I want to age like a French woman.
Full of chic sophistication and natural beauty.
Smile lines, laugh lines, lines of wisdom across my face.
Clear boundaries and subtle sexual charge.
High standards but relaxed expectations.
Still sexy in my 50s, 60s and beyond, without chasing the Americanised beauty standard of botox and filler.
Fuck that.
I’m here to age radiantly. To be a full-bodied woman.
Life size, Wife size, Mother size, Grandmother size.
Embracing my growing wisdom over chasing fleeting youthfulness.
Young at heart, but also aged like a fine wine.
Embodying a mature femininity you just can’t buy in a bottle.
The kind that younger women look up to
And real men admire
Which leaves them thinking…
What a woman, what a woman, what a woman.
–
When I was younger I would look at women older than me and think: I want to look like that when I’m her age.
You know the type - the glamorous 50-70 year olds selling their own brand of influence on Instagram.
Little did I understand the extent of how hard it was going to be to keep up…
Like the mental gymnastics of it all - I would hate to be consumed by it, as I imagine some women are.
And while I do intend to take good care of this body - I eat well and work out - I don’t want to live the rest of my life worrying about having to look youthful and fuckable all the time - certainly not at the expense of being present in my life.
But I also refuse to be invisible. Resigned to be ignored.
An elder woman who maintains her radiance is especially striking to me.
I make a point to tell her how radiant she is, when I see her crossing the street.
Because it breaks my heart to hear women talk about how invisible they feel.
And I’m not here to dismiss their experience. But I do wonder…
How much of that feeling is a self-prescribed reality?
Are you actually invisible?
Or somewhere along the way, did you start to decide to take up less space?
That you were no longer worthy of a second look?
That you shouldn’t walk with a sexy sway in your step?
That a woman of a certain age “should” be invisible.
Is that what your mother told you?
Your grandmother?
Your grandmother’s grandmother?
I ask these questions because I’ve been noticing these patterns within myself lately…
The ideas I’ve been prescribed about a woman’s worth.
And how easy it is to feel unworthy. To let go. To tell yourself “your time has passed”.
That you shouldn’t draw attention to yourself.
That no one in their right mind would find you attractive anymore.
I catch these thoughts and examine them.
Who says?
And, is it really true?
Surely I’m not the only one who admires the beauty of a woman who has lived a full life.
There’s a magnetic confidence that only accumulates through experience.
So why do we tell ourselves it’s over, before it has even begun?
I’m not saying that societal ageism doesn’t exist.
What I’m more curious about is how we impose it upon ourselves, by making ourselves smaller, wearing less colourful clothes, quieting our voice, and dimming our spark because we assume the world no longer wants to see it.
How quickly we are willing to submit to the self-fulfilling prophecy where we become invisible because we stop acting visible?
I have no doubt that as we age, the way we are perceived changes and there’s a lot of good to explore in that too. But I do believe our capacity to command a room, be desired and hold court remains entirely intact if we continue to allow ourselves to claim it.
You are allowed to take up space.
You are allowed to walk with a sway in your hips.
You are allowed to be loud, beautiful, sensual, and demanding of attention.
And not because you are trying to catch the eye of a powerful man to survive, but simply because you exist, you are alive, and it’s human to want to be noticed.
In our youth it’s much easier to feel hot and worthy - because our culture fetishises youth.
Feeling attractive is easy when people keep telling you you’re beautiful.
And being attractive can make you feel mighty powerful.
It’s no wonder we want to hold on to that feeling.
But part of growing up is making the shift from passive power (attracting attention) to active power (wielding influence), and that becomes our art.
There comes a crossroads in every woman’s life, where you have to decide: Do you give your power away or claim it even brighter?
I’ll be honest, I’m 35 now (turning 36 in a couple of weeks) and only truly starting to understand how delicate the process of ageing is; the mental awareness it requires to actually “age gracefully”
And I know I’m just at the beginning. I am still young. But the bombardment of advertisers telling me what to watch out for has been in full swing on my feed for a few years now.
Thankfully ageing has been a subject I have always been curious about and want to prepare for so I don’t get blindsided. It’s why I make a point to learn from and admire women much older than me.
Growing up I was mostly surrounded by women who would complain about ageing. I’d hear the downside, but no upside. It was clear they lamented their youth.
And I get that ageing is no walk in the park.
I was a live-in primary carer for my ailing grandparents for 3 years - so I saw the end of the road with sobering clarity - a very humbling thing to witness in your early 20s.
But thankfully it was also around this time that I met this fabulous Estonian woman who was a single mother in her 30s. She told me “Life just gets better after 30.” And I chose to believe her. And so far she’s been right.
It was clear she had such a zest for life, and over the years our paths have crossed a few more times and I got to see her grow into her late 40s too.
She’s still as vibrant as ever. Still loving life. Still standing by her statement that life just gets better as you age. All this, despite having had some very big curveballs thrown her way.
And that was one of the most magnetic things about her; her resilience and capacity to still enjoy the sensual beauty of the moment. She doesn’t know it, but she’s been a beacon for me over the years, modelling what it means to age radiantly.
And that’s what I want to be for other women too. Because I believe young women need to see more examples of elder women in their power continuing to enjoy life.
Not women who just “look good for their age”, but women who are actually enjoying the hell out of life with the turn of each new decade.
So I’m at the beginning of my ageing journey, where the lines start to show. I have some regrets - proof of wisdom forming. And postpartum has transformed my body into something I’m still getting acquainted with.
Amidst all this. I’ve noticed the temptation to take up less space. The voices that sometimes arise to say you’re not pretty enough to have an opinion.
I mean WTF is that about!?
As we age, we gain in wisdom - as long as we don’t allow ourselves to get too distracted from the bigger picture, caught up in trying to hold on to who we used to be.
And that power and wisdom can be incredibly attractive in its own way.
As you start to let go of what society tells you you should be and start exploring who you actually want to be a new kind of confidence arises. And the embodiment of that is powerful.
But it is a different frequency to the spark of our maidenhood and we need to appreciate that too.
Because it’s pointless for a full-grown woman to try and compete with our younger counterparts on the axis of looking young and hot.
But we should also remember “hot” does not always equate to sexy, beautiful or attractive.
If anything, the word “hot” feels so disturbingly passive to me in this context. Like prey for the slaughter. Or low hanging fruit. I don’t want to be ogled. I want to be known.
And perhaps that is the natural shift that is taking place for me…
I spent my youth wanting to be SEEN.
Seen as this mysterious woman. Someone elusive, attractive and magnetic.
And for a while that was fun…
But it’s also left me unsatisfied and lacking some social skills to take conversations with strangers to the depths I crave.
I notice myself waiting to be asked. Because somewhere along the way, I began to think it was uncouth to speak out of turn.
I’m releasing that old pattern now.
Reprogramming my psyche as I make the shift from a more passive existence to being a more active participant in life. I’m playing full out now. Giving less fucks about how I’m seen and acting more fully from embodied feeling.
That is the gift of ageing I believe.
The process of liberating ourselves from all the silly rules we thought we had to abide by to give love, get love and feel loved…
And discovering that on the other side of that is a woman in full bloom whose very existence is a gift to humanity and she is a fucking sight to behold.
