Read this before you decide your face looks “too old.”
This pro-ageing beauty buffer might just shift how you feel about yourself...
Truthfully, ageing has occupied far more of my headspace this past year than I’d ever want to admit. And I hate how diminishing it feels.
I know this disconnect isn’t really about my face changing - although it has a little, mostly due to weight fluctuations - it’s more the drip-feed of right-leaning social media that loves to cut women down once they’ve ‘no longer useful’ and the constant churn of youth obsession in beauty and fashion. Living and working inside industries that prize being perpetually 25 makes it near-impossible to keep those corrosive voices from seeping in.
But I want to try and find that elusive a middle ground - one that allows me to look the way i’d like to, but also lets me feel at ease in my own skin; the state that’s taken away from women at such an early age.
There’s a quiet rebellion in choosing to believe you are getting hotter with age. Hotter not because you’ve chased the creams, procedures or filters that society insists are the only ways to “fight” ageing, but because you’ve stopped fighting yourself. Hotter because you’ve decided to reject those ideals, and the systems of oppression that created them.
This is such an unimaginable, utopian idea but I’m so desperate to believe in it - even a little - because I think we need it. All of us. Not just the ones in their thirties or forties panicking about getting older, or the ones in their fifties and upwards fretting about changes in their bodies, but also the teens bulk buying anti-ageing skincare, so afraid of the idea of developing a wrinkle and being seen to visibly age.
If you’ve felt even a sliver of this, or it takes up space in your brain too, I think we have two options. 1) Stay as we are, in almost constant panic mode which is ZERO lols. 2) To try and rewire our brains into creating a happier narrative around visible ageing.
Instead of dreading it (like I do), maybe every birthday could mark another year of more perspective, taste, boundaries, and - yes - perhaps even beauty confidence. Because honestly, what is hotter than someone who knows themselves, is comfortable in their own skin and won’t apologise for it?
Hotness isn’t about wrinkle counts at all; it’s about refusal. Refusing to settle for the partners, jobs, or friendships that drain you. Refusing to accept that your best years are behind you. Refusing to make yourself smaller so someone else feels bigger. Refusing to cut your hair because of age, or to dress a certain way too. Refusing the limitations imposed on us.
When I think about the women I’ve admired most - they weren’t the youngest in the room, they were the older ones who radiated confidence, style, and a sense of self that just can’t be faked. That doesn’t mean we have to eschew the tweaks we might love or drop our retinol, but it does mean keeping things much more in balance, and regaining perspective - something I know I’ve struggled to keep a hold of at times.
So this month’s affirmation isn’t a delusion, it’s a decision. A decision to rewire how we measure our worth. To stop grading ourselves against youth and start measuring it against our own aliveness. I wrote it because I want to find a better way. And I hope it might help you too.
Here’s what I’m doing this month as a self confidence boost, if you want to join me:
Print this affirmation out and stick it where you’ll see it. Mirrors are great!
Save it as your screensaver on your laptop and phone.
You could even record this as an affirmation/voice note and play it on repeat: I get hotter as I age because I’ve grown into myself. Because I demand the best. Because I am not here to fit a youth-obsessed lens, and because I deserve to be appreciated, visible and feel beautiful at every stage of life.
Crucial step; if you’re on social media do a cull. Start following the people who embody this, and unfollow those who don’t.
I’d love to know if this resonates at all for you…
Much love…
PS: I write these pieces because I know how loud the negative voices can be. Subscribing means you’ll always have a softer, smarter one waiting in your inbox…and from next month I’ll be paywalling these posts…
I'm 77 and it scared the hell out of me when I got a look at my face in a good mirror with excellent lighting. I am old as fuck and I look it, but there's one great comfort. All my lines are laugh lines, and they show up when I grin my face splitting grin. I'm an old woman with a serious chronic disease, and my face looks like I've spent my entire life grinning from ear to ear. Take that, age.
David (Kibbe): I find it fascinating that among all the species of our planet, only humans in our infinite wisdom, have come to belive that we are at our most beautiful in our youth. Flowers are celebrated when they are in full bloom. Kittens and puppies are definitively adorable, but it's their full grown selves that we cleave to. I believe that if we reach deep into what we instinctly feel, our richest and most profound sense of beauty's comes from a place that recognizes experience as its most potent quality. Youth culture is really about marketing. Of course we are susceptible to this. What if we replaced the narrative of "aging" with a new paradigm of evolving? Thank you for this lovely post!