What does it mean to “age gracefully?” Oscar-winning Julianne Moore thinks it implies that there’s a right and a wrong way to age, and that, she says, is a “totally sexist” problem.
Fuck “aging gracefully!”
“There’s so much judgement inherent in the term ‘aging gracefully,'” Moore, 60, told As If magazine. “Is there an ungraceful way to age? We don’t have an option of course. No one has an option about aging, so it’s not a positive or a negative thing, it just is.”
How often do you hear about a man “aging gracefully”? A man’s age is hardly commented upon; his sexiness and appeal are taken for granted until, apparently, the day he starts drooling.
“It’s part of the human condition,” Moore continued, “so why are we always talking about it as if it is something that we have control over?”
Read More: The Secret of Aging Well Is In Your Attitude
Age Gracefully Meaning: The Lexicon of Women and Aging
Moore is not the first woman to condemn the idea of “aging gracefully.” At our Out Loud event in New York in 2019, Linda Wells, the founding editor of Allure, said she hated the term. “The language fails us. Fuck aging gracefully,” Wells said. “My feeling is that the future has to hold a lot of ways of aging, and we should be able to figure out our own version.”
We categorically denounce the phrase “for your age.”
Others who have spoken out about the lexicon around aging are Julia Roberts and Jennifer Aniston, who said this: “I feel physically incredible. So it’s weird that it’s all of a sudden getting telegraphed in a way that’s like, ‘You look amazing for your age.’ I think we need to establish some etiquette around that dialogue and verbiage.”
We totally agree. We categorically denounce the phrase “for your age.” Actually, we created a game for an event where you could throw darts at a target that says, “Any sentence that ends with `for your age.'” A lot of women got to vent their frustration with that wording by riddling it with darts.
That made us wonder if Age Boldly, our tag line, is in anyway judgmental. We hope not. We believe aging boldly has nothing to do with how you look and everything to do with an attitude of embracing your age, not hiding it or feeling your best years are behind you. We do have control of that. What do you think?
Read More: A 92-Year-Old Filmmaker’s 5 Secrets to a Long and Fascinating Life
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