In Praise of the Aging Face

I miss seeing faces age. I miss watching the beautiful, painstaking process of creating a map of our lives on our skin.

If I were to name a toxic trait of mine—or perhaps, since I speak kindly to myself these days, we’ll call it an unhealthy habit—it would be working on the weekends.

On any given Saturday or Sunday, you might find me doing “this one quick thing,” ostensibly so I can “get ahead” for the coming week. Scheduling a newsletter. Updating a web page. Crafting content for social media. The constant hum of productivity rarely quiets, even when it should.

Last Saturday, I managed to break the pattern. I was determined not to work. No laptop open. No planning for Monday. Instead, I settled in to watch A Family Affair, starring Nicole Kidman, Joey King, and Zac Efron. Given the state of… gestures wildly at everything in the world… I craved something lighthearted and enjoyable.

I’ll confess, the first twenty minutes nearly lost me. But something made me stay, and gradually I found myself relaxing into the story as I allowed myself the simple pleasure of being present with a film. Nothing to accomplish.

I’ve always enjoyed Joey King’s work, and Nicole Kidman has been a favorite since I first saw her in Days of Thunder decades ago. Her talent is undeniable. Her presence, magnetic.

Yet as I watched, something kept pulling me out of the story.

I’d recently seen Nicole in The Perfect Couple, so I was already aware of how incredibly smooth her skin is these days, and I think it’s fair to assume she’s had work done. But there’s something about her appearance now that creates a strange disconnect. The dissonance between her age and what we’re allowed to see of it.

Then came a scene where Nicole sits beside Kathy Bates. In that moment, the contrast between them crystallized something I’ve been feeling for years. Watching Kathy, I was captivated, completely drawn in by every expression, every nuance crossing her face. Her presence felt whole, integrated, and truthful.

Watching Nicole, I felt distracted, despite her tremendous talent. There was a barrier. It felt as though she was delivering her performance through a mask.

I felt a sudden, visceral ache for all the faces we’ll never see age naturally. All the stories etched in laugh lines and forehead creases that have been denied, erased, chemically-peeled away. All in the relentless pursuit of youth that isn’t youth at all, just its simulation.

This isn’t about Nicole Kidman specifically, or any individual who chooses cosmetic procedures. We all navigate this culture with the tools available to us, making choices within systems that often leave no good options. The pressure on women in the public eye is particularly crushing. I understand the impossible bind.

But oh, how I miss seeing faces age. I miss watching the beautiful, painstaking process of creating a map of our lives on our skin. A testament to the decades we have witnessed and the ways that we have engaged with the world. These aren’t flaws to fix, they’re stories. Archives. Wisdom made visible.

This hunger for authentic representation becomes more urgent with each passing year. I find myself seeking out the faces of women who have chosen to age naturally, drawn to them like water in the depths of a desert. When I find them - whether in film, literature, or real life - I drink them in, grateful for their courage, their example, their reality.

I’ve long maintained that when it comes to aging, I want to challenge the culture, not criticize the individual. But sometimes I wonder: where are “my” women?

As I sit here, with cellulite creeping on my thighs like ivy, stretch marks tracing journeys across my belly, the slackness and softness that comes with time and gravity’s ever persistent pull, all I do is dream of gathering with my women.

I imagine us on a mountaintop. A mass of women who have chosen to age without intervention coming together in circle, in song, in ceremony, to witness each other’s beauty. Where we look around and truly see one another. Embrace the fullness of our lived experience. Validate the choice to remain visible in a culture that would prefer we disappear.

In the months before my 51st birthday, this is more than a fleeting thought. It’s a plea in my heart and an ache in my bones. I long for it with a yearning that surprises me with its intensity. The hunger to be together. To see and be seen, completely. To honor the faces that tell the truth of our lives.

And honestly, all I see is us hiding. Ashamed of how flawed we are. Believing we’ve failed and that our bodies have betrayed us because they’re no longer a shrine to being twenty-five.

My God, haven’t we earned these lines and landmarks that are the maps of our lives? Haven’t we sweated and toiled and labored and given ourselves away to still be here? Haven’t we died a hundred deaths and survived a thousand heartbreaks to have earned the right to be utterly proud as we point to all our markings of survival and scream from the top of the mountain how damn proud we are of ourselves for all the ways in which we didn’t simply give up and fade into the background?

We’ve weathered storms that could have destroyed us. We’ve built lives, nurtured others, and fought battles. We’ve stayed the course, and some.

But here we are, smoothing away our stories. Stifling our beautiful, exquisite, agonizing lived experiences. And it’s killing me that millions of intelligent, articulate, passionate, capable, credible women have been convinced that our sum worth is a resounding zero simply because we’ve dared to age.

I refuse to believe that our cultural narrative of invisibility after forty is inevitable. I refuse to accept that our only value lies in the simulation of youth. I fucking refuse to disappear.

My resistance begins with my own face. With choosing to see it clearly. With carrying it proudly through the world. With saying, unequivocally, that these markers of time are not my shame but my glory.

So here I am, on top of an imaginary mountain, hoping that the wind carries these words to the women who are meant to find them. Hoping that we grow in numbers, in strength, in solidarity.

Hoping that you’ll join me.

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Will you join me?

If this spoke to you, know that you’re not alone, and you’re not invisible. I write for women who are done being erased.

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