Wise Women: This is Fifty

Ageism is a real thing, gals! I feel that men will never truly understand what it means when a woman gets older than 35. Recently, we saw first-hand how extreme this is when J-Lo played the Superbowl half time show and the memes started spreading across social media. The whole world was basically jaw-dropping and saying things like "she's 50!?" then people starting putting themselves down in the process and other older women down as well.

30, 40, 50, 60 looks different from one person to the next. Celebrities seem to have an upper-hand in "fighting off" wrinkles and loose skin. I don't think this is healthy to idolize them for that. I also don't think it's healthy to accuse those women in the public eye of just having more money or getting surgery ether. The problem is bigger than that. While I wish those women who have a higher profile would show more of what aging gracefully looks like for a broader demographic, the fact that these women fight against aging so much, is because of the broken beauty beast that we feed.

The pressures put upon us by society, the media, and the people around us create a toxic world to age within. If it wasn't hard enough for women to be equal in this world, now we aren't allowed to age, or a least not appear to be. Today I wanted to show off my mother. She may not always think that she aged gracefully or that she isn't showing "her age" because people now think 50 looks like J-Lo. She may think she is too muscular at times, or that she needs to buy that anti-wrinkle cream because the world said so... My mother is (whispers) fifty fucking seven and she looks exactly how she should: beautiful, strong, confident, and self-assured. She is brave, she has fought against adversity, she has started over more times then we can count, she kept us all alive, and she still takes care of so many people. This is 50(7)!

I wanted to document this time for my mother. I wanted to show her that she "got it" not still but forever.

I plan to continue my work with this age group and ages beyond this to help more women feel empowered and beautiful.