remind yourself and others that we don’t have to be “age agnostic,” then share a picture of an awesome older woman, or just shoot your grandmother a text message telling her how cool she is (because your grandmother is hip enough to have iMessaging). And celebrate all of your weird age marks and stretch marks. You did it! You lived so hard it affected your body. That deserves admiration.
A/N: The glorious woman in the cover photo is Iris Apfel. She's a fashion icon and fabulous. Check out the documentary about her life on Netflix.
man running in forestPhoto by 
