Finally, at Fifty, I Can See Myself
I participated in the betrayal of my face because it’s easy to do when your thoughts about beauty are colonized and your appearance is a battleground.
I hate that the “women turning fifty” narrative is just another reclamation project urging women to hold back the ocean of aging with lube, a jade face roller, a bucket list. So much of this narrative rests on the assumption that we took the road much traveled, as we’re reminded that we “earned” our wrinkles, that we can finally lose our inhibitions with partners, that we should love our bodies and the evidence of childbirth. I never gave birth, I’m not a spouse, I haven’t yet hit menopause or even “middlepause.” How do I redefine myself at fifty, without these relationships to other people? Sometimes it feels unfair that the only relationship to redefine is the one between me and my face.
As a girl, I looked at my feet when I walked, but now I look up and forward, not just to be seen but to see. It’s both a trope and a truth that at fifty we care less what other people think—as if in becoming invisible to others, we return the favor. The more I see myself, now, the less I see what anyone else might want or need from me. I see less and less of what supposedly needs fixing, masking, or changing.
Enter your email address to receive notifications for author Lydia Kim
Success!
Confirmation link sent to your email to add you to notification list for author Lydia Kim
More in this series
To Swim Is to Endure: On Living with Chronic Pain
“If I don’t swim, the pain grows. If I’m in more pain, what will become of my life?”
A History of Premature Births, Including My Own
Dr. Couney settled in the United States in 1903, when he began exhibiting incubator babies on Coney Island every summer. “Infant Incubators With Living Babies,” the sign above the building read.
Digital Distortions: Reflections on Zoom and Body Dysmorphia
We’ve spent quarantine in faulty mirrors, sparking negative feedback loops.