Ageing: Hot or Not
A mini essay on beauty
2023 is a new year, which means new complaints and the same horrendous infrastructures ruining our lives. For me, it’s been a few weeks of incessant beauty discourse on my FYP and Twitter TL—you know, the ones where people argue over if your body is worth existing in.
My understanding of beauty has always been elusive. As I've mentioned in my articles about shrinking myself and body neutrality, I've grown up in a world where I've always been seen as lesser than others due to my fluctuating weight—which never entered the realm of skinny. As a result, my interactions with other people shifted from comments of puppy fat to outward mockery and pity, as if I didn't have a mirror to know what I looked like.
Whenever one talks about the experience of not being desirable, it is often whittled down to the typical woes of once being a teen and not being liked. My treatment wasn't that—instead, I was treated as subhuman. The fear of being mocked at lunch prevented me from eating to the point of a debilitating eating disorder. My daily goal was never to appear out of place, sweat, breathe loudly, walk slowly or sit in a natural posture without sucking in. All for fear of receiving taunts that confirmed my appearance. Unfortunately, this shared experience of being plus-sized sticks with you into adulthood no matter how much therapy you put yourself through because, as we know it, the world has not radically become less obsessed with beauty as a concept.
Some have said feminism is currently in its flop era (myself included). Right now, we're peddling anti-ageing straws to teenagers via social media apps and telling young women that they must have botox at 21 to avoid looking their age at 30. They must try pilates if their hips don't look right, plaster their mouths shut at night if they don't want to breathe funny or shave down their teeth to get a million-dollar smile.
Clean girl, girl boss, doe-eyed, siren, coquette, red scare — you are meant to be everything and yet nothing. Even within non-conforming sub-identities, you still fall into the trap of desirability.
The older I get, the more exhausted I become with the world. This seems like a natural progression, I suppose, but I often wonder how much of this exhaustion comes from the fact I’m repeatedly being told how much I’m meant to hate myself. Strangely enough, it feels worse now than it did at 14. When I was 14, I wasn't fully aware of the depths of beauty's roots. The only reason I thought people were mean to me was their cruelty.
By the time I am 30, I don't want to hate myself simply because the algorithm says I have wide eyes or droopy ears. My crooked teeth do not need to be fixed but should be taken care of lovingly as a part of my body. I want my experience of physical movement to be joyful and not a punishment for refusing to tear at my flesh with scissors.
I can’t wait to age because it means I get to look like my mother. I look forward to the day I have the same crinkles beneath her eyes. Her body and mine exist to keep us alive, so we can love people and experience life for as little as we have it.
In 2023 I want to hate myself less and love my body much more.
I hope you all do the same.
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This newsletter is a gift. I won't overthink my response. I entered this new year with these thoughts. I thought I’d never share them publicly because I wasn't interested in being debated, but I had to respond to this. I am thin and have never struggled with weight gain, but I know the violence that comes with not being seen as desirable because I am dark-skinned, a young mother, and refuse to ascribe to specific beauty standards. When I date, I oscillate between resenting the performance of beauty to get a match while rejecting all of it because it keeps me questioning my selfhood. I finally deleted the apps. When I turned 30 in May, one thing was sure: I didn't want to be beautiful. It is too laborious, and the rules continue to change, so it is fruitless. As you said, there are more important things: to love, grow older, and inherit the likeness of the women in our families and to nurture.
Thank you for sharing it. I will share it with more people! ❤️
I cannot wait to get gray hair, it’s gonna look so cool!