Mirror, mirror on the wall

Rejecting youth culture as an act of liberation

Photo by Laimdota Karpinska on Unsplash

A quick note on the name change:

You might’ve noticed that this publication is no longer called The Uproar. That name once reflected how I felt: angry, overwhelmed, needing to shout into the void. But that version of me has quieted.

Lost & Found feels closer to where I am now, the kind of writing I want to share, and the kind of community I want to build. It’s for women who are navigating change, recovery, creativity, and a return to self.

If you’re feeling a little lost but are ready to find your way back to something - your voice, your dreams, your joy - this is the place.

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You look in the mirror. You see some wrinkles, maybe a few sun spots. A blemish.

You touch your skin and notice how much looser and drier it is, press the back of your hand up under your chin and try to flatten the barely noticeable sag there.

You look left then right, up then down.

You frown at your reflection before remembering that frowning deepens lines so quickly rearrange your facial muscles into a neutral pose.

You resist the expressions that mark you as human and replace them with a blank mask, ready to be superimposed with someone else’s features. The features of who and what the world wants you to be.

Someone with dewier, more elastic skin.

Someone whose makeup is flawless.

Someone with sparkling eyes, plump lips, and a smooth neck.

Someone young, or at least younger.

Someone absolutely, categorically, not old.

Because you know what happens to a woman who is deemed old, how she is treated and viewed.

You’ve grown up hearing her referred to as ‘hag’, ‘witch’, ‘frigid’, ‘bitter’, and ‘dried up’.

You know she is often ignored, insulted, and seen as irrelevant.

You know that her clothing is mocked, her grey hair abhorred, her soft body reviled.

You know that, if the same thing happens to you, your opinions will no longer matter. Whatever successes you achieved in your life, however many human beings you raised into productive members of society, whatever art you created, skills you acquired, ideas you had, or communities you fostered, you will cease to exist once your external shell is no longer visually pleasing.

‘Get out of the way, lady’, they will say when you dare to take up any space.

‘Go away, Karen’, they will sneer when you dare to speak an opinion.

You really, really don’t want to be a Karen.

The men who once held doors open for you, smiled at you, and offered you their seat will now walk by you like you are a ghost, elbowing you out of the way.

The staff who once served you quickly in shops and pubs will pretend that you are not there as you wave a hand in front of their blank faces, wondering if they see you at all.

The people who once sidled up to you at social events and asked about your interests and views of the world will avoid your eyes when they scan the room, assuming you have nothing of value to say.

You will ache knowing that the privileges you were afforded when you were young have been stripped away, and that you hadn’t even known they existed until they were gone.

You will burn with shame, or perhaps fury, that for all its social progress and scientific advancements, the world still expects to extract beauty from women like a resource that can be infinitely mined. With sadness, or perhaps horror, you will realise that it was considered your most valuable resource all along.

So you set about doing everything within your power to stop this slow unravelling of your identity, your personhood. To avoid your own dehumanisation.

You are left with no choice but to comply with the demands of the patriarchy, to present yourself for measurement against its expectations and pray you are not found wanting.

You know that the only solution to staying you is to become less like you than ever.

You take the needle you once used to weave the threads of your life together and begin to stitch something new. With pieces of the girl you once were and scraps of who you are now, you try to keep the seams from splitting, to prevent the woman you fear becoming from bursting out.

You create a monster of their making, from which they then turn away. Even though you did what they asked, it wasn’t enough for them. It will never be enough. You will never be enough in their impossible game.

Fear of ageing is real, it is ingrained, and it is insidious. It is a sickness from which it is hard to recover, a heavy, dull mark that is hard to erase.

But maybe you can learn to replace that fear with something else. Indifference, acceptance, joy, maybe even love. Gratitude for the life you still have and the body that got you here.

You can choose to reject the idea that you need fixing or freezing, that you are not worthy of evolution. That you don’t get to change or grow or expand, physically or spiritually. That you can’t reach beyond the confines of the gendered box you were put in straight from your mother’s arms, where they all cooed over how pretty you were.

You can take back the time you’ve spent worrying about ageing and use it to create something beautiful and new, something that could only come from a person recently liberated from a lifetime of shame.

You can look how you want, wear what you want, say what you want, be how you want, and no one can tell you otherwise.

You can release the insecurities that have plagued you for decades and accept that ageing is not the enemy - fear of it is.

You can reject the narrative offered to you and rewrite your own story, one in which you are not merely an accessory.

You can step into the power that is already yours, if you’re brave enough to claim it.

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