It’s no secret that women have an extra layer of societal pressure to stay young and beautiful. Lana Del Rey even wrote a song about the worries she had that her man wouldn’t love once she lost her youth and beauty. These worries have traditionally come into play at around 30 years old when a woman is a fully grown adult, but with influencers like the Kardashians and Jenners getting filler and botox in their teens and twenties, it’s changing the age at which women begin to look for wrinkles in the mirror.
It is really rooted in misogyny—why are men given such a free pass to age? In fact, their worth and value go up in society when they get older because oftentimes it is assumed that they earn more money, are wiser and have gotten it all figured out. Or when we see a man who hasn’t gotten married by 40, he has every right to do so because he’s still a “bachelor”, but conversely, when we talk about women not married at 40 we pity them. Why is that?
We place womens’ value on their age because women have a “biological time clock”, the window in their lives in which they can reproduce, that determines how valuable they are to society. By diminishing a woman’s worth because she can’t bear children any longer, it puts an unfathomable amount of pressure on women to stay looking youthful and compete with younger women. It’s as if nobody is allowed to age past 25 anymore because cosmetic surgery has become so mainstream. I am not saying cosmetic surgery is a bad thing, but to see some women on Tik Tok get filler before they are legally allowed to have a drink says a lot about the beauty standard for women.
I have also noticed a trend of adolescent, teenage girls growing up too fast. Many will disagree with this and say that I am judging them for wearing too much makeup or revealing clothing at 13, but the truth is I just wish kids were able to be kids again. The rise of social media has perpetuated this archetype of what every woman should look like no matter the age. I am now seeing preteens on social media that I thought were in their early to mid-twenties at first glance. Childhood comes and goes so fast, and it is important for young teens to not fall into the pressures of social media.
Don’t get me wrong, I was a preteen less than ten years ago, so I am fully aware of what these young girls see and how it makes them feel. I am not saying their experience is invalid; it is more about the grown women who influence them into thinking they don’t look good enough. But the thing is, those women who are influencing were also told during their adolescence that they had to look a certain way.
The standard of beauty is truly a toxic cycle that does not allow young women and girls to age-appropriately express themselves. We need to remind female-identifying people of all ages how beautiful they are, and that it is okay to look your age, no matter where you fall on the spectrum.