What’s wrong with being, looking 75?
It’s been a week since the Oscars, and I still can’t get Jane Fonda out of my mind. The woman is 75 years old. She did a good job of looking much younger, which is a tribute to someone’s surgical skills.
It’s also a sad statement about Fonda’s self-image. She was desperately trying to look good in the same way she did 50 years ago.
So, what’s wrong with looking good like a 75-year-old woman? I’m serious. Consider 78-year-old British actress Judi Dench. She’s dynamite. Wrinkles and all. Another 78-year-old British actress, Maggie Smith, makes a powerful statement with her age, not a furious denial.
I shouldn’t just pick on poor, old Jane. Oscar performer Barbra Streisand, 70, also looked too tightly stretched. It was painful to watch her sing “The Way We Were” while trying not to look the way she is.
This is nothing new, of course. In 1979, host Johnny Carson told his Oscar audience: “I see a lot of new faces, especially on the old faces.”
So, what’s wrong with old faces? I’m serious. We’ve been sipping this Youth Potion for so long that we’ve become addicted. Like any other addiction, it’s going to be hard to kick the habit of tying one’s sense of self-worth to looking young. It requires a major societal shift.
And women have a harder row to hoe.
The less said the better about 75-year-old Jack Nicholson’s Oscar appearance as a leering reprobate. Suffice it to say he wasn’t worried about looking his age. Nor was the elegant Christopher Plummer, age 83.
OK. So the stigma of aging falls harder on women. That’s no reason to give in and start saving up for a neck lift. To paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt: Nobody can make you feel stigmatized without your permission.
Nor can everyone continue to cast old age as the ugly stepsister without mass buy-in from the biggest cohort of self-interested people the nation has ever seen. Baby Boomers changed a lot of other ideas that used to be considered biology-as-destiny social norms. Not to mention being responsible for oldies radio and TV stations devoted to “I Love Lucy” and “Bonanza” reruns.
We, the Boomers, have the collective demographic muscle to change attitudes about ag-
ing.
Start with the courage to celebrate your wrinkles.
Some people will argue that there’s nothing wrong with a woman trying to look her best. I agree. But is our “best” the way we were?
What about the way we are? It’s cheaper than all those peels and lifts. It’s also more enlightened. Tibetan Buddhist master Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche walked away from his status as best-selling monk to wander the hills in an extended solo retreat, but his followers still send out videos of his teachings. One landed in my e-mail last week.
In it, Mingyur Rinpoche discussed his conversation with a woman who hated her wrinkles so much that she broke her mirror.
He told her it was a waste of the present to focus such energy on the past. It robbed her of the chance to realize and enjoy the potential of her current age.
In other words, make friends with the mirror.
But don’t take a Buddhist master’s word for it. My sister once told me that wrinkles are a sign of experience — evidence that you’ve lived. Maybe even learned some things.
My sister died fairly young, so I won’t get to fully judge her commitment to that idea.
That’s really the point, isn’t it? Growing old is a privilege. A gift from God.
We need to start seeing it that way.