Breaking The spell On Age And Beauty

I was watching the fabulous Mary Queen of Frocks on Channel 4  last night and can’t wait for some funky clothes to come on the market for all ages and all sizes. I think she rocks and love her! We are in a time where we are all coming into our power no matter what our age. For me life began at 40 and I have never looked back. I love so many things about getting older and I have never felt more in my body or happier. Sadly we are in a society where beauty seems to be measured by youth and many women are doing anything to keep to ageing process at bay. I agree we should all make the most of ourselves and have pride in who we are. How we look is an expression of the inside BUT fighting against aging is a losing battle and beauty truly isn’t only external. In ancient cultures ageing was honored so let’s bring some of that attitude back!

Forty is the new twenty – fifty is the new thirty.  It’s true that overall we are all living a lot longer and also staying a lot more youthful (more about what I mean by that later on!)

But still a lot of women are scared about getting older.  And apparently losing our looks is high on the list of what scares us.

You can understand why.  So much has been said about this youth obsessed culture that we live in that apparently is sending us to the cosmetic surgeons in numbers never before seen at the first signs of ageing.  Yes, there might be a few exceptions to the fashion rule (apparently the gorgeous model Daphne Selfe who still rocks the major Paris shows at 82 didn’t sign her first major modelling contract until she was seventy and hasn’t had a thing done).  But when models in their early twenties appear in adverts for anti-wrinkle cream and children model adult eveningwear you know it’s all got a bit messed up.

I’ve never really bought into this idea that we can’t be beautiful and older.  What is considered beautiful is only ever really someone else’s idea, but if we fall outside of its strict rules we can allow it to change the way that we feel about ourselves. And that’s when we start to play our lives small and allow our power and energy to diminish.

When I say that we’re staying youthful a lot longer, what I mean by that is that we no longer think along the lines of, ‘Well, I’m forty and my life is over’ (as a friend of mine’s mum said to her).  Many of us are out there, trying new things and getting excited about life and all of its incredible possibilities at a time when previous generations might have thought it’s time to start winding down.

But this idea that you can’t be older and beautiful is such a nasty, cunning little spell that I want to break it right here.  You know it’s a spell because it can hold a tremendous power over us without actually being true at all.  It works to make you feel bad about yourself.  It works to make you want to be young in years again, rather than youthful in attitude and outlook. But here’s the truth.

The likelihood is, if you don’t feel you’re good enough just because you’re fifty, or whatever age you are, you probably didn’t feel you were good enough when you were twenty either.

‘When I was twenty one I thought I was fat and ugly’ said a friend (who at the time was a dancer and did a bit of modelling on the side). ‘If I looked the way I did then these days, I’d happily run down the high street naked’.

Self hatred becomes a pattern, a habit.  We might change the spell that we chant to keep it going.  When we’re twenty it’s because our thighs aren’t the right shape.  When we are fifty it’s because we have grey hair or lines on our faces.  The thing we focus on changes, but the disconnection with our true power and beauty is the same.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent’.  Yes, shame on the fashion mags that show kids in evening dresses slashed to the waist, but we can gently weed out the spell that we can’t be beautiful because we’re older and replace it with a much more powerful spiritual truth; that when we wear our souls on our faces and in our bodies, we are all stunning.

Loads of love,

Michele

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