I'm Not the After Photo

Why are women divided into two categories: the ones we're supposed to aspire to be and the ones we're supposed to be afraid of becoming?

Think about how we talk about women and aging.

There's the before photo. Young, smooth skin, firm everything, bright-eyed, full of promise. The woman with her whole life ahead of her.

And then there's the after photo.

The wrinkles. The gray hair. The changes in her body. The woman who's supposedly lost something along the way.

She's the cautionary tale. The reason for the expensive cream, the anti-aging treatment, the makeover, the exercise program promising to turn back the clock.

Look at the before. Look at the after.

See what happens if you don't do everything in your power to stay young?

I've got a problem with that.

As an older woman, I refuse to be somebody's after photo.

We're Put Into Two Buckets

From the time we're young, women are taught to think of aging as a contest
against time.

In one bucket are the women we aspire to be: young, attractive, desirable, energetic, full of potential. In the other are the women we're warned about becoming: old, wrinkled, irrelevant, past their prime.

One represents possibility. The other represents loss.
One is the goal. The other is the consequence of failing to achieve it.

And here's the kicker: We're all headed toward the second bucket, assuming we're lucky enough to live long enough.

So what exactly is the plan? Spend our entire lives trying to avoid becoming the people we're inevitably going to become?

That's a hell of a way to live.

And it creates a ridiculous situation in which a woman can spend 50 years being told to look forward to her future, only to arrive there and be told she's no longer what she should aspire to be.

She's become the warning.

Who Decided the After Photo Was a Failure?

Let's look at what that before-and-after narrative actually says.

It says that youth is the ideal and aging is the problem to be corrected.

It says that the changes our bodies naturally undergo are evidence that something has gone wrong.

It says that a woman who looks younger than her age has accomplished something, while a woman who looks her age has somehow fallen short.

And it says that the most important thing about a woman's appearance is how closely she can maintain the illusion that time hasn't passed.

But time has passed.

We've lived through things. We've loved people. We've lost people. We've raised families, built careers, changed directions, made mistakes, recovered from disappointments, and learned a few things we couldn't possibly have known at 25.

Our faces and bodies are part of that story. Why should we regard the evidence of a life lived as a personal failure?

I'm not suggesting that women shouldn't color their hair, wear makeup, get cosmetic treatments, exercise, or do whatever makes them feel good. You want Botox? That's your business. You want to let your gray hair grow? That's your business, too.

The problem isn't what women choose to do with their appearance. The problem is the message that makes us feel we have to do something about it.

I'm Not a Lesser Version of My Younger Self

Here's what I want to challenge. The idea that the older woman is simply a younger woman with something missing.

Less beautiful. Less desirable. Less interesting. Less relevant. Less capable of beginning something new. As though the only direction a woman can travel through life is downhill.

I'm not the same woman I was at 25. Thank God. I know things now that I couldn't have known then. I've had experiences I couldn't have anticipated. I've developed opinions, lost a few illusions and acquired a much better understanding of what deserves my time.

I've also changed physically. That's what happens when you inhabit a body for decades.

But I'm not a damaged version of the woman I used to be. I'm a woman with a longer story. And that story is still being written.

I am not the after photo of my younger self. I am the current edition of me.

And the current edition has every right to be interesting, attractive, ambitious, adventurous, funny, sexy, curious or whatever else she wants to be.

Not because she's managed to hang on to her youth. Because she's a person. And people don't expire when they reach a certain age.

The Most Dangerous Thing About the After Photo

The real damage isn't just that older women are underrepresented in advertising, entertainment or the cultural imagination.

It's that we can start to see ourselves through that same lens.

We begin to ask whether we're too old for the clothes, the date, the trip, the new business or the unfamiliar experience. We start to feel that we should be grateful simply to be included. We hesitate to take up space because we assume the world has moved on to people who matter more.

And sometimes we even help reinforce that thinking by distancing ourselves from other older women.

I'm not like those old ladies.

I don't dress like that.

I don't act like that.

I don't look my age.

We may think we're escaping the second bucket by proving we're different. But we're still accepting the idea that the bucket is where we don't want to be. We're still treating older women as the group we need to distinguish ourselves from.

And we still haven't questioned why the category exists in the first place.

What if we stopped trying to prove we're exceptions?

What if being an older woman didn't require a disclaimer?

What if we could simply exist without having to demonstrate that we're younger-looking, more energetic, more fashionable, or more interesting than somebody's stereotype?

What if we were allowed to be exactly who we are?

I Don't Want to Turn Back the Clock

I hear a lot of women talk about wanting to turn back time.

I understand the sentiment. There are things I would happily do differently and there are certainly moments I'd love to revisit. But I don't want to spend the rest of my life trying to reverse the fact that I've lived one.

I don't want to be measured against a younger version of myself, as if she's the gold standard and I'm the disappointing sequel.

I want to know what I can do now. What I can learn now. Who I can meet now. What experiences might surprise me.

I want to be seen as a woman who is still becoming, not a woman who has already peaked.

And I want other women to feel that way, too.

Because the alternative is a lifetime spent chasing a moving target, followed by a second lifetime trying to pretend we haven't reached the destination.

No, thank you.

Let's Throw Away the Before-and-After Labels

Here's my proposal.

Let's stop treating older women as the after photo.

Let's stop describing every wrinkle as something to fix, every birthday as something to survive, and every new decade as a further step away from relevance.

Let's stop asking whether women over 60 can still be attractive, interesting, adventurous, or ambitious.

Of course they can. Why is that even a question?

Let's make room for women who look their age and women who don't. Women who are starting over and women who are perfectly happy where they are. Women who want a quiet life and women who want to shake things up.

Women who are tired. Women who are energized. Women who are figuring things out.

In other words, let's make room for actual human beings instead of two-dimensional categories. Because the woman in the before photo is not more entitled to a full life than the woman in the after photo.

And the older woman isn't the end of the story. She's the woman who's living it now.

I'm not the after photo. I'm not the cautionary tale. I'm not a warning about what happens when you get old.

I'm a woman with a life, an opinion, a history and a future.

And I refuse to believe that any of those things become less interesting because I've accumulated more birthdays.

So the next time somebody offers you a choice between being young and being old, between being the ideal and being the warning, between being the before and being the after?

Reject the premise.

You're not a before-and-after project. You're the whole damn picture.