The Evidence of a Life Lived

There is something strange about the way we talk about aging.

We celebrate birthdays. We celebrate longevity. We call growing older a privilege. And then a woman shows us what growing older actually looks like, and suddenly everyone has an opinion.

I was reminded of that when actress Jasmine Guy responded to comments about her appearance following her return as Whitley Gilbert in A Different World. Nearly four decades have passed since many of us first met Whitley, yet people were looking at the woman she is today and comparing her to the 25-year-old woman preserved forever on our television screens.

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What struck me most was that Guy didn't pretend every part of getting older is easy. She acknowledged the changes while questioning why we're so quick to criticize the visible signs that someone has lived.

That stayed with me.

My first thought was, why can't we simply allow women to age?

We're allowed to age. We're just not supposed to look like it.

There seems to be an unspoken agreement about what aging should look like for women.

Grow older, but maintain your youth.

Have confidence, but don't "let yourself go."

Look natural, but not too natural.

And if you choose Botox, fillers, surgery or another cosmetic treatment, someone may have something to say about that too.

Women can find themselves criticized for looking older and criticized for trying not to.

It's an impossible standard.

We celebrate women for living longer, then criticize them for carrying the evidence that they've lived.

And I'd be lying if I said I was immune to those expectations. I notice the changes in my own face too. Sometimes I wonder what I'd look like if a line weren't there or something were a little tighter.

But maybe that's part of what Guy's words made me think about. We can acknowledge that getting older brings changes we don't always love without believing those changes make us less beautiful.

I own a skincare company. Of course I believe in caring for our skin. There is nothing wrong with wanting to soften the appearance of a fine line, address hyperpigmentation or simply like what you see when you look in the mirror.

But caring for our skin and criticizing it for aging are two different things.

Growing older changes us. Some of those changes may be easier to accept than others. But a line on a woman's face isn't evidence that she failed to take care of herself. Neither is gray hair, changing skin or a face that no longer looks the way it did at 25.

They're evidence of time.

Of living.

And no woman should be criticized for that.