For those who were beautiful, how do you deal with age?

[pinkglitter12]

It happens to all of us I know. But how are some people so accepting and so graceful getting older?
Each time i look in the mirror something is lower than It was before.
This time its my my eyebrows. I waxed the ends so they no longer drag down my face but how do people fight this unbeatable battle and inevitable death?
How do people accept that they are no longer beautiful?

Personally, I am very happy that sleazy men have backed off and don't see me as prey and for that I am thankful to my aging face. I find aging empowering.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You may think you are losing your youthful beauty but you are perhaps gaining much more. Character, strength, elegance, poise and, yes a more mature beauty, focus on these things.

Take care of your skin, hair and nails still. Exercise moderately for health, strength and posture but nurture your intelligence and soul. That’s what pays real dividends in the end. Live with grace for yourself and others as much as you can. It can be hard sometimes. Wear clothes that you know suit you rather than clothes that are fashionable or suit others.

As Dahl said, ‘if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.’

Omg! Not another

"older women with wrinkles and sags are ugly"

thread?

Seriously....if the women out there who think this ^ REALLY believe it, please grow an intellect, philanthropy and a personality.

Your unwrinkled skin and firm triceps do NOT make you interesting, compassionate and good to know

It’s also helpful to remember that growing older sadly doesn’t happen to all of us - it’s a gift if we’re still here to enjoy it.

I'm 41 and still think I've got it!

I eat a clean diet, drink lots of water, sleep as much as perimenopause will allow (😵‍💫), and have worked out consistently for 23 years.

It helps to have some older ladies who you admire. I'm in a running club with a very pretty lady in her mid 60s, and I also watch a couple of 70 year old ladies on YouTube and they look amazing. They have wrinkles and grey hair, but are slim, fit and stylish, with pretty faces.

I’ve lost my looks but that’s because I stopped caring about how attractive I was to other people (used to be a bit too important to me). The only time I care about it now is on photos, I look awful (every photo looks like a mugshot 🤦‍♀️). I hate how easily I put on weight though, especially as I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted. I’m voluntarily (and permanently) single so there’s no longer outside pressure for me to look attractive. I spent decades making sure I looked good so I rather enjoy being meh about it now. (Although if I could click my fingers and be slim and pretty again I would, I just don’t want to work for it).

Interesting question.

Two pieces of advice:
Take up dancing
Get a spectacularly beautiful dog - something like an Afghan Hound, Saluki or a Borzoi then it will put your breathtaking beauty firmly in the shade so you will no longer worry about ageing.

Eagerly awaiting your next fascinating question 😏

At 41 I was still very attractive, roll on twenty years and that’s a thing of the past. I never thought I would go downhill but it happened (probably due to stress and major surgeries) and it’s just too much effort to get it back. Apparently once you hit sixty the aging process really accelerates, so unless you’re very focused it will get the better of you. It sounds like you will keep on top of it though.

I have a life! My eyebrows don't impinge on it significantly........

Botox isn't really ageing gracefully though, is it? It's artifice. And it's sad.

I don't care. It creeps up on you so gradually you have plenty of time to get used to it. If it happened overnight it would be a bit grim. I was fed up of my attractiveness being the only thing people noticed about me, especially men. Now people are attracted to me for me but I am invisible to men which bothers me not one bit. Occasionally I will find one interested in what I have to say but their attention wavers when a pretty woman walks by and they don't even try to hide it.
I find gay men much more interesting and have many gay male friends.
It's a relief to finally be a person and not an object.

I think people are responding to this with more than a little schadenfreude.

I am not beautiful but a good friend of mine is. Since we were in high school she has been complimented constantly, inevitably, on her beauty, by men and women. So much more attention, by the people around her and so of course her too, is focused on her looks than has been my life experience as normal looking person.

She's a lovely person generally.

She definitely finds aging harder than me. I can totally understand and have empathy, it must be surreal and disorienting when this baseline way of being is taken away from you. She is of course still beautiful and always will be, but society's focus is now on the twenty year old beauties, not the ones nearing forty.

OP I guess the answer is that simply it is something you can choose to accept with grace and find the joy in, or something you will feel bitter and disappointed about for the whole rest of your life. It's not my struggle so I don't pretend to understand but I do think you have a real choice to make here in terms of how you approach this, and it will be a matter of having enough self control over your mind to consistently reframe how you feel, until the reaction comes naturally or as naturally as possible.

You want to be a beautiful person, and a beautiful older person. Not an older person trying to look like a younger person.
Smile more, move more, have a positive attitude. Being funny and generally nice really helps.

I really think the best looking older people in my life are those without a face full of fillers (or even a small amount). People who have it done think we can never see it. We can, but we're too polite to say!

I know a conventionally very beautiful 27 year old who is already having botox. She'd be better focusing on her brain, career, health and general personality, not holding back an inevitable tide.

How old are you OP? I'm 59 for content. I've experienced real grief and real drama and trauma in my life and that also helps put aging in context.

Reading some of the comments from posters who believed themselves to be beautiful when they were young makes me think that ageing is the best thing that could have happened to them; it’s providing a much-needed and long-overdue dose of humility.

“Bars went quiet when I walked in.” Really?

Botox means I can see out of my right eye without the eyelid drooping down over it. It’s not sad at all, I’m bloody delighted.

I keep waiting for the day my vanity will loosen its grip on me - it hasn’t happened yet at pushing 50, and suspect it never will. My grandma was the same - still fretting about her looks till the day she died at 88.

I was very beautiful and honestly, can still turn a few heads now if I make the effort. I just got lucky, genetically speaking, so it wasn’t something I felt proud of, as I didn’t see I had anything to do with it - but I was aware of it. And I’m aware that it’s fading, and I find it hard. I’m trying to age gracefully, and I’m very aware that how I look is literally the least interesting thing about me, but still find myself looking in the mirror (or worse, at photos - I swear I used to be photogenic!) and wondering what the hell happened, and how much worse it’s going get.

My life is very full - I have a DH and DC I adore, a job I enjoy, friends, hobbies - and I try to be a good person -I volunteer, I donate blood, I try generally to be a kind and helpful person. But in spite of all this, I am finding the aging process hard. You might think this is shallow and silly, and you’re probably right. As I said earlier, I’m hoping one day I’ll grow up enough to stop caring!!

If you are fit healthy and have a good sense of humour and pretty much enjoying life, why does beauty matter??

I was - but never realised I was. Being overlarge and occasionally mistaken for a man didn't help. But old photos tell me I was. The mirror tells me what happened to mum is happening to me. Menopause has a lot to answer for.

I know lots of beautiful old people, don’t you OP? I’d rather be old than dead so I look at it that way.

I prefer it. Being good looking when I was younger just made me a target for predators. I like being invisible to men now.
I still dye my hair, wear makeup, get piercings and tattoos but more because I enjoy adorning myself.

As I’ve aged, being fit, active, and healthy have become my main focus. I also feel it is important to set an example to my (incredibly beautiful) daughter, that natural is better than Botox, fillers and dye.

Heads may no longer turn when I walk in a room, but I still feel as beautiful inside, and that is more important to me now. Back then, I didn’t feel beautiful inside.

I also think that women who embrace ageing with grace look more attractive than women desperately trying to look like 20 somethings. I can understand the societal pressures though, women are constantly bombarded with the message that our only value is our sexual attractiveness, above our brains, our motherhood, our humanity. It’s a hard message to fight.

A small amount of botox every 6 months, (crows feet, forehead and frown lines) along with a good retinol and skincare regime does wonders. Most importantly factor 50 on your face, neck and decolletage daily without fail, even if you are not leaving the house. Eat healthily, stay hydrated, buy a water filter off Amazon as it makes water taste 1000% better and encourages you to drink more. 10k steps per day and gym 4 times per week, incorporating weight training to combat muscle loss. You won't look 21 but all of the above makes a huge difference.

Keep your hair longer than shoulder length, the reason why so many 40-50 year olds looked 70 in the past was due to the short hair styles. Avoid skinny jeans and similar, they suit nobody and are incredibly dated. Not having kids also helps; 8 hours uninterrupted sleep per day throughout adult life must make a difference.

I’m still really pretty, a really pretty 56 year old.

The thing I struggle with most is how much I’m starting to look like my mother. She died 6 years ago and had me quite young, so I’m getting close to the age she died. I had a complicated relationship with her, not all fond memories so I struggle seeing bits of her in the mirror.

the shape of my hands the baggy skin on the back of them with liver spots

my saggy neck, which has give all wrinkly

my 11 lines

my jowels (where did they come from)

my stomach, my bum, my candles

the list goes on, I do catch a glimpse of myself in a shop window sometimes and have to do a double take, as I think it’s Mum.

I don’t think it matters if you were attractive or not. It’s the signs that you’re getting older and your body is changing. I’m 52 and I’ve aged so much more quickly in the last 10 years than I’ve ever noticed before. Rather than growing up (I can’t think of a better way to describe it, I’m now getting older and aging

I think truly beautiful people will always have that. I see beauty in every age.

But you’re putting so much into youth, why? I feel better in my mid 40s than any other time. We all age, we are all in it together. Everyone older will be even older, everyone our age is going through it at the same time, and the younger people are just behind us.
It also helps when you’ve lost people who died before their time, it helps you realise what is important.