Can we just let women age in peace?

My thoughts on a headline that made me angry this week.

I innocently checked my phone one day this week and was confronted by this headline from The Telegraph:

How does Helena Christensen look this good at 52?

There are a few questions I want to ask here, the details of which I will go into in this post:

• Why are we (as a society) still publishing headlines solely about how a woman looks?

• Has a similar headline about a man ever been published?

• Why are we so surprised that a woman could look good at 52 that we have to write an entire news article about it?

• Is looking young the only way for a woman over 50 to be considered attractive?

Not only did The Telegraph choose to publish this article, some editor (whether at Apple news or the Telegraph, I’m not sure) decided that this was the article that should be pushed into people’s phones as a notification that day.

Normally, I wouldn’t engage with this type of content (why reward publications for reductive articles). But, as I have decided to write about it, I thought I should read the article. It is important to note, however, that no matter what the content of the article is, this headline pushes a harmful narrative. And, as many people only read the headlines of news pieces, their content alone should be regarded as significant.

I learnt from reading the article that Helena Christensen is in fact a supermodel. Granted, her looks are her career. She literally has no choice other than to look good, or she will be out of a job. But my point still stands: there must be more to her than this. And I don't think that supermodels are any less worthy of having headlines written about them than people in any other career. But I think that we should focus not on only how she looks, but on who she is within her career, and what she has achieved.

I also learnt that the inspiration for the article came from a photo that Christensen posted on her Instagram, exploring the Danish snow in a bikini. Perhaps this is also in part a symptom of Instagram culture: our image-based culture is fuelled by the image-based platform, especially in regards to female celebrities. But there were still better headlines to be made than this. Perhaps the article could have been an exploration of the trend of wild swimming and its health benefits. Helena Christensen can post as many Instagram photos of herself in a bikini as she likes, but we have to move away from the narrative that reduces women to their bodies.

By asking how a woman still looks good at 52, and expressing surprise that a woman does look good at 52, The Telegraph suggests that this is a rare accomplishment, that, by default, being 52 makes a woman unattractive. Why should we have to make headlines about this? Can a woman looking good at 52 not be an unsurprising, run-of-the-mill occurrence? It perpetuates a harmful culture which presents ageing as ugly, and youth as the only standard of beauty to aspire to.

This harmful benchmark for female attractiveness places value on something that no one has forever. But beauty is so much more than this. It comes from within, firstly, but it can also be manifested in the lines on your face: they represent the laughs you have had with friends, the trauma that has made you stronger – the experiences and your time on earth which have made you who you are today.

This ageism contributes to a culture in which women are shamed for ageing, where they become invisible, and, in public-facing careers such as acting or modelling, unemployable after they reach a certain age. (Perhaps the article could have instead focused on how impressive it is for Christensen to still be a model at the age of 52, and the ageism she must have overcome to do this).

This culture is why the age gaps between men and women in films are concerning. Why are 20-something women cast to play the wives of 50-something men? Are there no 40- or 50-something women out there to satisfy these roles? If we continually see a 29-year-old woman in the role of a middle-aged mother in films, and only young women (or women that look young) modelling our clothes, we start to internalise the expectations that this creates. Men are allowed to age, are praised for doing so (see: the fetishisation of the 'silver fox'), while women become invisible.

It also perpetuates a misogyny which reduces women’s value to their looks. Before reading the article, I didn’t know who Helena Christensen was, and this headline told me nothing of substance. It reduces her to both her physical appearance and her age. It tells us nothing of who she is as a person, what she does, or what she has accomplished.

And something else is highlighted by all this: the toxicity of the female beauty industry. It is no wonder that women fork out thousands of pounds per year on face creams, miracle treatments and even cosmetic surgery when society approaches their appearance like this. Our deep-rooted insecurities are analysed and sold back to us, packaged into tubes and pots. So many of my friends, who are in their 20s, have expressed how terrified they are of ageing. This is heartbreaking. Ageing brings so many great things, but we are taught to only focus on what it takes away: our ‘attractiveness’ in a misogynistic society.

Society needs to stop treating women like they are ‘other’ as soon as they reach their 40s. If newspapers and magazines stopped running stories like this, that would be a start.

Sorry if this is ‘feminism gone mad’, but if we fail to pick apart language such as this, it becomes the basis for our experience of the world. And, as a woman who is inevitably going to age despite society’s wishes for me not to (or at least to become invisible while I do so) I would like to start undoing this culture. Imagine all the extra time we would have to pursue our ambitions and make the world a better place if we weren't forced every day to obsess over our (and other women's) appearance.