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Note. There is SO much to say on this topic, I could go on forever. I’m only touching on one aspect of the physical oppression directed towards female-presenting people. I could talk about body, sexuality, Etc. Etc. I’m also talking from a strictly Caucasian perspective which is inherently more privileged and one-dimensional. Of course, oppression is always more extreme when intersectional.
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Recently I’ve been angry. Enraged and anguished. I’ve noticed new lines under my eyes, and the unreasonable misery they’ve induced is so pathetic that it only exacerbates the shame. The fact that I feel shame about the inevitability of nature is part of the problem. Let’s be clear — I subscribe to publications centered around the bucking of societal norms, like
. I regularly listen to ‘I Weigh’. I idolize Frances McDormand and radical women who fight the good fight. I am a steadfast feminist. And yet…Looking in the mirror is like cognitive dissonance. I see new lines forming with every year and I continue to believe that they will disappear. I cannot conceive of the fact that we all age, and that it’s a biological certainty of life. Instead I am told that creams and serums and facials will erase them. There’s still time! I see women in Hollywood who do not age in spite of the decades that have passed. How have I have aged from a teen to adult while they still look the same? It feeds my fantastical thinking that there is no slow slide, but a shifting of one avatar to the next from child to teenager to adult to suddenly 80. I don’t see ageing in the media, I only see advertisements for facial clinics and Botox and am repeatedly told that there are preventative measures! PREVENTATIVE. Ageing, it is emphasised, is a choice. More than that, they say, it’s the moral choice.
I’ve always had a complicated relationship to age. When I hit 10 I had my first existential crisis, spurred by the epiphany that I was now in my double digits. Who was I? What was my purpose? Why me and not the quadrillion other genetic combinations that could have occurred? What was now lost in the click over into a new decade? What were the implications?
In spite of this, I always wanted to be a grown up. Like many children, I romanticised adulthood. I role played them, tapping away at fake registers or typewriters imagining myself as a teacher or secretary, sticking on fake nails and squeezing my pudgy feet into glittery, plastic toy heels. Later in life, I dreamed about living alone. To me it signalled successful adulthood — autonomous, self-sufficient and in control.
This abstraction of adulthood only led to a kind of imposter syndrome. Maturing and internal growth felt separate to adulthood. I never slipped into what I imagined to be an adult mind. Every passing year felt like a kind of failure. I hadn’t achieved what I had envisioned. I hadn’t reached the expectations fast enough. When would I be wise and powerful and ticking the boxes and click-clacking down the hallways like the women I saw in movies. Shouldn’t I be wearing heels now? It wasn’t until I turned 23 that my dread of ageing became a dual discomfort. The horror of aging morphed into a vanity project.
In the last week I have: Re-read Susan Sontag’s Double Standard of Aging. It was soothing and disturbing. I called my Mum. She was no comfort. I talked to my boyfriend. That really startled me. How could the male and female experience be so chasmically different? Patriarchy, obviously, but it’s one thing to intellectual understand the double standards of the Patriarchy, and another to roam around on the other side.
I thought that by expressing myself I would merely open a back-and-forth dialogue wherein we’d both commiserate on the reality of the world. I realized that for most men, they didn’t need to engage with these thoughts in the same way. Why would they waste space and time on seemingly vacuous ideals that have no relation to them? Males are allowed to me boys or men, as Sontag outlines, and both provide a separate identity and individually accepted beauty. For women, our narrow standards are centered around youth and illusion alone, unchanged from girl to woman. This rule is so violently force-fed down women’s throats that I assumed all men would be similarly aware.
Verbalizing why I was sad and enraged, I felt entirely vain. At first he believed I was talking about mortality and the loss of motor or cognitive faculties. I shamedly admitted that this was not the source of my distress. To explain, I had to go deeper. I had to underline that for women, beauty standards and the pain of aging is so much more than appearance. It is weaponized oppression and it fundamentally relates to value.
For time immemorial, the narrative we’ve been told is that the value of a female is tied to her looks. Regardless of whether we like to admit it, women are given more opportunities, or shown more attention and favour if we invest in our looks. Unfortunately, ‘pretty privilege’ is a thing. “Looking professional” for women often relates to wearing makeup and doing our hair, while part of your economic success in the service or hospitality industry correlates with the ability to objectify and market oneself towards the male gaze. In fact, it doesn’t hurt within any industry.
Garnering appearance-related compliments reinforces the notion that this is where our value lies. The accumulation over a lifetime only entrenches the belief. Because this is what you are congratulated on, you begin to place your worth in youth and appearance. You fear its loss. The thought of being without that thing rattles your sense of worth. You fear irrelevance. You fear being unattractive to the sex that we are told is “more dominant,”, “more important” and “more powerful”. The reality is to be disqualified in every sense, and the terror of that reality leaves a woman feeling more vulnerable than ever.
Because I’ve been in a spiral for the last few weeks about this, journaling and talking to friends, I’ve started noticing more content about it. Cailey Rizzo’s latest article “Ur Mom Called, I told Her Ur Fckin Up Big…” from her insightful Substack
similarly talks about a fear of aging. Cailey suggests that clinging to youth is a way to redeem a past self. Without first coming to an internal acceptance, how can we ever embrace physical change? If outward ageing signifies a hard life lived, then agelessness becomes a form of denial.More than anything, what resonates with me is the shame. I’m embarrassed by new lines I see, and I’m ashamed of my reaction. Susan Sontag speaks of women being the defensive caretakers of our bodies. We are at war with ourselves, and thwarted efforts against the progress of change are “a humiliating defeat.” To understand that we are working against nature, against ourselves, is to recognize the oppression.
When female ageing is not seen, it is not understood. Diverse, realistic and inspiring female representation is so crucial in rewiring our collective thinking into understanding that not only does aging exist for women, but it’s also something to be valued. Vogue Philippines recently made headlines when they featured the formidable Apo Whang-Od on its cover. She is an incredibly inspiring woman —one of the last Indigenous Kalinga tattoo artists alive, who is passing the tradition along to her grandnieces and shares her culture with travelers. She also happens to be the oldest person immortalised on the Vogue Cover to date, at 106 years old.
The editor of Vogue Philippines explained that her staff “felt [Whang-Od] represented our ideals of what is beautiful about our Filipino culture. We believe that the concept of beauty needs to evolve, and include diverse and inclusive faces and forms. What we hope to speak about is the beauty of humanity.” A beautiful, formidable and learned woman — it’s about GD time.
Featuring older women in beauty campaigns and mainstream media is an essential way we can create space in society’s imagination for actual, unsanitised, unglamorised, unhollywood-ised beauty. Normalising, diversifying, unveiling, is needed to begin uprooting unrealistic ideals.
Like most things though, an intellectual understanding doesn’t always erase emotional turmoil, particularly when your reasoning is being ceaselessly undermined by society. I’m trying to rewire my brain but the world has programmed so much shit into it, that it feels like it’s short circuiting. I resent the fact that female presenting people, who already earn less, have so many more expenses to keep up the façade. The list of procedures and products ever expands.
What adds flame to my fury is the understanding that these ideals — and the oppression they engender — is all fabricated. Designed to instill us with feelings of lack, marketing and corporations methodically drill a hole into our sense of self, eroding our confidence and happiness. Conveniently, they also have products to stuff back into this gaping hole! But it’s a blackhole, and they are filling it with junk food and fluff. The substance is only an illusion. Youth Is Happiness! they tell us — except it’s not. If Happiness Is Youth, Then Youth Is Forever! they tell us — except it’s not.
It makes me depressed knowing that the forces at power are willingly tearing us down and sending us on a wild goose chase, all for commercial gain. The manipulation of female-identifying people in particular speaks to the disposable nature of our fast fashion, fast food, insatiable capitalism. As Sontag says: “consume more, throw away faster.” To know that I am a pawn in Capitalism makes me want to scream. To know that I’m only valuable, employable, f**kable in society’s eyes until they deem me dispensable is enough to make anyone want to fight nature. I’ve realized Patriarchy has a grip on mother nature herself.
We need to check in with ourselves — what do we actually value as individuals? As a society we need to stop trying to catch rainbows. Youth does not last. It cannot. It cannot be the only standard, nor the only thing we value. It is unimaginative and it is impossible.
Our skin is proof of growth and change — I am finally no longer a child. I see female identifying people of all ages and I think they’re beautiful. It’s beautiful to wear your experiences and wisdom like you could a tattoo.
Intellectually I understand that every line represents a learned maturity. Perhaps we earn our womanhood and humanness just through experience and survival. Regardless of morality, achievements, mistakes or failures, our body records a lifetime of laughter, love and loss. And isn’t that the most human thing? Isn’t that the whole point of life itself? To live? To feel? To connect? To just… be human?
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