Hot Girl Health

The perspective on “getting old” is a topic that I really want to talk about.  Not only is aging seen as a negative phenomenon, although it happens to us all who are alive, but it’s beaten down on top of our heads the beauty of youth and how desperate you should be to keep it.  There’s this constant fear of “now or never” in the most vulnerable and impressionable segment of your life, paired with the imminent idea of your short-lived “prime.”  It’s the same kind of dull mentality as hearing “high school will be the best years of your life” when there’s so much life left. It’s the kind of thinking that stunts us.  

It upsets me to see the way girls ruin themselves surgically, mentally, and emotionally chasing the perpetual carrot on a stick.  And in chasing said carrot, sometimes you inadvertently end up running head first into the very thing you were trying to avoid: looking older!  (“Preventive botox” marketed towards 20 year olds, I’m looking at you.) 

But is the conditioning our fault?  Isn’t it the tragic destiny of man, chasing the unattainable, before succumbing to the circle of life?  

First, I want to tell girls, that you can’t stop aging.  But it’s not a death sentence if you aren’t the youngest, newest, hottest thing either.  It doesn’t have to be. 

I believe people look at aging as this nasty, looming creature catching up to us on the cosmic treadmill, where one day we’ll be consumed by its jaws.  The negative is thrust over and over in our face: ugly, useless, your purpose is over, shriveled, and worthless.  It’s hammered down in our brains from the time we’re little girls, making us hate something that is ultimately inevitable, trying to satiate a population that is never satisfied.  This way of life kills us before we’re even dead.  It incapacitates us before we’ve even had time to experience anything, let alone the prime of our lives.  

What about the upsides of aging? Are there any?

My answer is yes.  There’s a lot of grace that comes with aging that isn’t often extended to us.  We have to reach out and take it ourselves.  Take it, mull over it, and understand it. And as I say in a lot of my other articles, it starts with the mindset.

The best thing about aging, that I don’t see get talked about, is the comfort in your sense of self.  You don’t really know what it means to have a fully formed sense of self until you’ve lived a little and have some distance to look back at it too.  Who you think you are at 13 is different from who you are at 21, from who you are at 35.  And that’s ok.  Growing is not a bad thing, learning is not a bad thing, figuring it out is not a bad thing.  Gaining knowledge to have at your disposal is good.  It shows that you’re evolving with your life, not being stagnant.   

Aging also allows you more agency if you let it.  You’ll have freedom in your thoughts and autonomy the way you didn’t know you could before.  A sense of calm and ease and clarity that can only come with making it to certain ages and stages of life.  When you aren’t grieving for something that was never meant to last forever to begin with, you open the space for all the possibilities beyond that.  There is so much out there if you want to know it.  Life doesn’t end the second your frontal lobe develops, it actually restarts the cycle, so you can begin again fresh with all the tools you need inside yourself.  It’s the last piece of the puzzle in the beginning formation of you.  

Don’t mourn a made up goal post that’s only purpose is to make money off of you, decimate your self esteem, and control you.  Don’t fall into being afraid of a projection of a supposedly miserable future that you haven’t even scratched the surface of yet, or isn’t your reality, a timeline that doesn’t even exist until you make it so.  Break free of the conditioning to live your existence, simple or glorious.  The point is that it’s yours.