I have thought about this hard and long. What I have to say is this: The app picture of people looking older are not ugly to me. If I had friends who looked like the older photos, I would see them as beautiful. I love the faces of my older friends, don't you?
Growing older and aging is not a bad thing. However, it is hard to adjust to growing older when we live in an insensitive youth culture that despises older women for aging. I wish young people could know how wrong it is to be judged harshly for becoming something more than sexual objects for men's fantasies. And that's the key, we are becoming something MORE, not something less.
As a woman with wrinkles, gray hair, and age weight, the laughter and disgust over the age progressed pics diminishes me as a person. I feel invisible. I feel like I am disgusting and should never leave the house. I feel like I am the end result of everyone's fears about growing older. I begin to wonder why my ugly, useless self is still alive. What purpose do I serve when I am so reviled? Seriously, this is how ageism makes me feel.
Let's care less about how we look, and care more about what we do. Vanity is not a virtue. Women don't have to be young and beautiful to have value. The world will be a better place when we stop playing games.
self portraits over time:
Women Rowing North says our attitude towards the aging while we are young, and even in the present, says a lot about how we feel as we get there. There are some women even at the age of seventy that look down on old people, not wanting to associate themselves with that group. Sad really since only the lucky get to get there.
ReplyDeleteSo true, Linda.
DeleteI am grateful that I got to grow old. My packaging has changed but I am still myself. Youth has always been about themselves and they always will be. I remember my generation saying not to trust anyone over 30 and then turning 30 and moving the bar.
ReplyDeleteHa, we did do that, didn't we?
DeleteOMG, I remember my Parents telling me that when I was Young I told them I didn't wanna live past 30... Why? So I wouldn't become a BURDEN to anyone! Hilarious now that I'm more than double that digit! Winks
DeleteWhat can I say? The young are silly in a huge variety of ways. I just hope we older folks have smartened up. Judging others is a very popular pastime right now, and not one I approve of—and I voice that disapproval LOUDLY.
ReplyDeleteSo tired of it.
DeleteI have to laugh that there is an app that can show you what you look like when you get old. Just look at your parents and you'll have a pretty good idea:)
ReplyDeleteI work with people of all ages with cancer and can tell you that we are indeed lucky to get old, not everybody gets there. However I would prefer it if my left didn't hurt:)
Thanks for the reality check.
DeleteFeet, not left. Sigh.
DeleteI've always loved whatever age I've been. Not sure why, but maybe because I've been crazy all along. LOL!
ReplyDeleteYou are a well balanced person.
DeleteBrava! I could not have said it better.
ReplyDeleteThanks, pal!
DeleteIt is much better to be considered Crazy than Boring, you're doing it Right! *Winks*
DeleteI just finished reading thie essay by Laura Lippman on how as older women we still struggle to meet ludicrous expectations and while I am not completely agree with it (of course, we all knew this, surely), this here makes sense:
ReplyDelete"I have decided I like the way I look and I’m the expert. Who has spent more time looking at me than I have?"
https://tinyurl.com/yyvvwtuv
Our media here is sending out pretty scary messages about the faceapp's Russian origin and how it sucks data from your phone etc. for spying software and face recognition systems. Oh dear.
Perfect quote! Yes, I've been reading about the faceapp's potential "issues" as well. Really insidious and frightening. Thanks for the url.
DeleteThe whole "vanity app" thing really disturbs me. Why do people throw caution to the wind about these applications from absolute strangers? I fear women are especially vulnerable because of our tendency to obsess over our appearance.
DeleteI have found growing old to be very sad. Not because of neighbors who bring in my trash cans, or hold doors at the store. But people talk to me as if I am stupid, and that is demeaning to both of us. Except they don't know it--yet.
ReplyDeleteYou hit the nail on the head! They think we are stupid, as if one's IQ goes down as their age creeps up. We become invisible. They laugh at us, patronize us, and ignore us. Dammit! The only thing different about me now and the person I once was is the color of my hair, and some well deserved laugh line wrinkles. And maybe a few extra pounds, ha! Don't look away, folks! I'm still in here.
DeleteWith Age comes more liberation and I for one enjoy it more. I am MORE comfortable in my skin now that I'm a Senior and could give two shits about what anyone thinks or says about how I just choose to BE now. *Winks* As for invisibility, I think I was perhaps more invisible in Youth, now I can be as damned outrageous as I wanna be, which heightens visibility I suppose and sparks some intrigue? Who is that very Odd Old Woman??! It has begun some very interesting conversations with random people, most of them young and all of them complimentary... I guess they Like an Old Person who just lives the Golden Years full tilt perhaps? *LOL* As my Dear Old Mom always said, it is better to be looked over than overlooked, she Rocked it clear into her 80's... still attracting attention and intrigue!
ReplyDeleteMight the passage of time have an eraser-like effect? When one talks to an old yet familiar person might one be blessed with a sense that one is addressing their history, views, good deeds and wit and that wrinkles say nothing in particular?
ReplyDeleteI wish.
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