Adulting - Let's Talk About... Ageing

Episode Date: November 24, 2024

Hello and welcome to Adulting, and the nineteenth episode of Let’s Talk About… a broadening of Adulting... where that was about all of the things we never got taught in school, this is almost like seminars on life; where my audience (that's you!), get to chat anonymously about things they couldn't necessarily discuss over lunch with their friends, or feel like they don't have anyone to talk to about whatever it may be.  To get involved, follow me on Instagram @oenone, where every Tuesday we vote on a topic and every Wednesday we dig deep. Let’s Talk About… Ageing. The submission read ‘Ageing and how scary it is to watch your body change.’ You all had a lot to say on this so let’s dive right in. I hope you enjoy  as always, please do rate, review and subscribe!  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guarantee requires play by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded. Or 11 p.m. Eastern. Restrictions apply. See full terms at canada.casino.fandu.com. Please play responsibly. Hello and welcome to Adulting and the 19th episode of Let's Talk About. A broadening of adulting where that was about all of the things we never got taught in school. This is almost like Seminars on Life where my audience, that's you, get to chat anonymously about things you can't necessarily discuss over lunch with your friends, or feel like maybe you don't have anyone to talk to

about whatever it may be. To get involved, follow me on Instagram at Anoni, where every Tuesday we vote on a topic, and every Wednesday we dig deep. Let's talk about ageing. The submission read, ageing and how scary it is to watch your body change. You all had a lot to say on this, so let's dive right in. I hope you enjoy, as always, and please do rate, review and follow the show. Some messages. About to turn 30, I'm freaking out about it. It's fucking terrifying and had always felt like someone else's problem until now. As a society, we are horrified of signs of aging, yet they are inevitable. It's both freeing and terrifying to feel yourself becoming less visible in society. On the one hand, I'm excited to get older because the more time passes, just turned 30,

the more confident in myself I am and the less fucks I give. But as a woman, I'm terrified of my body changing and I already see a difference versus when I was 20 and I'm scared of wrinkles, cellulite, saggy skin, etc. I know it's superficial but I've been conditioned to see my body as a huge part of my worth as a woman. This. It feels uncomfortable to acknowledge but I've definitely noticed that I feel really insecure about not having my youth as something going for me. When you're in your early 20s, your life and potential feel limitless. Now that I'm approaching 30, I feel as though I don't have this as a security blanket to fall back on. Saying this sounds ridiculous because

30 is not old, but society makes me feel like a shriveled, useless prune. I don't know if this will make any sense, but the biggest for me is that a significant part of your identity is changing. For the whole life that you've known, you've always been a young person and your actions and feelings match that, e.g. being more reckless, doing activities associated with young people. Then it feels like suddenly, but obviously it is gradual. That's no longer part of your identity. I don't know. I find it hard to explain, but I'll be 30 soon and just finding it a bit of an identity crisis. I wanted to cut this podcast up a little bit into sections. The first section being this, which is people on the precipice of turning 30 or people who have just turned 30 having this

identity crisis, which I can completely relate to, which frustrates me because I promised myself that I wouldn't feel this way, that 30 is just a number. How can I change so much between a day of being 29 and turning 30? And I felt quite comfortable with it when I first turned 30. And then actually in my 30th year, I have been having this sort of identity crisis. I think it's exacerbated by the fact that I am single as well. And it's really thrown into relief just how much society does view younger women as more valuable. It's not entirely true in lots of ways, and it's exacerbated in certain areas. But there is a truth to to it women are valued when they're younger more

often by men often in dating often in the media and entertainment and certain jobs it skews towards younger women more and when you're young one of you made such a good point is we everyone gets that period of their youth and when you have it it feels endless it's like this is my identity but it's not of course at some point you're going to get older hopefully it's like that saying youth is wasted on the young so when that does change it's like oh but i'm not positioning myself as this suddenly entirely different person but in the views of society and in the eyes of certain people i am now in a different category it's like moving up categories and x factor I still can't believe that the over 25s was old but anyway story for another day I've even noticed it on like dating apps I definitely

feel that I get less engagement for want of a better word because I'm 30 than when I did the last time I was single where I was like 28. And I do believe that is because people have their age range settings to under 30, because this is the idea that women are spoiled when they get past 30. It's so stupid, just on a really superficial level. I think that all of my friends have gotten more beautiful as they've gotten older, in a really undeniable way. And I find it fascinating that it really is the youth thing that is the most important. Sometimes it's not even about what people look like. I think it's proximity to purity, which comes back down to sort of quite religious undertones

and women being more malleable and more submissive I think that is seen even if not directly even if it's not conscious there is something about the way that youth for a woman it's not just about them being more supple or less wrinkly because I have to be honest loads of my friends don't really look they could look 20 but there's something it's not even in our skin or in the way that our body looks it's kind of in the way that you evolve you just look older even if it's not even in our skin or in the way that our body looks. It's kind of in the way that you evolve. You just look older, even if it's not through signs of aging. And with that comes more confidence, more assurance, more sense of self, more lived experience. And that, I think, is the thing that is devalued because power in women means sometimes, I guess, especially in a patriarchal, heteronormative setting, that men feel less powerful. And I guess you become slightly

more hardened. Maybe you become a bit more cynical. And that is seen as unattractive. I often think it's not really about what you look like but because this is so true even though I hate I hate talking about this like this because I don't want to give it power and I don't want to give it truth because it doesn't have to be like this and so many people don't think like this but if we're really zooming out we cannot deny the fact that disproportionately it is younger women that are valued more in society and men conversely can be and we spoke about this actually in everything is content's recent episode where we spoke about the sexiest man of the year award the sexiest man of the year can be a man in his 70s in his 80s

we do not value men on attractiveness in the same way that we do as women it's like you automatically get these extra points when you're in your 20s and then you automatically lose them when you move into your 30s. And I think what's really complicated is that in order to readdress this, we try to find ways to capture our youth. And so we become so preoccupied

and we'll come onto this in a bit, but with ideas of tweakments or halting signs of aging and our energy comes into us trying to arrest ourselves at a certain point to freeze ourselves in time so that we are still feeling like we're good enough rather than leaning into the positives of aging the benefits of aging the fact that you get to know yourself better the fact that you feel more confident life feels a bit easier because you understand things a bit more it might not be easier in the literal sense but hopefully you've learned coping mechanisms hopefully you've worked through some issues hopefully you're figuring out a way to live this life in a way that you find beneficial

and fruitful and joyous and all of those things are the joys of aging and it's just so unfair that as women we get made to feel like somehow we failed because we've just carried on living and reached the point, which is for some people over the hill. And what I thought was really interesting in this conversation was it was people, as I said at the beginning, that were coming up to 30 or just reached 30 or in their late 20s that are feeling this fear and this weight the most. And then something seems to happen where once you move away from your 20s, once you settle into the fact that you are in your 30s, that you're in this new period, that's when this joy comes in. And that's when I guess you finally get to let go of all of the external pressures, which are telling you that you're not good enough, or that you somehow diminished, or that somehow you're expiring. So I wanted to read some messages which echo this sentiment. Although your body changes, it's normal to settle into your skin

and the benefit of age is often increased confidence, less reliance on reassurance of others, a growing mind, better self-understanding, learning to process your shit, growing your friendships and deepening relationships, knowing yourself much, much much better I'd take a saggy tit or two for that I think this is so perfect because that's exactly it in your 20s and especially in your teenagers as well we're so reliant on outsourcing our sense of self and our confidence on other people whether it be through romantic relationships whether it be through friendships we're just constantly seeking out validation to make sense of who we are, because it does feel like as women, we're constantly being watched. One of the messages earlier was about how as you get older, you do start to feel like

you're less visible within society. And that initially, during that transition period from being a young, bright thing to being a woman can be scary. And once you lean into that it's like okay actually I don't need to look around and ask other people to tell me that I'm great or to be validated because I look a certain way I actually can get that from myself another message read I actually love it 32 I'm the strongest most confident I've been not the skinniest or the lightest I always mourn how I look to my early 20s. I'm 30 now, but if I actually think about it, was having less lines, being naturally slim, really the be-all and end-all? I know deep down it wasn't, but we seem to kid ourselves if we

look youthful and reject aging, we'll be happier. Whilst being 30 is certainly harder than being 22, I'm much happier with my life and who I am as a person so I don't think getting and looking older changes those things but I and everyone else have to constantly fight against the systems that tell us otherwise and it's a really hard battle and it requires a level of self-awareness I do not always have that's exactly it I think that once you've been in that frame of mind for a bit also this is just so wild because obviously I really don't think anyone's looking that different at 30. It is just such a psychological mindfuck because of the way that society is and like all the movies we watch when you're younger. It makes me so sad that people are mourning how they looked.

What would we say to a nine-year-old who was sad about no longer looking like they did when they were five? We tell them it's okay because now they're big girls and they can do X, Y and Z. We tell them they're still beautiful. They're big girls and they can do x y and z we tell them they're still beautiful they're just stronger and beautiful in a new way and what about all that life they live between being 20s and 30s all the experiences their bodies carried them through it's a wrinkle for years of feeling joy happiness laughter sadness and so much more is that really a bad trade-off we look a certain way in our 20s because we didn't have much life in our lives we shouldn't be mourning the loss of something that gave us so much i know this isn't coherent

but it just made me sad because it's such bullshit it was very coherent and wasn't bullshit at all i totally agree it's just a myth basically it's a myth that we've been sold in order to obey the laws of submission to the patriarchal views on how women should look and how women should behave. And even though society has evolved so far, these threads, these underlying threads still exist and we're still so beholden to them. And the beauty industry is a billion dollar industry. And the tricky side of this is that obviously pretty privilege is real. And if you adhere to all of these myths, then you probably will have an advantage in some ways but then you disadvantage yourself through spending money and time and energy and resources on striving to appear

more beautiful in the eyes of a society which has a very warped sense of beauty. Let's come on to tweakments and Botox and filler and trying to halt signs of aging. Someone wrote a message which said I really don't want to get Botox or fillers, but am I going to be the only person in their 50s that doesn't look 20? And someone else said, hard relay, I don't want to get fillers and Botox. So I wonder how I'm going to look compared to a lot of people my age in a couple of decades. And how is it going to be looked upon by people a couple of generations below us? I wonder if by then the opposite will be the popular trend, embracing your age and your looks as they come with it. And someone else responded,

this is what I think about. I don't want Botox and fillers because aging is a privilege and we're all starting to look the same from injectables. But if everyone around me gets them, I'm not sure I'll be able to resist. But it makes me sad that so many people want to get rid of wrinkles like smile lines they're beautiful and signs of a joyful life i understand the want because we live in a society that demands women to be youthful and bouncy but aging is so much harder than wrinkles it's so much deeper and richer than just wrinkles not to keep making this all about women and men but i do find it astonishing just how much we love wrinkles and gray hair on men and how much

any visible signs of aging on women is demonized. But then I think about, and someone sent in a really good message as well saying, think about how much we thirst over actors like Gillian Anderson or Angela Bassett. And I do think that there is a slight changing tide where people are starting to go, actually, there is something really beautiful in in aging I do also agree that it feels like fillers and Botox and treatments are becoming more commonplace and so the pressure to do that because it feels like well if everyone's doing it's another thing I've got to do it's a bit like how it's very normalized to dye your hair or to get your nails done and if nobody did that perhaps none of us would. Our tweaking is just kind of evolving to becoming the next final frontier on the long, long list of things that we do in order to maintain our looks. I have had Botox in the past. I don't currently

have it in my forehead, but I do have it on my 11 lines, which are the little frown lines in between my eyebrows. And I did enjoy having it it and I do think it makes your skin look really smooth I don't actually have like deep set lines yet I do notice I have some fine wrinkles but not really and I've kind of decided that maybe I don't really want it I like being able to express myself but my sister is a dermatologist and so she's like do you want me to do it for you the thing that I think is interesting about Botox and fillers and treatments and things is I don't actually necessarily think they make you look younger it was that thing i was saying earlier about how age is just present in our faces whether or not you have visible signs of aging there's a maturity there's something you can kind of tell how old people are roughly you it's it's obvious

when someone isn't 18 or 20 even if they have perfect skin and have never gone in the sun and don't have a wrinkle. What I think Botox and tweakments do is actually play into these ideas of maintenance. It's something where I think thinness is similar as well. They're signifiers of restraint, of self-care. And I don't mean self-care in a good way. I mean, they're blatant signifiers that you are valuing how you look. And that is something that society values in women, women who adhere to strict rules around attractiveness, who are owing people pretty, who are turning up and making themselves visibly gorgeous. It's a bit like the way that Boris Johnson walks around with his stupid hair. And yet, if a female politician

didn't look perfect, if her suit wasn't really neat, if her makeup wasn't on, or if women go into work, sometimes they don't have makeup on, they're told they look unprofessional. It is tied to youth, but it's also just another way of showing that you're saying i understand that my worth is in my beauty now this is really hard to opt out of i certainly don't opt out of this i certainly feel preoccupied with how i look it's definitely made harder by the fact that i have to often film myself and take photos of myself i'm hyper aware of my appearance i try to not give it excess air time and I've certainly come a long way because I used to have like really bad body image issues and I've I've learned to just

kind of every day wake up and be like okay this is how I look today whatever but don't get me wrong there are days when I I'm like oh I look terrible and I think that that is exacerbated by looking at lots of people on social media but I just think the Botox and fillers thing is interesting because I really do believe that it's something it doesn't always necessarily make you look younger and in fact actually I think on younger people a lot of filler and Botox actually makes them look older because we associate older women with having by older women I mean women in their like later 20s 30s 40s 50s but when really young women in their early 20s get it done, I actually think that makes you look older because it's a signifier of something

rather than like a direct means of looking younger. Does that make any sense? We've done a whole Let's Talk About on Botox and fillers before, but we can always do that again because we haven't done it on the podcast if you wanted to do that. To move on to a slightly different segment. I really don't mind the wrinkles and the greys etc

i work with older people and my absolute fear is the loss of function and becoming dependent with age it's probably why i'm a bit obsessed with mobility training and pelvic floor exercises but even i know they only work for so long i'd rather have wrinkles and live to be 80 than not i think again perspective helps here if we're happy and relatively healthy is it worth us spending precious time worrying over crow's feet i think this all the time but then i do believe aging is a privilege my mom died at 49 so maybe i feel this more i have a lot of friends who have had botox and i do wonder deep down who is it for yourself to be more attracted to men partners or more attractive than or to your friends i have nothing against women doing what they want to

their bodies but i would hate for anyone to be doing it for someone else's approval or because we're taught women can only be young and girlish and no wrinkles to be attractive. I feel I freak out about this more than my friends because I work with the elderly and I can see their bodies letting them down. I hear so much about replacements of knees and hips etc and it terrifies me. I also feel like I worry about this more than most because I have a chronic illness that is common in people over 60. I'm 27 lol and I find I currently struggle with the discrepancy between looking well i.e. generically fit and healthy young person and my insides being shriveled up like those of an elderly person. I really don't

know how my body is going to age because of this and it freaks me out. It's sad that in other communities and lots of native groups we put a much higher value on caring for our entire community. No one should feel like a burden, inadequate or gross for needing care or support in an older age or ever see the narrative of disabled people being scroungers etc. It sounds like a cop-out but as always capitalism has a lot to answer for here. If we didn't exclusively place value on people for their physical looks, capability and ability to earn money it would all be much easier. Also, needing more medical support whilst living with the NHS, it's such a blessing to have free healthcare, but also have heard of elderly

people waiting months, years for replacements, leaving them completely dependent and really immobile. But getting surgery privately is financially inaccessible for most people. And I guess adding to that the enormous cost of accessing adult social care, moving into a retirement home, ageing is so expensive, and less people will have family nearby to support. I'm a doctor and work primarily in acute care, older people's medicine.

Social care is basically non-existent and less said about the state of the NHS, the better. I'm not certain that in a few decades we'll be much better off than other countries. I really hope we can turn things around. We now have a population that is more comorbid than ever. This isn't likely to change given the cost of living crisis, no availability of preventative care. Sorry, I feel like I'm being so pessimistic and actually probably has nothing to do at all with everyone

else discussing the cosmetic side of aging law, just something me and my colleagues discuss a lot. This, this is my fear. And older generations had savings and assets i.e a house they're 100 owned that could be sold off to support accessing social care when older but our generation can barely save let alone get on the housing ladder how are we going to finance aging especially with the low birth rates meaning the younger generation when we are old will be much smaller so this is kind of like the the of our own mortality, the fact that we never really know how we're going to be in terms of our own ability. People often say, you're not disabled yet. We never know what health issues we might come across. And I found it quite interesting how much when we

talk about aging, when I speak to women women it is really about our looks and those cosmetic aspects and when I speak to men often they'll be worried about their knees or their ability to play football or the way that their physical and physiological signs of aging will impact their ability to do things that bring them joy and women so frequently not always of course but just something I've noticed anecdotally will really be stressing and worrying about what we look like and as scary as those messages are I think it is a good reminder that we're so young when we're talking about age and all these stupid parameters and paradigms of beauty that we've been sold we are young we're in like the summer of our lives i guess and we've got so much time hopefully of feeling agile and fit if you are

in that position lots of you also message saying you struggle with chronic illnesses which mean that you don't get to experience the physiology of the age that you are because of these debilitating illnesses and so I think it's sometimes good to try and be grateful for what where you are and what you have because there will be a time when you'll look back and think fuck I can't believe I was so stressed about having crow's feet when I was had all of these things at my feet and I was so young it's the same as anything when I look back at how old I was in my 20s I think god you were literally a baby I was so young so naive I feel I'm so glad I'm not that person now I don't think I'd want to wake up and start again from 25 god no even if some parts of my life are more

complicated even if some parts haven't worked out how I wanted I'm much happier as a person and in myself than I ever was then which is interesting because as we've been saying, you're not supposed to feel like that. You're supposed to feel more valued when you're younger. I wanted to go back to the most common sentiment, which is the thing we spoke about at the beginning, which is this identity crisis and read one more message, which said, I had trouble pinpointing why I wanted this topic, but this message really hit home. It really is overall an identity issue. it's a 360 identity crisis for me working in the creative industry while not feeling like I have my foot securely

in the door and also not having youth going for me the whole body image has always been an issue and I thought I would have settled into it or fix myself into a better version by now plus all the life emotional choices that come with time relationships babies no babies housing aging family members and I just wanted to say because I completely relate to this but in this conversation and in thinking about it I think that we really have to stop honoring the problem and the problem being our preoccupation with feeling like we're currently no longer valued because it isn't true and what really helps me and I've been sharing this on my stories is I google at what age people

did certain things whether it's what age they meet their life partner what age did they get that job what age did they discover that they wanted to be xyz if we're hoping that we're going to live a long life we have to also hope that that long life is moving upwards and onwards and that there is excitement to be had in the years to come and if we look at it like that it kind of might make you feel better that you haven't reached all of your milestones by 29 30 35 because what that means is there's still so much more to come it's incredible when people manage to figure out exactly who they want to be and the person they want to be with in their 20s but that shouldn't be the be all and endall or the only way if we're to hope that we're going to live a long life if

we're going to honor the fact that we're going to age that time is going to pass anyway and that it's a privilege to get older then we have to also feel excited about the fact that maybe certain things haven't happened and excited for the prospect of what's going to happen I thought the message was really clever earlier about the someone saying like when you talk to a child it's so interesting that it's so fun getting older when you're younger and then you hit 30 and suddenly it's like quick stop the clock what is not to say that things just are gonna get so much better in the next 30 years and I've spoken about this in the milestones episode and we've spoken about this so many times but maybe you won't do that career thing until you're 60

maybe you won't meet the love of your life until you're 45 that means that your life has so much joy and fun and pleasure to come and that the the way to get there is going to be through traversing this journey which along the way you might get a sunspot or a wrinkle or your hair might go gray but this is literally you have got this one life and every single aspect of it every chapter of it is going to be different and it's not always going to be easy. But the one home you have is your body. And as long as you're treating yourself kindly and looking after yourself and also having fun. If people can't value you because you're a certain age, then why would you want them in your life?

And I know that's easier said than done. And I know that it's so easy to compare. But when you go out into the world, not everyone does really look like an Instagram model. Not everyone is having filler and botox i think like coming back into reality sometimes is really good being out on of the wild and seeing and looking at people that you admire and reading stories reading books i always think books are such a good means of getting into the flavor of life and where things can go because also things could go horribly wrong or they could go horribly well and I think that we will regret spending so much time worrying about getting these wrinkles but I also think that when you get into your mid-30s or just further into

your 30s once you leave behind the sort of shadow of that youth idea that you were clinging on to it sounds like it gets way better and I already feel like I'm coming into my power more and I'm excited about that and I'm ready to kind of shed my skin like a snake and oh god I wish I could shed my thing actually I keep watching those videos of snakes anyway it's going to be great we're going to be fine everyone's worrying about it but also it's going to happen and we can't actually control it kind of worrying about aging or staring at it when I used to have my really bad body image issues and they would take over the day I'd wake up in the morning I'd hate myself I'd look at my body I'd

pinch my skin I'd be so cruel to myself but then as I got older I'm like okay well if I wake up in the morning and I don't like how I look there's nothing I can do about it right now so I've just got to get on with my day I've got to do things that are going to make me feel better maybe move my body see some friends call my mom eat some nutritious foods maybe have a donut and then we'll start again tomorrow but these things that we're worrying about we can't stop the passage of time and nor should we want to and if we're going to get wrinkles if you want to get Botox whatever do what you want but we shouldn't be wasting time or fearing this because hopefully we will get older and hopefully we'll look back in our 60s and our 80s and be like god you were so young and so full of life and i wish that i'd just taken advantage of that because we are the oldest

we've ever been and the youngest we'll ever be right now in this moment and so i think it's good to remember that and yes it can be scary and yes we can feel fear of aging but I think maybe let's try to find the joy in the fact that we are this age that we're at and what are the good parts of this what things do we have what capabilities do we have that are going to go and maybe just leaning into accepting acceptance I am this age I am this person I'm not the person I was when I was younger so I'm not going to look the same I'm not going to feel the same I'm not going was younger. So I'm not going to look the same. I'm not going to feel the same. I'm not going to think the same. I'm not going to accept the same treatments. I'm not going to speak in the same way.

There is so much to be said for finding joy in aging. And I hope that that's come across in this, even if I do freak out about it still. But I also try to remember that I've got so much stuff to do. And I hope I've got loads of time to do it because, God, there are so many things I want to do in this life. And if I don't get loads of time to do it, then I'll never get them done. And as someone said, if the price of that is a snaggy tip and a wrinkle or two, then so be it. I'm ready to pay. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you've enjoyed this episode and I will see you next week. Bye. I do. Daily Jackpots. A chance to win with every spin and a guaranteed winner by 11 p.m. every day.

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