For years, women have been sold the idea that beauty is synonymous with youth – and chasing it is a global business worth tens of billions. But many are now joyfully reclaiming positivity towards their faces and bodies. The message is about grabbing life – not trying to erase it
What if: “You look young for your age” wasn’t a compliment? What if it was neutral, or even slightly insulting – “why are you making a judgement on my face?” We may be closer to that being a reality as more women – from celebrities to the woman next door – seek a more self-compassionate way to approaching ageing.
Anna Murphy, 52-year-old fashion director and author of Destination Fabulous – which one reviewer described as an “empowering manifesto for changing our attitudes to age” – is one of them. “All I did [with my book] was say you don’t have to inject things into your face, or worse still cut your face,” she tells Positive News. “It should be such an obvious thing to say but it was such a relief to people.”
This isn’t a subtle rebrand, a renaming of ‘crow’s feet’ to ‘smile lines’, but women on the ground deciding to turn away from the relentless marketing. Fearne Cotton has described the lines on her faces as being there “because I like laughing, I really like smiling, I’m often quite surprised, and I focus and concentrate on things that I really enjoy.”
After modelling when she was younger, Kate Groombridge (main image) has returned to it at 42 due to there being high demand for natural, unretouched images of more mature women. A recent shoot for Boots magazine captured her skin as it is: freckles, laughter lines, baby hairs and all, for the first time since she was a teenager. Originally tentative about calling up the modelling agencies that she used to work with, she has “been rushed off my feet ever since”.
Meanwhile writer Jessica DeFino, an outspoken critic of modern beauty standards who is fiercely anti Botox, has amassed 95,000 subscribers to her newsletter The Unpublishable. DeFino has made it her mission to challenge the global beauty industry, debunking myths, questioning pseudoscience and confronting a narrative that encourages women to feel bad about themselves – and spend an awful lot of money to feel better.
Former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson hit the headlines when she recently went makeup-free for Paris Fashion Week. “Challenging ourselves is what keeps us young and beautiful. And I think, really genuinely, beauty does come from within and you don’t have to play the game,” she said of the decision.
Writer Jessica Defino is an outspoken critic of modern beauty standards. Image credit: Lucy Kinnen
Social media has turbocharged the reach of a beauty industry that tells us a naturally ageing face is ugly, but it has also – the signs are there – helped to wake us up. Arguably millennial women in particular, who grew up with photoshopping, retouching and general visual ‘lies’, have had enough.
That’s not to claim this as a full-scale revolution; recent worrying headlines have revealed Gen Z’s crippling fear of ageing, while children as young as 10 are reportedly requesting anti-ageing products. But there’s also plenty of age positive content out there if you know where to look.
Change may take time. “We’ve had fear around ageing drip fed to us right from fairy tales, which are populated by horrible old hags and gorgeous, young, line-free maidens,” says Murphy.
It’s about women opting to turn away from the relentless marketing black hole, and grab life – not erase it
Then the beauty industry and the land of modern fairy tales – Hollywood – take over. It’s no wonder that research by Erica Åberg at the University of Turku in Finland has found that “women internalise the fear of ageing from a society that does not value ageing in women, and that message is spread through friends, relatives, the media, etc.”
Appearance, according to Åberg’s research, has increasingly become a form of ‘capital’. As Murphy says: “I wasn’t going out in my 20s worrying about getting older, seeing it as this terrible incurable disease that was heading my way, but young women feel that, because they’re being marketed at so directly.”
The late Carroll E Izard – a former professor of psychology at the University of Delaware – studied the importance of facial expressions, arguing that they “are an essential part of our social communication.” Another reason to avoid Botox then.
‘Social media is part of the problem but also potentially part of the solution,’ says Anna Murphy. Credit: Lucy Kinnen
Fortunately, there is now a stream of voices actively turning their backs on the impossible beauty ideal. “Social media is part of the problem but also potentially part of the solution”, says Murphy. She reveals a now common experience for her: women at her book events telling her they’d felt pressurised to have Botox, but having heard her speak, have cancelled.
This isn’t about the beauty industry making limp attempts to jump on the body positivity bandwagon. It’s about women opting to turn away from the relentless marketing black hole, and grab life – not erase it. As Groombridge has put it: “I wouldn’t say I’m proud of my wrinkles, but I had a really good time making them.”
It’s easy on social media – and in life – to connect primarily with your own generation, but if all you see is young faces, anything else looks exaggerated in its difference. As Murphy says: “It’s a responsibility for us as we get older to show people coming up behind us that ageing is nothing to be afraid of, it’s something to embrace. It’s liberating to care less about what other people think of you.”
I wouldn’t say I’m proud of my wrinkles, but I had a really good time making them
Lyn Slater, the septuagenarian cultural influencer and ‘accidental icon’, has spoken about growing older as being like a rose. “There are some thorns but there is also the bloom, and there’s always that bud of potential, growth and self-discovery.”
And it could be worth tuning in to these sorts of voices for myriad reasons: research has found that those who have positive associations around ageing actually age better and live longer.
As Anna Murphy puts it: “Is ageing a straightforward proposition? No. Does it have complexities including negative ones? Yes. But is it something to grab with both hands rather than somehow attempt to negate? Yes, because ageing is living.”
Main image: Kate Groombridge. Credit: Lucy Kinnen
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