If you frequent TikTok or have any sort of presence online, you’ve probably noticed the intense skincare, makeup, and filters all dedicated to preventing the show of wrinkles. In the digital age, constant reminders to start using certain products to protect your skin and prevent aging are everywhere. Young girls have the demands to age “gracefully” drilled into them as visible aging is seen as a curse. Despite the knowledge that many women use Photoshop, filters, or get work done to change their looks or appear closer to beauty standards, women are still expected to look a certain way.
You may have also noticed that men typically get a different level of attention down to a singular forehead wrinkle or the number of dark spots along the nose. Men are allowed to let their hair turn gray because then they earn the title of a “Silver Fox.” Women are not awarded this luxury. The internet’s response to former Victoria’s Secret Angel Adriana Lima this past year was brutal and uncalled for seeing as she has given birth to multiple children and lives a busy life. Women will not look the same as they did at the age of twenty when they are forty-two years old. Bodies change, and this is a celebration of a life well-lived.
The internet’s cruel response to any woman who shows any slight sign of age shows young girls that they must be ready to keep to a strict skincare regimen, get plastic surgery before the age of thirty, and keep up appearances well into a middle-aged life even though everyone ages and there is nothing wrong with this. Aging is normal. Aging is beautiful.
When will we allow women to age? There is no such thing as aging “gracefully,” because every man and woman on this earth will age, and unlike what we see online, most people we see do not actively pursue procedures and surgeries to prevent their aging. What we see online and what we see in the real world are completely different, though people expect women to be something that they’re not because these two worlds have become blurred.
Gilmore Girls star Alexis Bledel appeared at the Oscars party this year, marking a rare appearance as of late. Her appearance received scrutiny and insults purely because the internet has no idea how a woman in her early forties is supposed to look anymore. Sometimes even we women have no idea the harm we cause by making the same comments as men do. Just as a celebrity faces scrutiny for aging naturally and beautifully, we also have to realize that we will not look the same as we did before.
The moral of the story for some people on Twitter should be to log off, take a lap, and reevaluate how cruel they’re being to women who are simply existing, and living their best lives. Life is too short to be hyperfocused on the appearances of anyone, let alone people we don’t know.
Women should be allowed to age just as much as men are.