Part 2: Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?
The other side of the double-edged sword is the fetishization of youth by the fashion industry. One would imagine that the older a woman gets the more liberated she is from the beauty standard. No longer does she have to perform gender in every social setting. She doesn’t have to do maintenance to be seen as a woman and earn respect. Eventually, wrinkles, smile lines, and white hair will appear. You can’t hide the signs of aging from society. Unless you are in the fashion industry, in that case, you can and WILL. The fashion industry loves to erase the beauty of aging from women
An example is Variety’s Actors on Actors cover featuring Jeremy Allen White and Jennifer Coolidge. It features Jeremy and Jennifer posing and asking each other questions. They look like they are both around the same age range. They look around forty to thirty years old. However, Jennifer is 62 years old and Jeremy is 33 years old. Almost a thirty-year age difference, but that doesn’t translate in the photos published.
This photo perfectly exemplifies the older woman that the fashion industry wants to sell to society. That a woman in her sixties has no wrinkles or smile lines. No signs of aging past the age of 30. She looks so youthful that she and Jeremy look like classmates. What makes this even sadder is that Variety’s Jennifer looks nothing like Jennifer which exists in reality. The real Jennifer has signs of aging like facial fat and smile lines—a lovely woman in her 60s. The fashion industry wants to eradicate this stage of womanhood.
Another example is the September 2023 Vogue cover. The cover shows 4 supermodels of the 90s: Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, and Naomi Campbell. These women were the definition of stunning in the 90s. Every woman aspired to look like them. Vogue wanted to highlight their importance and contributions to the industry. Instead of doing that, they disrespected these icons with a beauty filter.
Similar to Jennifer on Variety, these women all look like they are between their 40s and 30s. Yet every single one of these supermodels is above the age of fifty. The editors of Vogue have retouched and removed every sign of aging from these women. Women once the epitome of beauty no longer fit the beauty standards. If these women can’t exist in their bodies and be beautiful, neither can everyday women. Women are pressured to look young. They are supposed to stop aging once they reach 25. In the fashion industry, to be youthful is to be beautiful. They put an unrealistic and unhealthy expectation on women to never show any signs of aging.
It is not a new trend either. The fashion industry has been doing this for decades. The Marie Claire 2008 Britney Spears cover encapsulates this. Britney Spears is a woman who has gone through many hardships in life. She was a victim of the abusive media industry, stuck under a conservatorship, and publically dealt with mental health issues. Going through all that stress would age anybody. However, the people at Marie Claire did not want a vulnerable and real Britney on their cover. Instead, they decide to remove all of the vulnerability and realness.
As one could tell, Britney Spears doesn’t even look like Britney Spears. The cover erases any signs of the struggle she may have faced. She appears “perfect” on this cover. No signs of wrinkles, eye bags, or thin hair. It is what the fashion industry pushes upon women of any age. Britney was 26 at the time of this release. And yet, she doesn’t look young enough according to the fashion industry standard. Even if a woman is going through a crisis, she must look beautiful. Any woman going through a dilemma can never look like she is going through a crisis. Her body and face must always display an image of a youthful being. In the fashion industry, there is never a time when you can look old and ugly. Women don’t have that right or privilege. We must stay youthful to appease society. Our body is their canvas.
But If the body is a canvas, then the signs of aging should be its painter. The female body goes through many transformations throughout life. Whether it be going through puberty, pregnancy, menopause, or any other major life events. It shows how much we smiled and laughed throughout our life. It shows scars/beauty marks that can bring her back to an exact memory. It displays the trials and tribulations of girlhood/womanhood living in a patriarchal society. It simply tells the world that we have lived. It shows our humanity. And yet, the fashion industry wants to erase all of this. They don’t see the beauty in aging, so they would rather photoshop it away.
The double-edged sword of fetishization and sexualization is imposed upon women and girls. It takes away the humanity of aging from us. Instead, it tells us that we must perform gender and womanhood from birth to death. The fashion industry and pop culture tell us that no one will love us if we are not young and beautiful. We have been conditioned to do an unnatural amount of work and maintenance to our bodies. Conditioned to shame other women and girls for looking their age. It’s now an internalized problem that we all must eradicate from our minds. The work must be done to tell women and girls all around the world that age and beauty have no power or correlation. The fashion industry and pop culture must get rid of their ageist beliefs. If not, women will never be able to liberate themselves and stop the erasure of aging.