Reflections on 50

Recently, one of my co-workers turned 50.  She didn't handle it well.  After passing along to her an article from Glamour extolling the virtues of celebrities who had, or would very soon, turn 50, she confessed her main concern.  She felt she wasn't turning heads anymore.  That the beautiful sexiness that she possessed in her twenties and thirties was gone.  This thought coming from a woman who is petite, active, successful, smart, and absolutely gorgeous and, outside of her misguided beliefs, definitely continues to turn heads.

But I understood.  The media blasts us with images of teenagers and twenty-somethings who are tall, thin, with perfectly symmetrical facial features, glossy white teeth, and the world on the string.  We all know these pictures are Photoshopped to achieve this image but in comparison we women who are approaching menopause simply feel inadequate.  And so begins our reflection on life....where have the years gone, how did I arrive to the place I'm at today, oh so many choices that I should have, could have, would have done differently in my youth.  As much as we relish the photos that show celebrities without makeup, which makes them to some extent "more normal", it's vital that we put to death our vain attempts to compare ourselves to others. 

Sure, the twenty-year olds turn heads.  But in their youth they have not learned, have not experienced the life we have.  They have fresh beauty and lack of wrinkles on their side, for the time being, but we have years of wisdom garnered from the highest level of learning - our mistakes.  These account for our wrinkles, our gray hair, our age spots. 

So often I have compared myself to high school classmates.  Oh how she has grown old.  Look at her.  We are the same age but I look so much better, so more put together, so more younger.  But why does this matter?  Instead of comparisons we should feel a sense of peace that our classmate continues to be with us, regardless of her looks.  As many people for whom I hold my looks in comparison, there are so very many more who win the age contest hands down.  And besides the point, no one is keeping score.

So let the youth enjoy their life, let them turn heads, and allow them the carefree spirit we all enjoyed when we were young.  And let us women, who are approaching fifty or have turned fifty and beyond, accept the new chapter gracefully that we are opening, similar to a new book with shiny crispness for which we are eager to read until late at night, folding the corners down to mark our place so we don't miss out on one single sentence.  It's going to be a new adventure that we should all be anxious to begin with enthusiasm, rather than in comparison.