Impossible Expectations of Beauty in the Face of Aging
When an arguably beautiful person is "sometimes insecure about aging"
Welcome back to Age Wise, exploring the science of improving physical health and mental wellness at every stage of life. This week, some celebrity gossip (?!).
I don’t spend much time following celebrities or the gossip around them, but a Google alert set to keep me apprised of new research and popular stories about “aging” turned up an item this week that makes me sad. It might seem benign at first glance, but I’ll explain below.
The actress Jennifer Love Hewitt posted what appears to be a somewhat or perhaps entirely makeup-free selfie on Instagram with these words:
“Woke up at 4am and was 44! I am deeply grateful, blessed, happy, sometimes insecure about aging, a mom of three incredible babies, married to the most handsome and awesome man, and really excited to see what this year has for us. I feel magic in the air and I love magic.”
Life sounds wonderful for Hewitt. Good for her. Yet she’s “sometimes insecure about aging,” a seemingly odd line to toss into a list of stuff that’s going great. It makes me sad because a) aging is freaking awesome if you let it be and b) it’s gonna happen whether you worry about it or not. But what really saddens me is that our culture makes so many people insecure about aging (some think of it as a dirty word, as I noted week before last), and that insecurity often revolves around wrinkles and other stuff we see in the mirror that makes us feel … what?
I’ll leave that to you to answer for yourself.
I’d rather spend my time looking for the positives, as Hewitt mostly did, and engaging in things that will help me stay as young as possible in body and mind, wrinkles be damned. That in mind, I wrote on Medium today about new research on how exercise throughout many stages of life is linked to stronger brain power and lower risk of dementia later on.
The findings, published this week in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, suggest that “being physically active at any time in adulthood, even if participating as little as once per month, is linked with higher cognition,” the scientist conclude. However, they add: Higher cognition was most strongly linked with cumulative physical activity and high levels of it at all stages in life.
If you’re sitting on the couch (or in front of the mirror) today, you might take a few minutes to give it a read—it just might motivate you to move.
The full article: Does it Matter When in Life You Start Exercising?
Take care of yourself, now… and again.
—Rob
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