This post is about the pressure to get ahead of ageing, why beauty standards are really about worth, and the difference between belonging and inclusion. It's for any woman who feels the pull to fix her face before it changes, and wonders what it would mean to stop.
This face was not made by me alone. It is the culmination of thousands of ancestors, whose bodies merged generation after generation before mine.
This face has been scarred by acne, bumped by falls, burnt under hot African sun, wrinkled by uncertainty, laughter, grief, and love. It tells the stories of the people who made me, including their hopes and dreams, lived and unlived, their fear and tension, their delight and bliss, the faces of thousands who fell in love before I existed.
This is my original face. It is mine, and it is not mine. It was given to me by those before me, and it is a gift for those still to come.
I had a dream a few nights ago. A singer told me that performing her new song scared her. The shapes her face had to make to reach the notes felt too exposing. She feared the audience would see her as ugly as she threw her mouth open and scrunched her forehead in front of a crowd. Was it ugly? Was it divine? We both knew, somehow, that it was divine, and we were both angry that something so beautiful and so vulnerable could be turned into a weapon against her.
The Pressure to Get Ahead of Ageing
That fear isn't only a dream. I'm in my 30s. I consider myself young. But I already feel the pressure to get ahead of ageing. To zap the wrinkle before it deepens, to tuck it in before it sags, to tighten it before it droops. Ughhhh. It feels hard to admit sometimes...
Beauty Standards Are Really About Worth
That pressure is really about worth. And deeper than that, it's about status, class, and superiority. So many have altered the faces our ancestors gave us to get ahead in a game that requires women to use their looks, beauty, and sexuality (societal currency) so they aren't crushed by capitalism and patriarchy.
I already hold real currency in that game. I'm white, and I live in a smaller body—two things the beauty industry grants without me having to earn them. And even holding that currency, I still feel the pull to get ahead of ageing. Which tells me something: if privilege doesn't exempt you from the fear, the fear was never really about looking a certain way. It's the system, working exactly as it was built to.
Stepping Out of the Beauty Race
However, this is a battle I've chosen not to fight. I say this tentatively, knowing that as I keep ageing, I will begin to lose my place in "the race". And so, I'm calling on other women who are choosing to step out of that race too, or who have done so already, even though it's terrifying, to stand together in something much more important: belonging.
Belonging vs. Inclusion
It's terrifying to exit the beauty game because it threatens our sense of belonging. But we have to stop confusing belonging with inclusion. Chasing beauty standards is chasing a false sense of belonging. Really, it's chasing inclusion: if you fit certain criteria, you get let into the club; if you don't, you're kicked to the curb.
True belonging, however, doesn't ask anything of you. You belong unconditionally because you are. Because you're human, because you're here—and there's nothing to prove or achieve to earn it.
Chasing belonging through beauty is a chase you can never win, because you can never earn what was never conditional to begin with. You belong because you are.
Why I See Ageing as a Blessing
I believe watching my body age is a blessing. I have one body in this lifetime, and I have always held onto the desire to experience, feel, and embody its evolution fully.
I've been given a gift: both my grandmothers and my mother never altered their faces. I've become increasingly aware of how rare that is now.
What We Lose When We Lose the Crone
As a younger person, I long for the Crone: the wise elder woman who has seen it all, witnessed endless cycles of death, rebirth, failure, creation, conflict, and regeneration, and carries it all on her face.
Through her ageing, the Crone becomes the master of letting go, of residing in what is. She releases the youthful maiden and the fertile mother, knowing she is the final form of the powerful feminine archetypal trinity: Maiden, Mother, Crone.
I gasp at the thought of losing her to Botox. I wonder what happens to a society when women in their 60s and 70s look like they're in their 40s. Or, when our children can no longer read thousands of years of evolutionary biology in their mothers' faces, or when our teenagers watch their mothers claw their way back to a 20-year-old body instead of residing in the one they have.
The Crone teaches us to release control, to surrender into the magic of the now. If we lose her to Botox, I believe we lose that sacred wisdom with her.
Honouring the Face My Ancestors Gave Me
Choosing not to chase beauty standards is how I honour the face my ancestors gave me, and how I make sure it's still here, unaltered, to connect with the people who come after me too. That is a gift I wish to give to all young girls of the future, including my children (if that is part of my path).
Grieving the Girl in the Mirror
But that healing has to start with me first. I grieve the sixteen-year-old who stood in front of the mirror, pinching the skin on her stomach, convinced that was the thing standing between her and being loved.
I mourn the younger part of me who saw herself as ugly, who couldn't see her own inherent beauty and innate belonging.
And now, I start saying goodbye to my youth as I watch it slowly change into something else.
Choosing Vitality Over Perfection
I know there's no such thing as anti-ageing, and so I don't chase it. I know that death will come to us all, and part of making peace with the ultimate impermanence is to honour my body growing and ageing.
I choose vitality and presence over perfection in whatever shape it takes. I want to be vibrant and awake, engaging fully with my family and community for as long as I possibly can. Because who knows how much time we have left in our Earth bodies.
I want us to share through our authenticity, through wisdom gained by having been deeply touched by life, through traversing grief, bliss, despair, and love. Through the whole range of what a human face can hold.
Reclaiming Your Original Face
So today, I reclaim my original face. We owe it to the ancestors who gave it to us, and to the children who are waiting to inherit it.
And I hope, whoever you are reading this, that you find your way to reclaiming yours—however long it takes, in whatever form, however terrifying it feels to leave the race and step into true belonging.
A Place to Belong
If something in you is ready to step out of the race, you don't have to do it alone. EARTH is my free monthly online eating disorder recovery support circle: a place to land, where nothing is asked of you to belong.
