Realised I'm old and ugly

[Ilovemeggy38]

I have just seen some
photos of me taken on a night out, I had taken lots of care to look my best.
I'm 55 thought I looked okay, was actually quite happy as I have lost weight, got on hrt, starting taking vitamins and collagen.
But, those pictures 😞
I have the dreaded marrionette lines, I look miserable! And I'm not!
My hair looks thin and straggly, I have shoulder length hair and my Gosh the picture just shows my scalp at the front and so, so thin😞
I have strange fat deposits over my eyes which makes my eyes look small.
My neck has weird fat deposits which make it look strange.
I have tried to say it's just a bad picture but looking back over recent photos I can see I have aged badly.
I have just sat down with the picture and cried.
I feel so ugly, so removed from what I actually thought I looked like.
I'm really upset as my looks, my appearance is important to me for my own self worth.
I just look about ten years older, not even that, I look unhealthy in the pictures, really not what I see in the mirror.
My OH took the pictures on his iPhone, it is definitely high Res so every line, fault, has shown up but that's me in real life I suppose.

But that could be true. I have never been attractive and never will. But my friend always has been. People like this are just stating a fact. It’s not self-absorbed. Especially as they are probably just stating it online and would never say it in real life.

Attractive people will have had positive feedback about their looks all their lives. It would be disingenuous for them not to realise that they are attractive. Don’t be mean.

Has anyone used Regaine for thinning hair? I am in my fifties and wouldn’t mind a try!

I took a photo of a friend and thought she looked so lovely in it, I had it printed on a mug to give to her. She hated it and thought the photo was terrible! My point is that other people don't see you the way you see yourself. I bet your friends and family think you look lovely.

Ah, OP, I totally get it. When I was 50 I looked great (even if I do say so myself) and 4 years later I look awful. I’ve gained weight, I look really old and my hair always looks crappy. I’ve decided that rather than just accepting it I am going to do something about the things I can change.

If it’s any consolation DS took a candid photo of me recently and I looked like I’d scare children and then a friend posted an equally candid photo of me on instagram and I actually looked okay so angles and lighting to make a lot of difference.

I absolutely hate my photo being taken...I look horrendous....I swear I look so much better in the mirror, at least I hope I do. I die a little inside when someone suggests a photo...

I'm not having this OP!!
Ugliness is an ugly soul and I'm guessing you are a million miles from that!
And why feel old until you're well into your 80's if you're still nimble? Even then why feel it if you've still got the moves like Jagger?
Sounds like you had a fabulous night and only felt like that after seeing the picture, right? It's just a picture and won't capture the essence of your personality
My aging vibes are Judi Dench, there is a woman who loves her family, loves her life and knows how to have fun.
Men don't go around saying they feel ugly and old so why should we? Your personality and zest for life will draw people in and if someone judges you because you have a laughter line then they can jog their judgemental views somewhere else
Age with confidence and zest, looks fade for everyone!

Have you tried BIOTIN for your hair? Just a supplement you can buy online. Definitely helped me when mine was thinning during menopause, would definitely recommend

Recently my company re took all our photos for the security badges. Gone our youthful gaze from many years ago. Hello reality.
Mine was 18 years old!

Sometimes when out and about I’ll catch a reflection of myself and think ‘Who the fuck is that?’

Husbands take the worst photos!! Every.Time. But seriously, take some selfies and honestly you will see it's just a really bad photo.

Oh OP, I totally get where you’re coming from. I’m nearly 55 and I just don’t recognise the person I see in the mirror any more. It comes to us all, but that doesn’t make it easy.

I see lots of great advice already, but what has worked very well for me is to focus more on what I can do, rather than what I look like. For me, it’s progress I can make in the gym. Working on lifting weights has increased my confidence and also made me feel more in control of my life as I get older. I may not look younger, but I’m stronger than. I have ever been in my younger years. It’s been a game changer for me.

Same age same feelings.
I am not going to say I used to be attractive, because that would make me self-absorbed.
But I did used to have lovely hair until recently. Clear skin.
I actually tried Botox and fillers in 2000 - you had to go to London then. I worked around the industry, God knows why I had just turned 30. Developed a lump inside my mouth… it’s still there. Never again.
I now have…
Hair like a washed out Brillo pad.
A fucking beard.
A turn in my eye that my mum also had. So now I’m fucking gozzy.
Rosacea.
Crevices everywhere. Face. Neck. Thighs.
A big rubber ring around my middle that would save me in a Titanic situation.
I look like a hobbit.
However… a friend of mine died in her sleep recently. An adorable person. Seeing her friends and family at that funeral, and knowing she’d gone, I saw the alternative.
So I may look like a gargoyle, I could work as a Miriam Margolyes lookalike if I put my mind to it, but I am here and still going.
For interest: my best friend is a real beauty. I saw her recently (we met aged 10) she feels the same as me. She pointed out her flaws, which I could technically see, but all I really saw was my lovely friend. Same big blue eyes, same big smile.
Love softens edges that no filter can.

I only learnt what ‘marionette lines’ are on a thread here last week and still can’t see what the big deal is - that’s just how faces are, madness that it’s been given this name and treated like it’s a terrible thing to get unhappy about. If your self worth is tied up with looks so much - which i understand given how shallow and youth obsessed the world can be - then it’s better to take this as a good signal to start changing that thinking because we’re aging and there’s nothing that will stop that, so time to start appreciating yourself in other ways. Think how much of our youth we wasted hating how we looked in needless ways, and also think how rarely we think of others as looking old and ugly. We see people for their qualities and love who we love regardless. Try to find some more love for yourself as you get older. Someone told me I have a kind face and I felt glad about that as it can last me till I shuffle off. Course I still have my moments and don’t love gazing at myself in photos, but I think how my mum or granny looked and know that’s coming and that’s okay. It’s how I’m meant to look.

"With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come" - Merchant of Venice

I was shocked initially when I realised I was old and ugly, but then I realised there's freedom in it for women. No longer an object of the male gaze, no longer in the losing competition for beauty and youth, I was free to be invisible, to please myself, to do and say what I wanted, to eat junk food in public, to travel, to blend in with the crowd without the crippling self-consciousness I had as a young woman.

Plato has Socrates argue that losing one's looks is a blessing because an older person can focus on experiencing the beauty, feeling and strength of which one's mind and soul are capable.

Let go of your self-consciousness and allow your true self to live freely my friend. It's great!!

OP I felt like this in my 40s as I was so exhausted from parenting a disabled child. I invested in some trention, the odd microdermobrasian and some glass facials and it's taken years off me. These can be quite pricey so contact your local college beauty salon.

i had the worst experience taking one of those video selfies for proving your identity. The face that looked back at me in my phone was a wizened old hag with a turkey neck. Nothing like the person who I see on Zoom regularly or in the pics DH takes!
I wear makeup for special occasions but there’s no way I’m having any interventions.

Oh sweetheart….. I truly feel your pain.

I’m 56 and what I imagine in my brain how I look like compared to what photos show is depressingly different.

Like you, I always have pride in my appearance, applying make up when I go out, looking after my hair, I’ve just lost a ton of weight, so after 10 years I’ve feel I’ve got a bit of my mojo back.

However, the stress of running my business for the last 10 years, my DS who was a late baby is now a teenager, an elderly demanding mum have taken their toll.
Not to mention, losing a lot of weight at this age can play havoc with your face. My once prized high cheekbones now are more Cruella D’Ville then Kate Moss … and the saggy marionette lines make me look like Deputy Dog.
plus I have to dye my thinning hair ever month otherwise I look like Louis Walsh… and no one wants that.
my once plump lips are becoming thin and mean and when I catch a glance of myself in a mirror I look like I’m eternally dissatisfied!!

it’s shit…. Truly shit. At the age when you get your head together.. your body and face fall apart…

I tried fillers a few years back and tbh, I wasn’t that impressed with the results, mainly I think because it was sticking plaster over what was the real issue of my weight… but it might help I guess, but a lot of money for a maybe.

but regardless of all the moaning Minnie stuff I’ve just spouted, my kids and partner say I look fab… so really I have to try and believe them and stop tearing myself apart.

I really suspect you don’t look anywhere as bad as you think… we tend to look at ourselves and see the negative rather than the positives… we’re in our 50’s, we have the menopause to contend with, but tbh.. I’m still gonna slay with my head up…. Hanging jowls or not !!!

Sending middle aged hugs to you x x

Without wanting to write off your feelings I think we have to remember that ageing is a privilege that too many people don’t get.
I have stage 4 cancer. I’m 57 and look nothing like I did before I hit 50 and my saggy face in the mirror frequently comes as a bit of a shock but I would be happy whatever I look like with as many lines, jowls, bags as possible if I can just live into old age.
My lovely mum died aged 41. The photos I have of her show her very beautiful with a youthful face and figure. I’m sure she would have preferred to end up old and saggy too.
Everything is relative.

I agree… sometimes being invisible is a gift.

its nice not to have to say to a leering bloke ‘what you looking at’ because I was a young mouthy female … to then receive a tirade of insults.

being ignored and invisible is actually refreshing and liberating.

❤️

You are beautiful, OP.

You remind me of a conversation I had with my mum when she was alive and she was fretting about her looks fading. I just stared at her in utter disbelief because to me she was the most beautiful person I had ever met,

Getting old is a privilege and we all have days where we avoid the mirrors/cameras at all costs. But we all also have good days when we realise it’s not that bad.

I’ve really enjoyed this thread, thank you.

Photos are a static snapshot and dont really look like the person they are of. They dont capture the way you move, smile or hold yourself or how light and shadows work on your face irl. All of these are the reason why you look how you look irl. Photos are a flat image of something that is 3D.

If you look at photos of the same building, some will make the building look better than others, some will give you different emotions. Some might not even look like the same building. Or on selling sites where people say "It's more blue/shiner/less creased irl". If a camera can't show something as bland as a building or jumper properly, how will it show a human being properly?

Or when people meet someone famous and they say "they are prettier irl" or "the photos don't show how blue their eyes are" etc.

There is this phenomenon whereby light can reflect strangely on objects in photos. Sorry for the link to The Sun but I remember reading this years ago and tgis link came up first https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/3655060/bizarre-optical-illusion-wind-turbine-blade-baffled/ this shows how that photos don't show what we see irl.

Someone took a photo of me last week. I know I looked ok on the day. In the photo I most definitely did not! Some of it was true (eg I didn't realise how badly fitted my top was and my hair colour is eek!) but some of it wasn't eg I was just about to laugh so I had little squinty eyes, a double chin, t-rex arms... a second later and I would have looked completely different.

I've accepted I'm not photogenic but I also know that photos aren't really representative of me. Unless they make me look pretty. Then they definitely look like me and I will use that photo for everything, ever. 🤣

I remember my grandmothers feeling like this, and being really surprised because I thought they were beautiful. Sure, they were old, but they were beautiful old women. It seemed like they could only see the old. I’m trying to hold onto this as I’m now nearly as old as they were then.

Cameras can be very harsh. It’s ok to feel shocked at a bad photo but I think try not to dwell on it. You have good health, you are eating well, losing a bit of weight, taking after yourself with HRT and vitamins and you have a social life. I was feeling old recently and then I went to a funeral of a 49yr old and it put things into perspective somewhat. Life is for living and screw the dodgy photos!

You really need to take some - for your grandchildren. Imagine how when they grow up they have no photos of you with them.

Have them taken - just don’t look at them if you don’t want to.

I know how you feel, OP, I'm aging badly too and I also find it upsetting at times and that shock of seeing yourself in a photo is horrible. It seems some of us just take more of a battering.

We're still the same people, though, in fact we're better than we ever were - we're stronger and wiser. No-one asked you on the night out so you'll look good, they asked you because they like your company.

It's natural to feel like this because 'society' (ahem patriarchy) places such importance on youth and beuaty, but we're not washed up just because we're not young any more and a bad photo doesn't make you old or ugly.