﻿Aging: How It Looks vs How It Feels TXT Transcript
Our culture spends a lot of time fearing aging,
trying to hide all signs of it, even attempting to eliminate
it all together – but what if we stopped
assuming it's all bad? And what if we stopped focusing
so much on how aging looks to pay attention more to how it feels
to progress through different life stages? If we face our fears,
then the joys of getting older can come to the surface.
“I love your wrinkles. Both of them.”
Culturally we talk about aging in terms of a series of crises —
quarter life when we hit 25, the turning 30 crisis,
and then the mid-life crisis when we start to worry about
how much time we’ve got left, and what we’ve accomplished.
This pattern speaks to how prized youth is in our culture,
but slowly, it does seem like the needle is beginning to shift.
We’re seeing more roles for older actors,
for stories about the older experience,
and more acclaim and curiosity about these narratives
“Dreams are something you have to believe in.
I almost gave up on mine.” Aging is often framed in terms of loss.
The loss of loved ones, the loss of your looks,
the loss of ability. But here's our take on what we gain
as the years go on. The most prominent fear of aging
in our society is around looks fading. Social media and the beauty industry
have found countless ways to monetize this with filters,
facetuning, and plastic surgery trends — and the huge response to the recent
teenage filter on TikTok has shown just how explicitly
much of this is about chasing youth. “There’s no way a filter
can take ten years off your face.” The way these trends are marketed
plays into this fear. We are told aging effects
can be reversed, or that skincreams are anti-aging,
preventing the process before it starts.
When Martha Stewart’s spa-day and pool selfies went viral
at the start of 2023. It was because people
praised her for not looking 81. “What do you think about Martha?
Do you love her?” “Ugh what a babe!”
Similarly, Paul Rudd is constantly praised in Hollywood
because of how youthful he continues to look
despite now being in his fifties. Even the recent twink death
trend that went viral when images of an old
and a young Leonardo DiCaprio were placed side by side
showed that people still treat signs of age with cruelty.
Undeniably, it’s women who feel the brunt of this fear more than men,
especially those in front of a camera. When Reese Witherspoon celebrated
Amy Schumer back in 2015, she said:
“Amy, I’m five years older than you, so I’ll probably have to play your
grandmother in the movie, by Hollywood standards,
and you’ll have to play your own mother.”
“I had a little botox, and some collagen
and a chemical peel, and something with shark DNA.
Admit it, I look ten years younger.” But what’s most insidious
is how many constant messages we receive in culture that getting
older is gross and horrifying. In horror movies, we often see
old women transformed into monsters, there to provoke fear and disgust
in the youthful protagonists. It was there in The Shining,
it’s there in It, and it’s still there — albeit played
with in a more self-referential way — in recent horrors like Relic
and Barbarian. “Don’t you see?
She just wants you to be her baby.” The result of this widespread fear
impacts everyone, no matter your age. It also weirdly creates a very brief,
idealized window of time where you’re not so young that
people won’t take you seriously, but not so old that people
will think you’re past your prime.
We’re told to constantly work until we retire,
while people at retirement age are overlooked
and dismissed by our culture. It’s a framework that
makes everyone miserable. What’s encouraging, though,
is how now, people are starting to reject this mindset more,
and embrace how beautiful older age can be.
The rise of the “Dad Bod” illustrates how people’s tastes are changing
And the journey Emma Thompson’s character goes on
in Good Luck To You, Leo Grande.
is all about this, recognising how just because she’s older,
that doesn’t mean she’s not gorgeous, or isn’t an object of desire,
or can’t have a pleasurable experience “You’re letting go of the thing
inside that grips you, you know that judges you,
that watches you from the outside.” “Christ if I let go of that,
anything might happen.” So it’s worth examining:
what is it that’s causing all this fear? And if we recognise it, can we fight it?
When we talk about these aging crises, what exactly are they based on?
With the quarter life crisis, ‘ the anxiety we feel when we hit
our early to mid twenties is actually a pretty natural,
chemical reaction to the fact that our brains have finally hit maturity
and pumped the brakes, causing us to take stock
and be a little more self-reflective. “Before I know it,
I’m gonna wake up and be 23, and my life’s gonna be behind me.”
As for the 30 crisis and the mid-life crisis,
these are created culturally. Things like 30 Under 30 Lists
turn the start of our fourth decade on the planet into this looming
deadline we’re meant to be afraid of. A 2022 survey from charity Relate
found that 77% of millennials and 83% of gen-z felt a pressure
to reach certain life milestones by that age.
Whether that be getting married, starting a family,