Is It a Sin to Look Your Age?
One of my pastors was preaching from Genesis 12, and he came to the part of the story where Abram and his wife Sarai head to Egypt during a time of famine. The account highlights the cowardly moment when the patriarch asks his attractive wife to tell the Egyptians that she is his sister, which was technically true, but to keep their marriage on the Q.T.
In an attempt to help the congregation imagine Sarai's arresting beauty, the pastor said, "Sarah is about 65 years old here, and most of us don't think about 65-year-olds as objects of beauty." He paused for a moment, giving us time to think about the Medicare recipients in our midst, then offered his thoughts about the phenomenon. "It could be that in the ancient world, they had different standards."
On behalf of older women everywhere: ouch.
Is it really so difficult for most of us to think of older women as desirable? Or are we simply so used to seeing the distorted cultural images of mature "hotness" that we simply don't know how to look past them to see true beauty?
The older icons of physical beauty in pop culture are frequently portrayed one of three ways: sexually assertive cougars, physically obsessed fitness instructors, and plastic surgery devotees. The message of these images? Simply, it is is a sin to look your age. If hotness is something to which we should all aspire, old is c-c-cold.
It takes time, money, and commitment, along with a socially acceptable measure of narcissism, to maintain that desirable young appearance. Even so, keeping up (read: competing) with women a generation younger is the our culture's ongoing real time reality show. Actress Demi Moore's recent mental breakdown in the wake of her divorce to younger dude Ashton Kutcher was widely attributed to her fear that she was starting to look her age. (So is her first post-divorce ad campaign that shows the 49-year-old's face heavily airbrushed.) In response, Forbes contributor Anushay Hossein had this critique of the "old is cold" phenomenon:
Moore is a product of our youth-obsessed culture which teaches women from when they are girls that we are valued by our beauty. We are taught to stay young and thin at any cost, and there is no other industry that consistently reinforces that message more than Hollywood. It is clear that we are all buying and believing this message.
The fact of the matter is the film industry, in the U.S. and around the world, have pitted women against Mother Nature. It's an impossible battle to win and we all know it. But when women remind other women of that fact, like Demi Moore has, we blame and label them as unsuccessful, shower them with pity and disgust. We think they are "pathetic."
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Jennifer Grant
Great piece Michelle!
Karen
Bravo! It is O.K. to wear pink feathers! Or not! Midge
Robyn Widmer
Ali FTW!
Robyn Widmer
Ali FTW!
Tim
Ha! Good one ali! Tim
Alison Swihart
It's a sin to spend a fortune to NOT look your age.
Doreen Ashley
We can assume that Sarah's attraction 4000 years ago was "her brother's" massive fortune. Tribal leaders married for financial gain, protection, and political alliances, not for personality or beauty. That was simply a polite fiction. And, as a fascinating aside, in the U.S., it wasn't until the last couple of decades that people put "love and mutual attraction" OR good looks near the top of the priority list, See the interesting 53-year study by four university researchers called "A Half Century of Mate Preferences."
Doreen Ashley
One of the things I love about older people is that they have the face they have "lived into," rather than the face God gave them. As young people we have the luck of the draw, but age brings individuality, and a story, to our faces. I've always hoped I will turn out like some of the older women I know who have too many laugh lines to count. This has also been brought home to me by, very occasionally, seeing an older person whose face I hoped not to have, where an emotion like dissatisfaction or self-pity is written very plainly. Another thing about the double standard between men and women was brought home to me lately--and I think this is connected--the question of whether it's OK to have a scar. According to the cultural paradigm, women are supposed to be flawless. No blemishes. If a man has a scar on his face it proves his active manliness, but if a woman has one it does nothing but detract from her beauty--according to the culture. Well, I recently got a scar on my face. It's quite visible though I expect it will fade somewhat. I got it in a minor farming accident while wrangling alpacas. And the more I think about it, the more I resent the notion that this is terrible and that it would have been better for me never to touch an alpaca. I would rather live a life in which I *do* things, darnit, rather than sit home and protect my flawlessness. The scar, like any other line in my face, is a story--and it's a story I'm proud of, actually. As much as any man. So, I see wrinkles the same way. If it were possible to put our faces safely in a box (C.S. Lewis' "heart in a box" analogy comes to mind) and never do anything with them for seventy years, never smile at friends, kiss husbands and children, frown at the things that make us angry or furrow our brows with thought--and then get them out, flawless and shining, in our old age, would it be worth it? Not on your life.
KAREN SWALLOW PRIOR
What a great post, Michelle. I agree with what others have said about taking care of ourselves. But this celebrity/media-driven madness to look freakishly young at any cost is very, very sad. Thanks for giving a larger framework from which to view this.
TD
Well said. I think far, far too often, the church mimics the world at large, only tries to be a little nicer and put the God stamp on it thinking that makes it ok. It doesn't. "As we affirm that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, we must include the reality that even our graying hair and sagging midsections proclaim Gods creativity and beauty in the same way a starry sky or a blooming rose does." Absolutely!!
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