Top: Wallis. Skirt: Vintage. Shoes: Dorothy Perkins via eBay. Brooch: www.mockinghorse.co.uk
This month, the Feminist Fashion Bloggers are considering the subject of youth and ageing. It’s quite an interesting one to consider, from my perspective as a woman in her thirties who has looked – according to others – both younger and older than her age at various points in life.
From about twelve or so, people tended assume I was in my mid-late teens – I’ve never been asked for ID in my life, although when I look back at photos of me from when I was thirteen I can only assume that certain off licences had a policy of serving anyone tall enough to reach over the counter, because while I could have got away with being thought 16, 18 I did not look! I remember girls back then caking on loads of make-up to be thought older, working out at, say, 16 what drinks to order and how to order them with an air that suggested ‘legally permitted to purchase alcohol’. I heard a lot of ‘you’re so lucky you look older’.
At some point in my twenties, though, I seemed to transition to looking just a few years younger than I was. Someone that’s known me in a professional context since then still has to be reminded which side of 30 I am, having assumed I was just out of University rather than entering my second job, and I heard an awful lot of ‘you’ll be grateful for that when you’re older’.
I’m not really sure where I fall now, but I do find it fascinating what a narrow range of aimed-for youth there seems to be. I spent my teens being congratulated for looking 16-18 and my late twenties being congratulated for looking 25 or under, giving a range of less than a decade. Now, occasionally, someone will express surprise that I’m over 30, or they’ll reassure me that I look fine in spite of that – better than I did at 23, even. Which I personally think is true, but the rush to reassure me that I haven’t suddenly become invisible and undesirable now that my age starts with a 3 is rather telling of societal attitudes to both ageing and women.
I’m supposed, you see, to regard ageing as bad. I’m supposed to wish to remain young and attractive, with attractiveness being seen as harder (and more expensive) to achieve the further away from ‘young’ (which seems, from my experiences, to be ‘somewhere between 16 and 25′ – I wonder at what point one becomes ‘old’ and what in the world one is in between?) I get.
But I don’t regard ageing as bad. So far, all it’s done is improve my life and self-knowledge – there’s a few white hairs and nascent laughter lines, sure, but I don’t know why I’m supposed to see those as problematic so only positive effects so far. I don’t think that only the young can be attractive – attractiveness is about what a person exudes more than about the firmness of their flesh, and I know incredibly attractive people of all ages. And most important of all, I don’t think that Being Attractive is the most important thing to which we can possibly aspire.
I won’t lie and say it’s not important to me at all – I’m human, and I’m afraid I like to be found attractive as much as I like to be regarded as intelligent – but… is that how we measure our friends and family? Do we consider it of great importance that our loved ones look as youthful as possible? Of course not. We value intelligence, wit, warmth, kindness, the ability to know when you need a hug and when you need a kick up the bum, straight-talking – all sorts of completely non-physical characteristics that have nothing whatsoever to do with age.
So why are we encouraged to value different things in ourselves?
Dress: Gap via eBay. Shoes: Irregular Choice. Brooch: www.mockinghorse.co.uk
