numinous jane
  • Home
  • Facing the Minotaur Online
  • Bespoke Blessings
  • healthy boundaries for kind people
  • reframing
  • about jane
  • one to one work
  • somatic experiencing
  • Soulmap Journaling
  • DECISIONS, DECISIONS!!
  • art
  • Blog
  • free stuff
  • decisions decisions classroom
  • the hidden door dream workshop
  • classroom ftm July 22

where are all the wrinkles?

6/29/2016

9 Comments

 
Picture
 Recently i was asked if i qualified for senior discount.  Twice in the same week.  

Now, i laughed and said no ( i am more 13 years away from that cheap ride) but it got me thinking about age and appearance all over again.

A while back i railed here about the violence our ageist community inflicts on women.

So after that carding attempt i circle back to think again about aging and the way our world sees it.  

Ok, so here's my truth.  I'm 51 years old.  I lived most of my life on the coast in a part of the world where the ozone layer has had a big hole in it since the 1970s.  I was a burn, peel, burn baby of Celtic mongrel extraction - white skin developed in the haar of Scotland and the dusky dells of Ireland.  And yet, self proclaimed part lizard that i am, I have lived my life loving the sun.

All of this prefaces the fact that I am wrinkly and sun damaged.

I have grey hair, finding my first one at 16.

I have a wattle.  I have deep mean looking creases between my eyebrows and deep creases from the corners of my nose to the corners of my mouth which show the well worn path of all the smiles and grimaces i have made over my life.

I look like an old woman.

When i look in the mirror i see the wrinkles and the sagging and the pigmentation and the other varied marks of time, the way i have been taught to by my culture; sneeringly, critically.

To all intents and purposes I have committed the heinous and self destructive crime of "letting myself go".

​Go Where?
Go into aging.
Go in without the immense sums of money spent on face cream or treatments.
Go in without botox or surgery or (and i kid you not i know a woman who has done this) only ever sleeping on your back in order that your face is not squashed into wrinkles while you sleep.

​Why does this bother me?


It bothers me because we rob ourselves of a sense of beauty if beauty is only able to equal agelessness or youth.

For a while i was heartened when i began to see images of grey haired beauties turning up on my social media feed and then i looked a little closer.

If you don't beleive me go now and look.

When you look at images of grey haired beauties they have two things in common.  They have grey hair which i will grant is a rebellion against one facet of aging.  

But they also have flawless skin.

Do they show any other signs of aging apart from the hair?  

No.

Wrinkles?  Liver spots?  Sagging?

No.  No.  And No.

These role models for aging beauty are either airbrushed - in which case we are being lied to, or they have worked damned hard to avoid wrinkles.  Which of course is a personal choice and more power to them but I wonder why being unwrinkled makes people happy and the only answer is 

Aging is abhorred in our society.

Is it because it reminds us or our perishable nature? As my friend Vynka says, aging is a privilege not all of us get to enjoy. Aging is actually a gift - we get more time on this beautiful planet with the people we love.  But the spectre of death that has its whispers in our creases scares people it seems.

Is it because we are so fixated with newness in the consumer culture we live in we have to want a new looking body and face?


I don't know.

What i do know is that our perception of aging is being mightily fucked with.

We don't see people aging naturally.  We see, and applaud people fighting aging.  The rhetoric around aging is all about the battlefield.

There is no winner in this war though.  Only skin care companies and other's who profit off of our fears.

So i wondered how do i strengthen myself to walk away from the fight?

How do i remember that it is ok to sag and wrinkle and crease?

How do i look in the mirror without admonishing the tracks of time?

I realised that what i really need was the company of other women who have walked this path.

So i asked myself...

Where are our aging role models?

I went looking for memes and images about aging that showed women aging naturally and i either found those grey haired beauties with their ironed out skin or very wrinkled natural looking African or Asian women in traditional dress.

It seems aging is only acceptable when you are "ethnic"  Racist aging?  I think they might be linked.

Where are the wrinkly European women?  On some warped plain do we think we are "above" that?

The only one i could think of was Georgia O'Keeffe - who with her angular-i -don't-give-a-fuck-because-i --am-a-desert-loving-art-making-icon seemed to defy the norm.

Are the women who are wrinkly and European too busy trying making themselves invisible?  Hiding in sensible shoes?  Not dressing like lamb? The uniform of short hair and unthreatening dress?


Are we hiding our potential role models in a cloak of shame?

Lots of women say when they hit 45 they begin to become invisible.

I think it's probably more true to say that when women get to 45 they often pass out of the overculture's subset of desirability; they commit the crime of moving away from youth.  Our societies' gaze no longer naturally falls on women beyond this age.  Is it that youth so completely equals desire that we forget the rich complex beauty of an old woman.  Is it that desire is the only way we get to make the equation for  beauty work in our tiny well corralled minds?  

Or is it, more insidiously, that we as older women believe the bullshit rhetoric enough to be brainwashed into thinking we can't be gorgeous if we are wrinkly and we just begin to dim that inner light?

Why does it matter?

It matters because when we rob the world of beauty we all suffer.  A paucity of beauty is a meagre mingey unhappy-making thing.

It matters because we, each of us have the capacity for immense beauty up until, and even after we die.

It matters because a narrow definition like beauty = youth robs us all.

If somehow we can't find a way to decolonise our minds as older women, find a way to overcome that fucked cultural paradigm that robs us and our wattles of feeling as celebratory about life and our own unique beauty as we can, then we let the overculture win.  The patriarchy gets to live in our heads, robbing us the chance to sashay and wear whatever the hell makes us happy for some invented perception that crushes hearts and makes us and our world a less generous place.


So what do we do about it?
My best suggestion is to start something new.  Take a selfie without filters with our wrinkles and our beauty showing.  With our sagging and our grace showing.  With our liver spots and our lusciousness.

Let's start a hashtag revolution on facebook - #oldANDbeautiful. Post a photo of yourself untouched and hashtag it with #oldANDbeautiful and see what we can cook up.

I will if you will.

love

jane
9 Comments
Sera
6/28/2016 06:11:42 pm

I love you Jane. Your face has only ever screamed beauty to me. I remember you mentioning this before, the wrinkles in your "mean" brow. Wisdom we said. Wisdom comes with age and experience.

Last week, I went out on a boat with my parents. Before we headed out my mom asked me if she was "too old" to be wearing shorts, because she has some age spots and veins. To me, her legs are gorgeous (and seriously they are). I scoffed and told her no way, that she has every right to wear whatever she wishes. I told her her legs are beautiful. I told her about body shaming (I don't think she's ever thought about that before). She wore shorts all weekend. It made me so happy, but also reminded me the uphill battle I have regarding the constructs of beauty I've been taught, and those that continually seep into my world regardless of my cautiousness around body shaming.

I know just the woman you are talking about in the ads with long gray hair and flawless skin. I am grateful for your willingness to change the standard of beauty for coming generations.

At a month shy from 34, my grays have been emerging for 5 years now. Sometimes I let them. Sometimes I hate myself for them. (Which, other times, I can't believe.) Sometimes I hide them and notice my self esteem returning, and I am baffled by this. But I work with it again and again. Self love
self love
self love.

You are beautiful.
I am beautiful.
We are all so magically beautiful.

If only we could continue to see.

Reply
JANE CUNNINGHAM
6/29/2016 04:01:38 pm

Ahhh dear Sera, coming from a woman with such a kind heart your words mean a great deal to me.
Your Mom sounds amazing and i am so glad you are able to stand by her lovingly and see her shuck off the conditioning she received... i honestly think i won't be lying on my death bed worrying about people seeing my spider veins, i would much rather remember the feeling of sun on my skin and my daughter encouraging me into life... what a gift you are to her Sera... Bless those grey hairs and all of the life they have seen and bless the part of you that hates them because knowing that is there means you are able to meet the whole of yourself and that kind of tenderness and generosity makes the world kinder to be in.. being able to look that in the eye means the false messages begin to melt and self love flourishes... We are all beautiful. Truly and really our beauty is inextinguishable because we come from love. And i send so much love to you my friend <3

Reply
Don Genge
6/29/2016 04:12:26 am

I have never met you, never seen you other than through the eyes of my daughter who speaks of you fondly. So, I've had the privilege of vicariously meeting an amazing, intelligent, articulate, numinous (I take that to mean beautiful) woman. I really hope we get the privilege of meeting you in person sometime.

Reply
JANE CUNNINGHAM
6/29/2016 04:04:03 pm

Ah Don! How lovely to connect here... you may have already heard from your daughter today - but i told her i already love you for loving her so well.. you are the kind of man who makes the world a better place with your generosity, curiosity and great capacity for love. Thank you for your kind words and i look forward to talking with you in person some fine day.

Reply
Honorata link
6/29/2016 01:39:54 pm

A while ago you shared a beauty of your wise words with me. You are older and have the privellage of knowing more and deeper. Your look is unique like you are. All this business with denying true beauty of ageing drives me crazy too. Even women in 30-ties can sometimes come up with comments about their own look that make me wonder-why and how can we as a society be so shallow? Thank you for your post!

Reply
JANE CUNNINGHAM
6/29/2016 04:07:30 pm

Honorata! Thank you for your kind words... i agree...our shallowness is such a mirage - we really are as deep as the oceans, and wide as the plains and because we are made from Love our beauty is inexhaustible and so much more than can be seen on the spread of a magazine... blessings on you <3

Reply
Michele Unger
6/29/2016 06:28:21 pm

I don't think ANYONE who has looked into your eyes would think if you as anything other than spectacular! There is intelligence there, and the beautiful color.of those twinkly eyes are surrounded by laugh lines, my most favorite kind of line. You look interesting and like you could be pithy and honest and FUN. Your face is a story and I would love to know it. Too bad we live so very far apart. XOXOXO

Reply
Gaea Yudron link
6/29/2016 06:39:21 pm

Yes indeed....Old and beautiful. I am with you on that. Reclaiming the word OLD as a word of power, too....celebrating the beauty of being old.

Reply
Elizabeth (gentle soul)
7/2/2016 01:23:12 am

I will be 48 in 6 months. All my life I wore bangs in my hair and only recently have pulled my bangs back to expose my forehead. I see the lines that were hidden and a silver streak I knew nothing about. I was surprised, but I welcomed these subtle signs that I have lived longer than a minute. As your wise friend said, not everyone has the privilege of living so long. Many people think I am far younger than I am and while it sometimes flatters me, it sometimes annoys me, too. I am my age, whatever that looks like. I have lived almost 48 years and am happy to have done so.
I think you are lovely with your wild white hair and beautiful eyes. One of my dreams is to meet you in person. Thank you for being in this world and sharing the journey with me...and sharing your wisdom, too.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    Author

    jane- creativity activist, synchonicity celebrator, conduit for love.

    Categories

    All
    Dreams
    Forget Me Not
    Heroine
    Hunger
    Longings
    Praying
    Rivers
    Simple
    Yearnings

    Archives

    February 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    April 2020
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    November 2017
    July 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    October 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013

    RSS Feed

Photo from South Africa The Good News