the privilege of aging & unrealistic beauty standards

Hey friends! Welcome to my birthday, I am 26 today and that officially means I have entered the last year of my mid twenties (24-26) and am off of my parents health insurance! YAY! So so so fun and exciting!! :’) 

Last year on my birthday, I launched this blog and I put out a post about 25 things I learned by 25. I loved that article and still go back and reread it to remind myself what I convinced myself that I had already learned. Those truly are life long lessons that I have to remind myself of often. If you haven’t read that blog post, I definitely recommend you go check it out! 

For my birthday this year, I just wanted to yap about aging. I wanted to talk about what it means to be in your late mid twenties because it’s honestly terrifying and exhilarating and my quarter life crisis is in full swing. 

How the f*ck did I get here? How am I not still a teenager with One Direction posters plastered all over my walls? That girl is still there within me, but now I can legally buy a joint and listen to their old albums and shed an occasional tear about how they are broken up, even though I swore that that would never happen.

This year for my birthday, I am in Warsaw, Poland. I am going to be spending the day getting some tattoos, eating pierogies, and dealing with the constant existential dread that comes with mid twenty years.

I am not someone that hates getting older, it just confuses the f*ck out of me, like the passing of time and how I managed to get to 26 years old. 16 was a decade ago? UNREAL. It’s just all very surreal to think about conceptually. 

I remember being 19 vividly, feeling like I was on top of the world with it all figured out. 23 feels like it was literally yesterday, even though that was already 3 years ago. 

Aging is a wild thing. I feel like I am going to blink and then I will suddenly be 30 and then 50 and then 80 and then dead? I mean, one can only hope right? I would say it’s not an unpopular opinion to want to die while you're sleeping when you're old. 

That's the thing with aging, it's a massive privilege. 

Sometimes I feel like people check out once they hear the word privilege nowadays unfortunately. I don't know what it is about people not wanting to be aware of the ways the world is benefiting them. It seems to trigger some people, but stay with me. It is a PRIVILEGE to age. 

Not everyone gets to age unfortunately. We don’t all get to live to 100 and die peacefully in our sleep. It’s just not the reality. I think to be able to look at myself in the mirror at 75, with a face full of wrinkles that tell the story of my life, would be such an honor. 

There's so many people out there that don't want to age. In fact, I feel like we are constantly being pushed by anti-aging rhetoric, especially as women. 

Of course there are things that I am not stoked about when it comes to aging, but I am not going to fight it too hard. I will incorporate some retinol into my already inconsistent skin care routine, wear sunscreen, and try to take care of my body the best my little disabled self can. 

Now coincidentally, I just watched The Substance with Demi Moore. This movie, first off, is insane. It was so disturbing and gross to watch, as someone who is grossed out by bodily things… It was amazing though, and the general theme of it is the unrealistic beauty standards. These beauty standards are rooted in being young. As we age, we depreciate in value as a whole. I highly recommend watching this gruesome representation of how far a woman will go to meet impossible beauty standards. 

Watching this movie and turning 26 within the same week have me really thinking about what it means to age and the process of it, especially how that relates to the way my body changes. 

I can’t deny the fact that I have already started noticing differences in my body as I have aged. I have put on weight since I was a teenager, which is totally normal, but still sometimes sucks to think about. I am starting to get deeper smile lines. I have always had pronounced forehead wrinkles and a permanent line directly between my eyebrows as a result of chronically furrowing them. Is it one of my biggest insecurities? Yes. It is hard to feel like I am the only one not actively trying to fix these things. 

The more I scroll on social media, particularly Tik Tok, I am being fed anti aging fear mongering posts. There are girls getting preventative botox at 20. 13 year olds are already buying retinol products from Sephora. All that is true, but there are still so many people I know that wouldn’t even consider these things (they don’t scroll on social media either). 

I think people can do whatever they want with their bodies. I don’t want this to come across as shaming the people that make these decisions. I do, however, think it is important to think critically about these things. It is not a feminist decision. The reality is that young women would not be getting these procedures if they didn’t feel like they were ugly or losing value as they aged. People are profiting off of these insecurities. It’s a massive industry that would sink if we all accepted aging. 

Looking older is like the mark of death in this day and age, and it makes me really sad. I find that a lot of women getting procedures done early actually make themselves look older. To each their own again, but I wish we didn't see a little wrinkle and immediately become insecure. 

I have to constantly talk myself down from wanting botox in my forehead. It would fix an insecurity of mine, but I would like to think that I am never going to get botox because of pressure from society. I have fixed an insecurity of mine, I had jaw surgery because I had to, not just cosmetic reasons. News flash, you fix on insecurity and you will naturally pick something else to not like.

Even though people might think they are doing it solely for themselves, if the beauty industry wasn't pushing anti aging, then these insecurities would not be as prevalent. I wish society didn't make women feel like they lost worth as they aged. Girls should not feel the need to get preventative botox at 20. I know that’s the point of “preventive” but have you seen the pillow face results… 

We fear it so much; aging.

I am not sure some people even fear getting closer to death as much as they fear looking older. As much as men have to worry about balding and wrinkles as well, I think the pressure to look young is a lot less intense. Women can’t have smile lines, crows feet, forehead wrinkles, nasolabial folds? I feel like I am just making up words that we are suddenly becoming conscious and insecure of. Men only like us when we look young, pristine, and firm! Good thing I am a lesbian! 

Crows feet and eyebrow wrinkles are in for men, they get coined as silver foxes while women depreciate with time. When you look at the most attractive celebrities as they age, often the men have embraced aging, while women feel that pressure to get botox, face lifts, and promote anti aging products at a higher frequency. 

I am writing this all from the perspective of someone who is 26 and as I was watching that movie, I realized that it must be sad to realize you are no longer young, not in a mental sense, but in a physical one. There are certain advantages that come when your body is younger. I can’t help but sympathize with people who are holding onto their youth. It is scary to get older and feel like our body is changing. 

I am now trying to unpack these fears. There is a possibility that the “hottest” I will ever look is when I was 21. I might have peaked in those years physically, but as I get older, I am coming more into who I am and am living a more authentic life. I still wish I could look this way forever, but I am trying not to just hold onto that hope forever. 

I get new tattoos as I get older, and that makes me look cooler and hotter, in my opinion. I still get to pick out fun clothes that match my personality. I can do fun makeup looks to keep things interesting. I can dye my hair a new color. You can do things to keep your appearance fresh, while accepting that you might not look the way you did in your teenage years. 

I think we need to start moving towards a mindset shift when it comes to our appearances and aging. We need to accept the fact that we will look different as we get older. It is okay to mourn that version of ourselves though, it is hard. 

There’s more to aging though than the physical changes, and I think that is what we should focus on. Some of us will get married, have children, travel to new countries, start businesses, and live lives more authentically as we figure out who we are. 

I personally am excited to get older because I think my brain will be a nicer place to live the more I age. I believe that with time we begin to care less about what other people think of us. We are more comfortable with who we are. We live everyday as authentically as possible. I think there is a lot to look forward to with the passage of time. 

You haven’t experienced all the love and amazing days of your life. Life doesn’t need to peak and end when we are in our teenage years or early twenties. There is so much more ahead of us and we are not defined by our appearance. We are worth so much more than that. 

I hope this blog post is just the intro to your critical thinking into the process of aging and the fear imposed on us by society. Being in your mid twenties brings up a lot of complicated emotions. I haven’t even touched on the existential dread and anxiety about our futures, that’ll be another blog post! You are free to do what you choose with your body, I just hope we can move to a place where we are more accepting of the natural changes of aging, as it is such a privilege to have.

Remember to live a life that charges your soul (& that might include a little botox). 

With love, 

Jordan