This week, as a part of our Dispelling Beauty Myths video series with Allure, were breaking up the monopoly that youth is supposed to have over our sense of value. For women in Western culture, aging is constructed as beauty’s arch-nemesis, and it must be repressed and stunted at all costs (literally, at all costs, with women shelling out loads of money on all varieties of anti-aging creams and medical procedures). But aging does not take away a woman’s beauty, nor does it diminish her voice. Rather, as Michaela Angela Davis, Joani Johnson, and Norma Kamali show, embracing the aging process leads to finding your most limitless self. As Maykayla, age 52, says in the video, "I’m just now starting to feel physically beautiful. I have comfort, I have wisdom, I have clarity. I like peace of mind -- being peaceful is hot to me now.” Women, and human beings overall, do not come with an expiration date. “There isn’t anything that I feel like I couldn’t do," states Norma, 71. "I know it sounds arrogant, but I never would have said that if I were younger.”
To watch the entire journeys of three women who treat aging as the blessing that it is, press play on the video above.
The Age episode of Dispelling Beauty Myths was edited by Andrea Cruz & Christophe McHale