Allowing ourselves to age

I was standing in a London changing room, at the age of 26, when it happened. The fluorescent light shone a harsh hot-white, hitting my hair and my skin and highlighting a notable absence of colour: a single silver strand in my otherwise brown hair. I was so taken aback, that I told my friends and my workmates that I was going grey. The horror! 

That hair turned it to be my only grey hair for many years, and the memory makes me smile-cringe now. Ten years on, there are plenty more greys where that one came from. I feel like I’ve physically aged more rapidly in the last couple of years. Perhaps it’s the lack of sleep that comes with motherhood, perhaps it’s the immunosuppressant I’m on, perhaps it’s having less time to myself and less time to relax. But perhaps it’s simply that I’ve internalised some impossible ideal of what a 36-year-old woman should look like. When I compare myself with my children, their skin so soft and unmarked by life, my own ageing seems so much more visible and scary. But why is that?

Shades of grey

Most people get their first grey hairs in their thirties, and once you’re in your fifties, about 50% of your hair will be grey (according to the bible that is Cosmopolitan). How many women in their fifties do you know who’ve allowed their hair to be its natural colour? Over 70% of New Zealand women dye their hair with just 20% of men doing the same (Consumer). We’re so used to seeing women in their thirties, forties, fifties with blonde and brunette coloured tresses, that we’ve forgotten what is normal. Hair dye is one of those products – whether it’s bought in a supermarket or applied by a hairdresser – that addresses niggling anxieties around aging and the truth that as women, we become more invisible to people (mostly men…) as we age. We feel we need products that will gloss over our imperfections, like ‘natural-looking’ foundation, serums for eyebrows and eyelashes, moisturisers containing retinol (which is supposed to reduce fine lines and lead to glowing skin), botox… and there’s a huge industry built around this.

Now I’m on maternity leave I’ve made a commitment to myself to use less makeup and dye my hair less. It’s not like I’m against make-up and hair dye; far from it. But as my behaviour has changed, I’ve started to really question the structures that perpetuate our desires as women to never look our age, and to use products as a cover.

And it’s complicated. Looking a certain way seems to be deeply ingrained in our social structures and in the way we’ve been brought up. We might not mind spending money and time on our appearance – I certainly don’t always mind it. But what I do mind is how insidious it is to look a certain way, as judged by others and the trends of that moment. Many of these ideals are arbitrary. They represent a certain standard that we feel we need to reach, and it is mostly women striving to reach this impossible ideal. Even if I enjoy the ritual of putting on makeup in the morning, or like red hair dye, or eyeliner – it’s difficult to disentangle that from how society says I should look and how I should not age, even as every year my body is getting older.

I think it’s a mix of consumerism and a multi-billion dollar beauty industry that wants us to see a lack in ourselves. This is coupled with sexism and ageism against women once we hit 35 – especially in the workplace. We must look good at all costs, and looking good = looking young.

Why are we so against aging?

Sexism plays a big part. This article on aging in Hollywood highlights the discrepancies between how women and men are meant to look in their fifties: the men all have grey hair and crow’s feet; the women have been airbrushed into oblivion (Scary Mommy).

As Westerners, we have deep issues with how we talk and think about aging and older people. In a health promotion paper I took last year, we unpacked the unconscious language we use around ‘old people’ and aging: often, we use very dehumanising terms. If we think of the word “old”, we might immediately think ‘vulnerable’ and ‘sick’, and we place a lot of emphasis on people being responsible for their own physical ailments: perhaps they should’ve looked after themselves better, or had more social connections rather than ending up lonely. Perhaps they should work out more and stay fit, and not retire. There is a lot of rhetoric around the individual responsibility of aging well, that is not necessarily accurate. Research tells us that how ‘well’ someone ages has more to do with their genetics and their socio-economic status across their entire lifespan (Stephens et al., 2020)

If we flip the narrative and look at all the positives of aging, we might see getting older as synonymous with being wise, happier, a trusted source of information, community-minded. And eventually, in retirement, a contributor to the next generation through helping raise grandchildren. We could shift our whole perspective on aging, and have a better view of how we want to be when we’re older.

Bucking the trend

There’s a trend of people embracing their grey hairs and wrinkles, especially after Covid lockdowns meant people couldn’t dye their roots anymore and we all became used to wearing trackies and sweatshirts. Here’s some inspiration on the Guardian - it’s great to see ordinary people saying we can still look good as we age.

Youth isn’t eternal. Getting older is a privilege; it’s not a given.

And perhaps it’s time we try to embrace that.