If you are cognizant of even a sliver of the media spinning-wheel directing our attention and you are female, you are probably fixated on aging, especially the visible changes on your face. Sadly, this attitude can happen even if you are only a teen, but most definitely can define how you value your worth once you reach an ‘advanced age’. This is not a male issue as evident along the packed shelves in every drugstore and grocery store or at the core of the countless ads directed at women, to conceal, enhance, even to defy how you actually look. Women are being forced to relinquish control of their autonomy thanks to a stacked repressive Supreme Court and equally hoodwinked into believing that while men grow more distinguished with age, women just get old. Our society tells us that men are not able to control themselves if an attractive woman in her twenties wears a pencil skirt but by fifty women should be quietly buttoning up all desires and most definitely putting on a new face.

I am doing my best to shirk off the notions that define a woman aging. This is a challenge for so many reasons. First of all is aging itself, which even among the most athletic slows us; of course aging brings sags and wrinkles and what my dermatologist politely calls wisdom spots. But commercialism aggravates our fear of aging. “Fashion is an endless stream of ever-changing, ever more frequent collections with which legions of fashion writers, buyers and influencers must all “keep up,” some literally circling the globe to keep pace. To be fashionable is to live in a perpetual “now,” suspended outside of time’s natural progression. This mad cycle has, of course, a financial component, stimulating consumer desire and keeping the industry afloat. But the cost for this is high, and the damage serious” (Face Forward).

Women are sold a bag of goods from TikTok to your local beauty salon. But it isn’t only what we look like that is being defined for us, it is how we should think and behave, how we should validate our experiences and our expectations. Self-worth is centered on the male gaze. Women are expected to follow the avenues set out by the patriarchy. However, there are women, through choice or circumstance, who don’t have children and they are being told they should not have a vote. Vance, “the 39-year-old senator has a years-long documented history of describing people without children as immoral and inferior. And as Election Day nears, those remarks are continuing to resurface… Vance also said that Americans without children should not have “nearly the same voice” as parents when voting” (Yahoo News). Seriously, do you want this man dictating his prehistoric beliefs to your teenage daughter, or your son?

Trump, with much bravado  models how to mock women. Misogyny dictates much of the Republican, (let’s just call it MAGA) agenda, which is probably why so many insecure and backwards thinking males are set to vote for Trump, again, despite his disregard for them too.

“Some call it “the bro vote.”

“Gender is everywhere in this election, but masculinity is front and center in a way that’s perhaps unprecedented,” said Jackson Katz, a scholar on gender and masculinity who this month released a new film, “The Man Card: 50 Years of Gender, Power and the American Presidency.”

“Gender is always a central factor in American presidential politics, but it’s hiding in plain sight until a woman runs. When a woman runs, her gender makes visible what’s been there all along.” (USA Today).

In this upcoming election, with women’s health on the ballot, we must regain control and match the striving to contain women by breaking the glass ceiling for good.

Thankfully, there are women speaking up from every corner of our globe, confronting such prejudice. As my favorite Presidential candidate announced, We are Not Going Back. We are, with the help of shared voices defying the limitations set by those desperate to sell us their flimsy lies, moving forward.

I invite you to pull out a favorite photo of your favorite auntie, not as she looked at 25 but as she entered her final decade, and just revel in the joy etched around her eyes. Locate the strength in her loving grip. Bask in her fabulous and promising version of you. Those grand old dames are worth seeking and honoring, as we collectively did with Maggie Smith. “Ms. Smith’s beautiful aged face invites us to break free of these limitations, to contemplate and appreciate the full arc of a lifetime, in all its stages, without fear, and without yearning to turn back the clock. Looking again at her face in the Loewe images in these days after her death is like pulling aside a curtain we normally keep drawn. Maggie Smith reminds us that age itself may be the ultimate luxury” (Face Forward). Isn’t that the real goal, to age? And in that process and state, honor and exalt the rewards?

I do want to salute those with a platform who are doing what they can to improve the lives of all women, through education, opportunity or resources. Women like Julia Louis-Dreyfus with her “Wiser than Me” podcast, which celebrates older women and their unsinkable spirits well into their later years. For the slightly younger crowd, we have Alex Cooper, the “Call Her Daddy” creator who unpacked many fears in her “Getting Older” podcast. When Ellen DeGeneres walked on the stage to begin her For Your Approval comedy show, she noted that she looks older, because she no longer uses botox or fillers. She proudly announced that she has aged, and therefore, here she is, aged. She stood in rounds of applause for those lines.

**photo credit goes to my darling Mj, who loves me being me, aging face and all