If 2023 was the year of the girl — the bows! Barbie! frilly socks with Mary Janes! — then can we please try to celebrate someone significantly more aspirational in 2024? I’m talking about Women, and yes, we deserve the capitalization (have you read the news, like, ever?).
Not that I haven’t enjoyed our collective salute to girlhood (I would argue there’s been a tad too much fetishization but that story has already appeared ad nauseam over the last few months) but after witnessing grown women don these classical markers of youth for so long, I’m eager for the pendulum to swing back the other way. And once I read the essay in The Cut about the benefits of marrying an older man (stop here and go check it out — it’s… interesting) I, as a 34-year-old, feel the need to stand up and defend my fellow grown ass women.
Writers, cultural critics, and your annoyingly opinionated extended family have been hemming and hawing over how women can and should age since the beginning of time. From the day we turn 18 and cast off our presumed youthful innocence, we’re told that time is running out. Our hormones will run dry, our skin will wrinkle and sag, our hair will gray and thin, and we will be relegated to the fringes of society, worthless and uninspiring. Capitalism is built upon this assumption (BUY THIS WRINKLE CREAM HERE), and I admit that I’m certainly not guiltless when it comes to peddling a youth-centric narrative.
HOWEVER!
As fearful as I am about the physical changes that accompany age, (I’m overdue for Botox and it’s stressing me out more than I care to admit) I’ve recently made a deal with myself to sit down, shut up, and marvel at all the absolutely fantastic things that happen when you’re firmly in the throes of your womanhood. So here’s a list of reasons why I’m happy to be a seasoned woman and not desperately pinning for my dimming youth anymore, because lists calm my anxious mind and after a truly hellish week, I deserve a little of that.
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