Latest news with #StillBeautiful:OnAge
Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Katie Piper says aging is a bereavement, but why do women fear growing older
Death comes for us all, but what does it say about us as a society when we view our aging bodies as a kind of early death? This week, presenter Katie Piper told audiences at Hay Festival that 'aging is like a bereavement,' as she promoted her new book Still Beautiful: On Age, Beauty and Owning Your Space. There is much to be commended for this book: not least in the celebration of the aging process, which is not granted to everyone. Growing older is a privilege. Katie explained that: "Women age out of the male gaze. I was ripped from the male gaze at 24. I didn't just become invisible. I became a target for people saying derogatory things." Katie added: "Sometimes we know we're losing somebody or something, and it's slow, it's gradual, and when it's ageing, we look down at our hands, we see they look different. We catch ourselves in the shop window, and everything's changed." While Katie's experiences may differ from most, there is a broader concern here. Why do women fear growing older? The spectre of the older woman feels almost cartoonish, I immediately think of Madam Mim in Disney's Sword in the Stone or the Ugly Sisters in Cinderella. Then there's the Bridget Jones's Diary where body weight and calorie intake was counted ad nauseum. Both the Disney cartoons and Bridget Jones show what is it like to exist beyond the male gaze, and it wasn't favourable. Horrifyingly, these unhinged, unkempt women were rolled out in movies consumed by young girls. These cultural moments that show the pains of being undesirable have grown tendrils, seeping into our collective fears. In recent years, there has been a staggering increase in Botox - with teenagers turning to the muscle relaxant to promote a more youthful look despite them being the very definition of young. High street clinics have popped up all over the country, offering 3 for 2 on areas of the face and Christmas deals. It's nothing short of dystopian. These frozen facial muscles are the very muscles that let us express anger and joy! Giving up the ability to express ourselves is a frightening development. For a period of time, there were movements that eradicated body-hair shame and celebrated bodies of all shapes and sizes for being unique and wonderful. And Pamela Anderson and Alicia Keys ditched make-up heavy red carpet looks. It felt liberating. But, if Katie's comments speak to anything it is that women are still shackled to the male gaze. Why does feeling undesirable to men cause not only feelings of being unworthy, but worse: as if we are not alive at all? It is vacuous to weigh a woman's worth by her appearance. But to tackle the issue at hand here, let's start with sentience first. Aging women are not warm corpses waiting to be buried. Growing older is not a kind of death. When did we start hating ourselves so much that we view aging as akin to being dead? There is nothing to be feared about 'aging out of the male gaze'. Nobody should be situating their worth in relation to the desire of others. Learning to love ourselves regardless of our appearance is a central tenet of living a happy life. But why are people, like Piper, viewing the aging process in this way? Possibly as it can come with restrictive employment opportunities, perhaps. As actresses such as Anne Hathaway and Emma Thompson have spoken out about not being cast in roles due to their age. In fact, Backstage reported that people over 40 acting in leading role is 21% for women while for men it is 34%. There is much to be angry about that women lose out on opportunities in the workplace as they age. Let's try and stay off the Botox so we can convey some of that fury. Helen Coffey at the Independent agreed with Piper, saying: 'Most of us are in the denial stage of grief' about aging. But also added: 'When we prize youth as the only thing worth having, we devalue the much more worthwhile gifts of wisdom and experience. When we strive to stay the same, we deny the much more rewarding path of evolution and growth.' It's time to stop unduly celebrating youth for youth's sake. A wrinkle on the forehead should not be a bump in the career, and it absolutely must not be read as a 'bereavement'. It is okay to feel unsteady that life is changing. That is natural. But we must begin to celebrate women's aging bodies, wrinkles, greys and all.
Gulf Today
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
Katie Piper's right, ageing as a woman is like a bereavement
Helen Coffey, The Independent 'Age is just a number,' goes the old adage. The new version should perhaps come with an addendum: 'Age is just a number — but one that your face and body should never reflect.' It was the recent words of presenter and activist Katie Piper that prompted this musing on our collective endeavour to erase the visible passage of time. 'Ageing can be compared to a bereavement,' the Loose Womenpanellist said at this year's Hay Festival while promoting her new book, Still Beautiful: On Age, Beauty and Owning Your Space. 'Sometimes we know we're losing somebody or something, and it's slow, it's gradual — and when it's ageing, we look down at our hands, we see they look different. We catch ourselves in the shop window, and everything's changed.' The 41-year-old's sentiments hit a nerve. I'm 38, a mere slip of a girl, surely, and yet I've already started having those out-of-body experiences — suddenly seeing a photo of myself taken from an unexpected angle and thinking, 'Who's she? That middle-aged woman with the chins and the deeply etched eye bags?' Or catching a glimpse in the mirror, brought up short by the marching silver threads that can never be beaten back no matter how often I dye my hair, because there's always more, more, more — a never-ending onslaught of grey to remind me that I'm getting older by the day. Piper, who has had to endure multiple surgeries to repair her face and eyesight ever since she was the victim of an acid attack orchestrated by an ex-boyfriend in 2008, has a very different relationship with her appearance compared to most of us. 'Women age out of the male gaze,' she said frankly. 'I was ripped from the male gaze at 24. I didn't just become invisible. I became a target for people saying derogatory things.' The reality is, everywhere you look, women are point-blank refusing to engage with the 'bereavement' of ageing; instead, they're locked into a relentless quest to freeze time and, increasingly, reverse it. This endeavour is nothing new. Though the modern iteration of 'anti-ageing products' can have been said to start in the first half of the 20th century, with the likes of Elizabeth Arden and Holly Rubinstein creating a mass market for their 'rejuvenation' treatments, go back a few centuries and you'll find Elizabethan women putting raw meat on their faces to turn back the clock. Travel further, to the first century BC, and Cleopatra was famously taking daily donkey milk baths for the same purpose. Hankering after youth and beauty is clearly hardwired into the human experience, the physical manifestation of our innate fear of death. But what has changed is the advancement of the technology to facilitate this age-old pursuit, and the extreme makeovers that are now being positioned by female celebrities as the gold standard towards which we should all be secretly striving. Or should that be 'make-unders' — as in, make this 60-year-old look underage, please? The most recent example to send shockwaves around the aesthetics world is Kris Jenner and her time-defying facelift. The woman is 69, but you'd never know that from her brand new £100,000 face. Rumoured to be her fifth surgery, and also rumoured to be a 'deep plane facelift' – because God forbid one of these women ever actually admit to what they're having done – the op has left her plump-cheeked, smooth-skinned and, ultimately, looking like an uncanny valley version of her daughter, Kim Kardashian. It's utterly mesmerising, the intricate artistry of someone who's arguably more wizard than plastic surgeon. Though Jenner is on one end of the spectrum – and perhaps feels like such measures are a prerequisite for being the matriarch of the nip-and-tuck-happy Kardashian dynasty – you don't have to look very far to see examples of Benjamin Buttons everywhere. Demi Moore, who has denied having various cosmetic procedures in the past, has fewer wrinkles at 62 than she did 20 years ago. Nicole Kidman has a face so taut it doesn't seem humanly possible that it's seen 57 trips around the sun.
Irish Independent
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Katie Piper: ‘Turning 40 kind of has shame attached to it. For me, 40 represents surviving, still being here, still being alive'
At age 24, an acid attack left model turned activist and Loose Women star Katie Piper severely burned. Now in her 40s, it's given her a unique perspective on ageing and beauty Ahead of turning 40 in 2023, Katie Piper began to notice a certain theme in questions about this approaching milestone. 'It kind of had shame attached to it,' she says. 'Like, 'How do you feel about it?' or 'Do you want to print your real age?' It was a strange feeling, because obviously, for me, 40 represents surviving, still being here, being alive.' The fact that other people framed 40 as something to fear, to avoid, even to regret, gave Piper pause for thought and the inspiration for her new book, Still Beautiful: On Age, Beauty and Owning Your Space. She felt she had something of significance to say about ageing, about beauty and ageing and, most importantly, about the beauty and privilege of ageing.
