to be freaked out by how much our faces change between 45 - 55 years old?

[tallowspa]

I'm just back from visiting a friend in the flesh I haven't seen since 2019. It was really lovely to see her but she was very down about her looks and how much she feels her face has changed in the past few years as she is now 53. I think she still looks amazing but she does look different now. She is 7 years older than me and the last time we were together you wouldn't have thought she was older at all but now the age difference was visible.

I work with women of all ages and one woman in her late 50's keeps saying how she looked good and like herself up until she was about 51 then within a year her face, skin and body changed and now she has just had to get used to never really feeling happy about how she looks or like herself.

Even looking at photos of actresses with all the surgeons and treatments at their disposal you see the same changes so I don't think it is something you can really escape, its inevitable and natural.

It just freaks me out though, I am 46 and still look like myself and I finally feel happy with how I look probably for the first time in my life but I know that over the next decade my face will change and probably not for the better.

I'm not on about looking young, or attractive and I know that aging is a privilege and that the alternative to aging is death but I still feel so freaked out my how much our faces seem to change at this time of life, menopause I suppose. I am on HRT (since I was 42) and that probably helps but obviously it isn't a miracle worker and these changes still occur.

I don't mind going grey or getting lines on my face its everything else and how our faces seem to fundamentally alter that freaks me out!

Jesus. How you look is like yourself because it IS yourself. Assuming you haven't been disfigured, or are very ill, you look like you look at the age you are.

This total cognitive dissonance constructed by a society that mandates youthfulness for women is so damaging.

Refuse it. Refuse to consider yourself defective for the rest of your life (potentially another 50 years if you're lucky) because you no longer look like you did when you were 25 and nubile. When you became a teen did you feel you no longer "looked yourself" because you didn't look 10 any more??

This construction is built entirely around the decade or two of our lives when most adult men find us most sexually attractive, and female people are expected to spend our childhoods acting up into it, and our later years desperately chasing after it, until we can't any more when we are expected to simply disappear in shame.

FUCK THAT.

@herewegoroundthebastardbush absolutely fucking hear hear, if I may say so!

Oh well said @herewegoroundthebastardbush .

Though I also empathise with you, OP, up to a point.

Christ, have you not seen what happens to men after 30???

Yanbu to feel that way. It's difficult for some to adjust and come to terms with. Not helped by societal ideals and pressures.

@herewegoroundthebastardbush I do get you and mentally I am on board with that but on another level I kind of just want to keep things as they are, and to have my face as it is and pretty much has been all my adult life for the next twenty years but I know that won't happen.

Yes, absolutely!
I can't look in a mirror now whereas when I was younger I was always checking myself in any reflective surface!

I hate it. Can't really get used to it but I know I must eventually.

I agree. I honestly liked how I looked the best (and that includes my teenage years, when I was beautiful in the way that most teen girls are) between the age of about 38 to 47.

I should add, that like most teens, I imagined I was full of flaws. I wasn’t! I just got more comfortable in my skin. When I hit my mid 30’s I just forgot to care so much, and was less influenced by social conditioning.

Im 55 now, and my looks have changed hugely in the last 5 years. I notice it. I don’t care, but I do notice it.

Chill out and concentrate on other things - who knows, you may even find it a freedom not to evaluate yourself based on your looks so much!

People grow old & die, as has happened for millenia, yet some are still so surprised that they aren't special enough to have somehow cheated the inevitable.

It is life ... life moves on .... things change, people change. Accept that or be miserable. You will get an old face (if you are lucky and survive) and a smiling old face is much more interesting than a miserable one. And a person behind that face who is interested and thoughtful is much better than someone obsessing over how they look.

Are you young?

Nope.

But I'm also not vain either.

Honestly, I did think I didn't look like me when I went through puberty and had to adjust.

It's not some ideal pushed by society I struggle with. I am far from being a person bothered by that.

Now, I do think my face has changed dramatically over the last two years. The shape is different and I do struggle to accept it. (Partly because I can see myself looking like my Mum/Gran which aren't completely positive experiences for me.) I'm not concerned about the grey or wrinkles but I definitely look different and have to work on accepting it.

I don't really give it much thought on a day to day if I'm honest but I do notice when I have an important meeting or I'm nervous about something. Perhaps I'm in a critical place then so find fault with more...

To be fair, I've never been a looker (although I look back at my 20s photos and wonder what the hell I was doing thinking I was ugly, I would never look so 'good' again by society's standards and should have been revelling in it!). So I've always had to resist the messaging up to a point, or I'd have hated myself from pretty much 5 years old upwards. If someone is more conventionally attractive, and has benefitted from that in the hundred little ways society rewards women for conforming to the beauty standard, it is probably hard to adjust when it becomes unsustainable. But that does mean that now I'm staring down 40, and am really coming into my raging feminism as I never really have before as a 'middle aged' woman and the mother of girl children, I see this awful inhibiting bullshit for what it is and am not daunted by my thickening skin and deepening wrinkles. Age and overweight is messing with my body in ways that matter - my mobility, my energy levels, pain levels, all sorts of things that stop me enjoying my life. I'll be damned if I'll spare a second worrying about what my face looks like - I don't have to look at the fucker.

It’s just not important at all in the grand scheme of things. I wouldn’t waste any time worrying about it. Look after yourself as best as you can & enjoy your life. None of us are here long.

Ageing is a privilege not afforded to everyone, so yes you are being too sensitive. If I could have my youth back of course I would but it is ridiculous to worry this much. I have just been to a dance class everyone is well over 50. I’m one of the youngest in my mid fifties. I saw a lot of women doing some exercise they enjoy and having some fun plus a bit of gossip as I listened aghast at tales of a woman’s ex husband.

Everyone is different though, for me I don't think its vanity as such in that I was never beautiful in my youth or now. Its just that I finally have accepted and grown to like the way I look, to appreciate what I see in the mirror and its all going to change soon and I'll have to adjust all over again if I can.

My friend on the other hand was beautiful, she was a model in her youth, we actually met at university when she went as a mature student when she stopped modelling in her mid 20's. For her its been the loss of something that brought her so many opportunities and formed a part of her identity, I don't think she is shallow for mourning that loss.

Of course I think that almost everything is more important than looks but I think its disingenuous to pretend that it simply doesn't matter and its unkind to heap shame on those who do care. Perhaps if women were allowed to talk about these feelings without being made to feel shallow or vain it might help more of us to come to terms with it and not be so vulnerable to exploitation by the various industries promising to reverse these changes.

There's something about the mirror in my bedroom. I look great when I see myself in that, whereas in every other mirror I seem to look like shit (or a close approximation to that). Therefore, I just look at myself in the mirror in my bedroom!

Try 60.....where did my fricking neck go?

I am a Facialist/Skincare professional/Esthetician.

As we age, and especially as we go through menopause the fibroblasts in our dermis (the middle layer of skin under the epidermis) slow down the production of elastin and collagen which keep skin plump and robust. The skin cells in our epidermis also slow down their cycle from creation to the surface of the skin from 28 days as a teen/young adult, to up to 72 days as an older adult.

We are also losing bone from our facial bones and the fat pads on our face fall. Elastosis (lack of elasticity) kicks in and the skin starts to sag from the face (if you can see creases where your face meets your ear you have elastosis). As our neck has very delicate skin and not much muscle or fat, it usually starts to show our age quicker than our face.

This is all part of normal aging and having mature skin.

If you haven't protected your skin from the sun with SPF since a teen you are also going to start showing not just the superficial fine lines of your 30s but the deeper lines of 50s+. If you smoke this will show up sooner.

You can do many things to help your skin, but you can't reverse decades of sun damage and neglect of your skin and body without more invasive procedures.

The good news is you can improve the appearance and texture of your skin a lot if you are willing to invest some time and money and make lifestyle changes.

Celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez only look fabulous in their 50s due to excellent skincare and lots of constant procedures to keep the signs of aging at bay.

Of course genetics and lifestyle also play a huge role in how we age.

@tallowspa I don't think you or or your friend are shallow and vain. Aging is hard. But what is the alternative? I try to focus on what I can do rather than what I look like. Some days are better than others.

👏🏻 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Cannot applaud this post enough

@DelightfulDungeon Go on spill the beans on what you recommend! Also I hope your username isn't a reference to how painful one is likely to find your treatments!

I'm really not trying to shame you (or your friend); just to get you to realise that you are only thinking this way because you have been conditioned to by a society that is totally phallocentric and misogynist, and to exhort you not to buy into it and let it spoil a moment of your pleasure in life.