Just Call me Swaggerful

Not my actual birthday cake...

As I approach another birthday in a few days, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to get older. 

I can't remember a time when I wasn't exposed to the idea that aging after your mid-20s is bad. We've been told that women must "fight" aging with pricey skin-care products, shots, vitamins, exercise, diet, etc. Never mind that to literally not age means to die. Forever Young by Alphaville was the prom theme for many of my peers in the 80s and 90s which seemed romantic at the time. Now, I balk at the idea that it's better to die young than "perish like a fleeing horse" (whatever the hell that means.)

The pressure to be beautiful when most of us are simply not is insane. Maybe it's because in every fairytale we were read to as a child there was a beautiful princess. I feel like if fairy tales started with "There once was an okay-looking girl who met an equally okay-looking boy who loved the girl for who she was and how she acted, not how she looked," we would all be much happier and more self-confident.

Men over 40 and 50 have long been celebrated for being (or at least allowed to be) man-children, while we women always have to be the mature ones. Did you ever notice how men are the ones that typically have midlife crises? It's because we women are too busy just holding everyone's shit together to allow ourselves to fall apart in the same way as men. I mean, I can fantasize about running away to an island to have my How Laura Got Her Groove Back experience, but I'd never actually do that because 1. I know that in real life How Stella Got Her Groove Back, author Terry McMillan's groove went away when the hot island man she ended up marrying came out to her, and she divorced him. 2. I know that marital and life ups and downs are always going to happen and that running away from them all only brings other problems, not solutions. 

I admit though to being a little bit too obsessed with beauty. Every year I buy People magazine's Most Beautiful issue. For years, People has had a section called 'Beautiful at any Age' that started with celebrities at age 20 and ended with female celebrities at age 59. This year's Beauty issue was different. Suddenly People woke up (or maybe just caved to the pressure from their pissed-off, aging readers). They featured a 76-year-old cover girl, Helen Miren! And the magazine's 'Beautiful at Any Age' section went up to age 80. I guess you hit 81 and you're hideous, but still, it's so much better than ending at 59. 

Helen Mirren had a few great nuggets of wisdom in the interview that accompanied her photoshoot. First, she said "...most of us are not beautiful. We have other stuff, which is just as powerful as beauty. And I would like to see us celebrate those things … I love the word swagger because I think swagger means I'm confident in myself, I'm presenting myself to the world, I'm enjoying the world around me. I think what is called the beauty industry should be called the swagger industry. We're giving people swagger."

I love this idea. Swagger is an awesome word that is not used enough. Beauty may fade but swagger can last a lifetime. 

Secondly, she reframed the idea of aging this way "Other people call it growing older, but I call it growing up," she says. "And one of the advantages is that you literally get to be wiser. Life is a constant process of learning."

Amen, Helen. Wisdom, comfort with yourself, and constantly learning new things are joys to behold.

Now excuse me while I take my almost-48-year-old self and share my swagger with the world.