Light Topics for a Birthday' Hangover': Beauty, Aging, Love, And Being Your Self

My 46th birthday was last week and as my daughter likes to remind me, that means I'm in my 47th year.

I'm not one of those people who will tell you that I still feel 24.  In fact, when I was 24, I said, "I feel 40."  And now I don't know what age I feel - maybe every age, depending on the day.

I stumbled onto a poem the week of my birthday by Denise Duhamel, called, "Fornicating."  Here is a quote from the poem, which I like very much (found in the The Best American collection from 2015):

"Anne Sexton wrote
Once I was beautiful.  Now I am myself..."

Maybe a sign or something considering that I am undeniably middle-aged.  And I've thought in the week since quite a bit about what it means to be seen as beautiful.  And what if feels like to be seen as my Self.

For women, aging and beauty, visibility and invisibility, worthiness, desirability, and identity are often inextricably connected in ways that I think it's hard for men to understand.  Well, truthfully, we women don't understand it, but we know it. 

One way I count myself lucky is that I've been around 'old' people, through my work, but also through my writing life, for a long time.  So, even as I rub on my face serum and anti-aging cream at night, I have a competing message that I have undeniably received from these 'old people.'  It is realistic and foresighted.  It says, "Your gonna have to let that go."

From my perch in my office chair, listening to women of all ages sitting on my couch, I hear vicious attacks.  The attacks are on themselves and the script started when they were very young and the words and meaning came through in secret and sad ways.  The script says things like, "You are more loved if you are more beautiful.  You are more loved if you are thinner.  But don't get too beautiful or too thin, because then you will be uppity and threatening.  But if you have to err on some side, err on being thin and beautiful."

The biggest problem is that for many women (at least ones in the United States, as far as I can tell, but it's probably more global than that), somehow being 'pretty' gets conflated with being loveable or being loved.

When I hear women talking cruelly to themselves - about being invisible as they age, about no one ever loving them because they weren't found beautiful enough, about mothers who rejected them because they weren't thin enough or feminine enough, I feel deep down sad, but my sadness is in part for myself because I also have received and taken to heart some of those messages.

But, because of my job, I've also been grappling with these issues of aging and physical change, since I was 32 years old.  And here's the deal, fellow women.  We have to start paying attention in new ways to what love and power really mean.  And we need to teach our daughters and sons to use different guides than the ones we may have been given:

First - What is real love?  We have to learn to recognize it, value it, and not settle for less than it.  And, I don't just mean romantic love, I mean any love at all.  When I was married, I had a thought hidden at that time from my waking mind, but a thought that drove some things about me nonetheless:   that is was really important that I stay attractive.   I never felt like I could dye my hair in front of my ex, or go without makeup on Christmas morning.  I felt that he required some artifice on my part.  I know now that was a sign that I wasn't really loved.  I didn't feel that being plain old me was enough.  It was unconscious, but I hoped that in being a shiny version of me, that I would be more loved, more acceptable.  I wish I had paid attention to the wrongness of that.   I have yet to fall in love in this middle part of my life, but I know in the wisest part of me - and you know this too - when someone is really loved, appearance seems an afterthought.  How many times have you gotten to know someone as a human being and they become MORE attractive to you?  Or their attractiveness seems inconsequential.  When you love someone, you see them in a whole way without making a decision or effort to do so - you see the essence of them when you look at them and it's beautiful to you.

And, this is the most important part:  by those who love you, you are seen the same way.   Let yourself feel that.  If you are not around people who love you for who you are, that is what needs to change.  That's the place to put your energy - not into how to lose 25 pounds or can you afford to get a tummy tuck?  

Second, we need to pay attention to our elders who are aging with wisdom, grace and energy and see what it is they have that we might want to cultivate in ourselves.  Older women, especially women who were known as beauties in their younger years, often tell me how hard it is to feel overlooked or invisible.  Losing part of your identity is, of course, demoralizing.  Losing perhaps your feeling of desirability, losing perhaps your sense of power.  But when we accept that our power and desirability can be so much more than perky boobs or a lack of crows feet, we allow in a fuller sense of what power might be.  My guess is that our power and desirability and energy and joie de vivre is rooted in what gives us creativity, ignites our passion, connects us with something essential in us, and lets us live truthfully and fearlessly.

Listen, I come from a long line of vain women, so I have a lot to overcome.  My grandmother, in the hospital at age 92 looked at me from her bed and said, "Kate...you look terrible."  What?!  "You need a little lipstick."  Even on her death bed, my Gran wore lipstick.

But mostly, in my 47th year, I am going to remember that the most beautiful thing to be is myself.

A second quote from the poem, Fornicating, sums up a bit of what I wrote above...

"it's easy to feel unbeautiful
when you have unmet desires."

Hey women - I know it may be easy to feel unbeautiful, but easy feelings are not always true.  Unmet desires are difficult (I have them too), but they are not as a result of lack of beauty.

Here is my wish for women, whether 6 or 46 or 96 - to know that you are loveable, worthy, and beautiful.  To know your own power, so that you experience the joy of being seen for your Self, but also so that you see your True Self.