Let me grieve my body and face
It's a process.
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Now that I’m closer to 40 and look like it, I’m starting to feel about what I’ll call “aging acceptance” the same way I’ve long felt about body acceptance: It’s an ultimately valuable and even crucial goal, and I’m suspicious of anyone who says it can be reached automatically or quickly.
Aging acceptance advocates will circulate social media posts and phrases about how your wrinkles and crow’s feet are signs of living, laughing, and loving; about how a visibly aging face reflects character and personal history. They’ll say how your body is supposed to expand or sag with the passing years; that it isn’t meant to look how it did before kids or before 30.
I don’t disagree, but I’m going to need a minute here. I don’t know how to feel entirely accepting about my aging body and face right now, but I think I will in time — but you’re going to have to let me grieve first.
I’ve noticed a kind of social prohibition against this, especially among women who are justifiably invested in rejecting the worst of the cults of “beauty” and “anti-aging.” You shouldn’t talk about being sad about looking older, because this evinces your investment in patriarchal and capitalist structures that harm women and keep them spending and slicing their way toward some facsimile of a youthful visage.
Fair enough, but I grew up and live still within these structures, and so I am sad because I am human. I think other people are too, but won’t say it because it feels wrong to say. Now that I’m saying it, though: it also feels good to say. It’s a relief.
