The pressure of aging has loomed over me, as a young woman, since I turned about 13. Excited and buzzing about finally being a teenager, I quickly became aware of the idea that there was a clock ticking for me. Only seven more years until I leave my teenage years, and thus, what seems like the entirety of my adolescence behind me. Now, I’ve got about a month left of those years and, if I’m being completely honest with you, it’s eating me alive.
I’d imagine the idea of turning 20 is a little scary for a lot of people, but especially for young women. So much of my worth seems to be tied to my youth. As I get older, I can’t help but almost feel like I’m losing some sort of race that I couldn’t win even if I tried. Time feels like an enemy.
I know, in the grand scheme of things, I am still young. I can’t yet legally drink for another year and I still have time before Taylor Swift’s youthful anthem “22” applies to me. But this turning point of 19-20 feels catastrophic. I still can’t believe I’m not 17 anymore.
Maybe I’m part of a unique case as a Gen-Z woman. Maybe it’s because I experienced a pandemic at age 17 that aging feels so dramatic and terrifying. The last year of my high school experience, and even the first year of my university experience, were warped beyond the traditional ones I was expecting to live through. My first relationship, the last of high school sports events and performing arts acts, even prom and other school dances, were all robbed from me in their authentic forms as the world dissented into chaos. And as it happened, I was fine with it. How could I not be? I couldn’t do a thing to change the condition of the world at the time, and there was no use of complaining. But now, as I reflect, I’ll forever be bitter about those pivotal years of my youth being taken away. Because now I’m almost twenty. I’m two years into my perceived adulthood and I still feel stuck in what was three years ago.
It doesn’t help that our American society and the traditional media I’ve been inundated with since I was young had always valued the teenage years and put a huge emphasis on maintaining youth for young women. The movies and TV shows of my adolescence all focused on the magic of the coming-of-age trope and highlighted that time in our lives as being full of excitement and a sense of recklessness and freedom we could only feel as a teenager. The music I would listen to would often reference teenage years and I long for the time that I aspired to reach those ages, or when I could finally relate to those lyrics as I turned those respective ages. Once I would reach my birthday, and a new number defined me by my age, pulling me from the relatability in the universes of those songs, they became harder to listen to. Those TV shows and movies became a bit harder to watch because now I felt too old to fully resonate with the world they crafted.
Even beauty standards, at their core, value youth over anything. Looking young, feeling young; appearing with no wrinkles, gray hairs or any other indicators of a maturing figure or visage. As I approach 20 I know those delicate changes are inevitable as I continue to get older, yet I pile on skincare and other products each and every day with the prevention of those very things at the forefront of my mind, even if I try to convince myself otherwise. I dread not being told I look great for my age when I reach a new decade of my life, even though there shouldn’t be a standard in place for appearance at any point in time. I know I will forever be chasing my youth as it flees me, because, from what I have witnessed, older women only ever receive praise for their ages based on how they look years younger than what their birth certificates would confirm for you. Most of everything else is disregarded for women except for their appearance and the youth that is inevitably associated with it. While it seems superficial, it’s a real, looming fear coming from the pressure of society as a whole.
I cannot help but fear aging.
The world we live in puts pressure on me to reach success and build a stable foundation for a family within the next decade of my life, yet I feel suffocated by the idea that I can’t simply wait until I’m good and ready to make those steps (a luxury most men are given). The timer that’s been set cannot be recalibrated; there’s a biological clock I’m bound to and one by society that sits right next to it, enforcing a theoretical deadline that feels impossible to ask for an extension on.
Soon enough I’ll be out of school and thrust into the real world, and as exciting as that can seem that I’ll finally be truly on my own, it’s equally as terrifying that in a few very short years I’ll no longer have a hand to hold, and by that time, I’ll be further along this timeline that looms over me. I need to be ready for my future before it happens. I need to jump ahead of the curve before it catches up to me, and I’m not ready to move that fast. Once I reach a certain age, certain things will be expected of me. Not only the maintenance of appearing young but the standard of stability that age indicates. It’s like I’ll be fighting two battles at once. One of preserving youth and one of validating my maturity.
I know I’m not alone in this thought process. But sometimes, it does feel like I’m unnecessarily fearful of adding a year to my age, especially as I enter only the third decade of my life. There’s so much time ahead of me, so why do I feel like things are coming to an end so quickly? 30 seems like it’s the end for a woman to me. Once I have a three stamped as the first number in my age, it feels like I’ll be an old spinster who, if she hasn’t yet, needs to have children and needs to find a partner to marry or I’ve let down the world I live in. If I don’t still have a youthful appearance to exhibit to the people I encounter on a daily basis, I’ve failed. It’s ridiculous to be asked for both, but it’s not likely those expectations will be dropped.
There’s a culmination of factors playing into my fear of getting older. And I understand that they’re useless to harp on as I cannot stop this ticking clock. I know as I age, youth will be perceived differently by me than it is now, and I may even regret wasting the time to think about it at19 when the clock strikes midnight in ten years on my thirtieth birthday, but the pressure will always be looming. Who knows where I’ll be then? Will I have a better grasp on the notion of getting older at that point, or will I be even more fearful then than I was today?
There is beauty and grace in aging. We gain maturity and experience, and we learn so much as we grow older, meet new people, live in different places, and work different jobs, but it’s overwhelming to know that with every passing day, my youth fades and I fall out of being the desirable young woman I once was. It’s not to say I will lose everything that makes me a beautiful person as those days come and go, I know that. But I know that the way I’m perceived by outsiders looking in will change, and it’s scary not to know what that will be or how I’ll be equipped to handle that change in perception as it comes to me.
Sometimes, it does feel ridiculous to be so afraid of getting older. But it’s a real anxiety inducer for many people, especially women. As much as I’d like to ignore the desirability associated with my youth, I can’t because it’s always being fed to me. The expectation of being petite, innocent and absent of any blemishes is engrained in us from very young and formative ages, and it’s something that can be very difficult to unlearn. Having to grow out of that box as we grow older is hard; a lot of our worth feels like it’s tied to those characteristics, but those characteristics aren’t meant to follow us into our adulthood. It’s a gross and, quite frankly, despicable expectation to hold over the heads of young women. This fear has been implemented in us by patriarchal standards that should be harboring the shame instead of us, yet we can’t help but feel like the victims of our inevitable growth. Even though it’s difficult to break from, I feel like the best thing we can do as women is to be aware of it. I know I can’t let go of the fear that comes with aging, the system I live in won’t let me, but as I force myself to be aware that there is a system in place that is inciting this fear, I can find a sense of peace while I face this pressure.