Mirror Mirror
Since the beginning of time, external beauty has been a currency of sorts for women. Much time has been spent cultivating it, and beauty rituals are passed down from one generation to the next. This society-approved vanity was something that we as women were predisposed to and rewarded for. Lifetimes have been spent chasing the accolades that beauty affords the ones who have been touched by her.
So what is to become of us as we age? What happens when the mirror begins to tell the story of the road that we’ve traveled? What happens when our youth begins to slide away like sand in an hourglass? This post is about going beyond vanity to find beauty in aging.
Beauty Is Power
What woman isn’t aware of the power that beauty’s sword wields? We’ve been rewarded for it forever, starting with the praise we received or didn’t receive from adults as children. If you were an attractive child, adults would tell you from an early age. You were conditioned to believe that external beauty was something to be celebrated. This power is inferred from generation to generation. There is no check and balance where beauty is concerned. External beauty wins 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week.
Women fully celebrate external beauty as a collective, and beauty is worshipped by men. Because men are visual by nature, beautiful women are sought after and openly championed. Beauty is coveted and chased, and women learn early on that the more beautiful you are the more powerful the sword.
All of this sets the stage for the ambivalence we experience regarding the aging process.
The Fountain Of Youth
They say youth is wasted on the young. When you are young, you have no real concept of how quickly time will move. You can’t ever imagine that there will be a time when you will be scouring magazines for the latest anti-aging creams and searching drug store shelves for hair dyes to stave off your encroaching grays. But that time does come for all of us that have been blessed with the gift of life.
The Vanity Continuum
As women, our perception of beauty and its influence on our lives evolves over time, but its value is subjective. For many women, we age securely in our own skin. Beauty is viewed as whatever makes us unique. We celebrate ourselves. For others, it is the sum total of their existence.
The Twenties- A Beautiful Mask
In your twenties, you bounce around with a youthful glow that everyone wishes could be bottled in a jar. You have youth on your side and you know it. Although many twenty-somethings haven’t fully reconciled their self-worth, that external glow trumps any inner turmoil they might be experiencing. The external validation you receive from beauty at that age is just enough to carry you through.
The Thirties- The Skin I’m In
We spend our thirties cultivating the beauty that we have been given. At this point, we realize that we have to work with what we’ve got, and we step fully into that. We focus on what looks good on us and work on showing up as the best version of ourselves. Secure in our own skin, we wear confidence first.
The Forties- Inner Glow
In your forties, you begin to realize that there is no possible way for you to compete with that twenty-something walking down the street. It begins to dawn on you that although you may be attractive, you are not the hottest one in the room anymore. Beauty fades over time, and if that’s all we have going for us we are truly in trouble. That’s when we start to realize the importance of our inner beauty.
We begin to explore in earnest what makes us unique, and what we can contribute to the world. Now I’d like to offer a disclaimer here that there are many women who already work from a place of self-love first, but it’s not everyone, and it certainly wasn’t me. It took me a while to get there. It wasn’t until I began practicing unconditional self-love that everything shifted for me. My perspective changed, and I finally understood my full worth as a woman.
The Fifties- Enter The Queen
Your fifties are about standing confidently in your womanhood and embracing all of the wisdom that life’s journey has taught you. It’s also about releasing the need for external validation. It’s almost like we’ve been walked through the process involuntarily. Over time the compliments and unsolicited catcalls come few and far between. A feeling of invisibility begins to creep in and challenges even the most self-assured. This can be unnerving for many women, but devastating for some.
But then something else begins to emerge…our confidence in our inner beauty. We learn to embrace the aging process and begin to live an invigorated life with all of the tools that wisdom has brought us. We refuse to be disqualified based on the external. And that is when the shift really happens. We are now armed with the knowledge that there is way more to us than meets the eye. We spend more time focusing on the internal vs. the external. Sure we want to look good, but the external doesn’t dictate our value. Our inner beauty takes the front stage, and we allow ourselves to really be seen.
For more on external validation, check out my previous post “External Validation And Opting Out” https://herpicketfence.link/9anxrsy
The Bottom Line
Aging is a process that we can’t stop. It is impossible to turn the clock back, but we can move towards sharing more of our inner beauty in the time that we have here. This is a lesson that I really wish I had learned at a younger age. I was so focused on how I appeared to others that my inner beauty was lost in the process. Now as an adult, I realize that I’ve always been so much more than what I presented externally.
If you have a moment, check out this great article “The Women In My Life Taught Me To Love Aging” https://herpicketfence.link/njr.
Nowadays when I walk down the street I wear joy, not because I’ve just been paid a compliment, but because I have been given the gift of aging and I’m enjoying the journey. My soul is maturing, and it feels phenomenal. Aging is an honor. Let’s embrace it!
