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“Ignore How You Look at Your Own Peril” – Charla Krupp
The above quote is Charla Krupp’s message to all women from her new book How Not to Look Old. The sad thing is there’s some truth in this! We do live in a superficial society where snap judgements are made according to appearance.
But does this mean we have to buy into the trend and spend a fortune on how we look? (according to a report in the Rage Diaries ), Charla Krupp spends about $16,000 annually on her appearance). Does it mean we have to snip and tuck & stagger around on stiletto heels? I think not.
I am a product of my society like all of us, and while I do not wear high heels and don’t spend all that much on clothes, I do have my hair streaked once a year. And I bought my first anti-aging product about 2 weeks ago. I’m fitter than I was during perimenopause and the first few years of menopause and feel better too because I exercise now. I don’t drink a lot and try to limit my cookie intake (well more than during the sitting-on-the-bed days of perimenopause anyway).
In some instances the worship of youthful looks goes way beyond ageism & into misogyny. Rush Limbaugh is quoted as saying about Hillary Clinton: “Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?”
Unfortunately this kind of overt criticism of aging women, along with all the covert messages send a strong message to women. It can undermine our self-esteem if we aren’t grounded in ourselves.
It’s great to look and feel good, but I don’t see the point in trying to look like someone we’re not. The reality is that some of us are middle-aged, and so what? If we are “invisible”, that’s only because our society has weirded out about youth.
Ellen: I enjoyed reading this blog. It’s always been my opinion that there’s a lot of pressure put on women’s appearance. It’s a complicated issue…appearance does matter yet at a core level we all know that it doesn’t matter. Aging is what happens…& the hard part is that this what should happen.
Don
One of my favourite women who made it in the public eye was Georgia O’Keefe. I look at photos of her in later years (lived to 98!) and the amazing wrinkles and wisdom etched on her face and I think to myself “that is Beauty!” Beautiful because of all she did to express beauty; her eyes saw beauty, her hands expressed beauty through her art. I would like to be that beautiful! Isn’t it about how we look out from ourselves, and that is how we look! (pun intended)