Aging and Beauty

Although I had already planned most of this blog on the subject of aging and beauty, this article below was too good to not include. What Jamie Lee Curtis wrote is particularly apropos where we just had the A-Rod admission on steroid use and the Oscars where the big push is on what someone wears (borrowed usually), and how good they look-- or don't. Curtis is writing with her usual frankness about us as a people and how we don't want the real truth on anything. Please read it and come on back to read the rest of my thoughts:

A Fish Called Denial

As a culture, we compare ourselves against people and performances that very often aren't real. We want our sports stars better than any physical body can perform by nature. We expect our celebrities to be more beautiful and never get old. When they do age naturally, the media ridicules them. Praise flows when they appear unwrinkled. When something cannot be acquired by nature, we are used to using pills or surgery. The question I have is what is it we are getting?

When you live in a certain culture, you quickly learn some things are okay for beauty and some not. Remember when a curvy figure was the ideal? Recently the media jumped all over Jessica Simpson because she had one of those figures-- fat they said. Fat? Are they nuts? Want me to show them fat. Never mind!

As we begin to age, the society in which we live wants us to deny old age It is to be hidden, scraped or cut away. It is not surprising that so many desperately try to hold onto what they think is youth... but can they?

At the Oscars, Sunday night, I felt kind of sad to see Sophia Loren who is now 70 or so. You can still see her beauty, her bone structure, the sweetness of her face; but with too much make-up, too big a wig, and a dress that was like a dance hall woman might wear, it looked to me like she wanted to still be seen as a goddess of sexuality. For me, it didn't work, and I think she could have shown up better if she hadn't felt the necessity to submerge her identity in a created character. It's not hard to understand why she did it. It's hard to shift gears as we age and most particularly probably in that world. All around is encouragement to not disappoint the audience.

It's been a lot of years since I entered puberty, but I am sure I wanted to be seen as pretty by others. After all it is how others see us that often determines how we see ourselves. The goal of most young women is to be the beautiful one, and throughout our lives, we measure our success or failure against popular celebrities. We might observe that beauty doesn't automatically lead to happy lives; but it takes real maturity to recognize that beauty, at any age, is a hollow goal.

The problem is that physical beauty is rewarded in so many ways. Do we recognize that what is happening is like the ancient sacrifices to the gods-- highly praised and rewarded until it's gone and what comes next? Someone else, that is what.

The quest for physical perfection becomes the quest to look young again. Is it possible? Not that I have ever seen. To me, Sophia Loren, even at that distance, looked like a woman in her 70s. I don't know that she is trying to look younger, that she ever had surgery, but from what she was wearing, I would say she was trying to look sexy. Is that possible?

Probably for awhile and to the ones who love us; but when we become old, one part of it is becoming more asexual. It's a fact of biology. What age that happens will vary, but it will happen. Having the wrinkles ironed out doesn't make anyone really look younger-- just undefined, like a plastic Barbie doll. Dress an old woman up in a dance hall outfit and she looks like an old woman in a dance hall outfit.

Old women and men can be beautiful but only when they do it naturally and when they allow their inner beauty to shine the brightest. I think old age requires a shift in thinking. This isn't about dressing age appropriate by some rule. It's recognizing that some things belong to our younger years and some are for the old ones.

Old age beauty is like fine wine, aged metal or very old porcelain. When you see that inner glow from someone who is very old, you recognize it. It's not sexy and it's not youthful. It's a whole new being.

One of the tasks of growing old is to accept this all as a cycle of life and not fight against it-- not let others pressure us into missing what we could have. Am I there yet? Nope, but I am working on it because it is the only real way to happiness in old age.

I hated to even write about Sophia Loren here because I admire her, do still find her beautiful, but she was such a good example. I would like to see women like her be the old woman they could be and quit trying to be what they once were. I'd like her to do it for us all because role models do matter. As we get old, there are less and less female role models as so many have bought into the must be beautiful, youthful looking and sexy forever mythology.

(I have a rich resource of photos of old women from my family both by birth and marriage. I don't think any though matches the beauty in the one I chose which was my grandmother holding my daughter. Grandma was 81.)