To be shocked women still try to stop aging?

[jillyiam]

With alllll the progress we've made within the feminism movement, why is trying to look younger (neck aging, face-lifts, longer hair is 'youthful') still a thing.

Every being is aging right, why do women still carry the shame of it? Being told you look even three years younger is actually intended and received as a compliment.

If we all collectively shun this shit, the industry that forces us to buy its crap, we'll be so much better off. Mentally, financially everything really.

I’ve never had Botox or any work done but I can say as someone self employed who has been both big and less arsed about my appearance and slimmer and putting more effort in that the latter means I get more respect and more money. It’s not right. I’m still the same person regardless of how I look. But people assume I’m more competent if I look younger/slimmer.

What do you do for a living?

It works better if you change sexualisation to objectification.

@Worldgonecrazy Honestly I really couldn't care less what men in general think of me.
Ugh the vast majority of men my age and older give me the absolute ick.
Thanks Menopause-the rose tinted glasses are off and men in general fall far short in every way.

I do love my DH but if he left or died I would never ever live with another man again.
Luckily I worked hard and have inherited so am able to live a nice life alone if it came to it.
I would say 95% of my friends feel the same

This whole centering ones life around men to the extent you would chop your face up

God no!

I’m mid 50s. Never had any “work”, wash my face with soap and moisturise with Nivea. SPF year round. I’m often told I look much younger than I am. Growing up, I was always “the clever one” and DSis was always “the pretty one”, and I have never tied up my self esteem with my looks, not that I have ever thought much of them anyway. I am inclined to agree with David Bowie:

Great discussion, I've learned so much useful stuff!

So you’re only free from the patriarchy if it’s a choice that other women agree with? That doesn’t seem like freedom.

The OP admitted earlier in the thread that they feel they can't 'compete' with women who use Botox, etc. That's where the real issue lies.

No. You're only free from the patriarchy (in terms of your choices) if they are made without any regard for its influence. Which given it surrounds us, is nigh on impossible. Some women make choices in direct opposition to those they believe serve the patriarchy, others consciously or subconsciously make choices that serve it.
Whether a choice serves the patriarchy or not is usually a matter of fact, not of opinion, so whether other women agree with your choice or not is irrelevant to any objective benefit to the patriarchy.
Making choices other women agree with is also irrelevant to your freedom from the patriarchy. Though if you make choices aimed to free yourself, feminists will sometimes feel they are the better choices.

No, you’re either free to do what you choose or not, assuming women make choices because of what men think is as bad as saying women shouldn’t vote as their tiny little brains can’t handle it… I assume that women have critical thinking and can assess their own decisions for what is right for them based on all available information.

Im not sure that 'still' comes into it, we're all aging for the first time and it is difficult to accept.

Its not about making choices based on what men think, it's about choices that serve the patriarchy.
I do anti aging stuff. I really don't do it because I care what men think, their opinions don't interest me. I do it because I'm exercising my choice to look a way that pleases me. However, by applying my own critical thinking to my choices, I can see that by colluding with the anti aging industry, I'm colluding with the idea that women looking older is inferior to women looking younger.
This serves the patriarchy because it reinforces the idea that women's importance lies in their looks and youth, when they are most desirable to men for sex and having children; and leads to older women being sidelined, ignored and invisible, while their same age males continue to be seen and heard.
I can know this, yet do anti aging anyway, because I am free to choose, and not every choice I make is a feminist one. Nor does any other woman's need to be.

I agree! Not every choice is a feminist one. Feminism is considered an ideology in the sense that it’s a framework of ideas and principles aimed at challenging patriarchy and addressing gender inequality. That doesn’t mean everyone relates to it in exactly the same way, because there are lots of different strands and interpretations. For me, I tend to frame it most strongly around choice, but I can see how your perspective sits within the broader picture too.

Absolutely. These threads that try to hold women to account for choices they make within a context they didn't create, and are navigating the best they can, never sit right with me. It serves only to divert attention from the underlying issues for which we are not responsible. It is also alienating because it holds women to another set of high standards, and makes perfect the enemy of good.