Delusions, Gently Held
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I’ve fought hard over the last 45 years to maintain a beneficial sort of narcissism, re: my appearance, and my current favorite delusion (gently held, of course) is that I’m going to be hot forever. I think it might actually be an argumentative stance, in the sense that if I hear anything else about the Aging Cliff I’m going to throw myself off one; this is not going to be another f-cking essay about facelifts, by the way.
I freely admit that turning 40 ushered in an immediate and all-encompassing focus on mobility. At 43, following an introduction to the myriad horrors of perimenopause, osteoporosis became my arch nemesis. I am of the mindset that it’s absolutely, 100% necessary to understand what’s coming down the line, but I simply cannot get square with humbling myself before it.
The rhetoric feels a little too close to abandon all hope on this march towards death: your face cannot win against gravity; it’s the vestiges of youthful vanity keeping you from the wise-woman-filled promised land of “not giving a f-ck.” Ok! I understand that death is a requirement, and that not destroying yourself over the way you look is and always has been the ultimate goal. But I consider my inside and outside to have equally valid and nuanced existences. Do I exercise for mobility and strength? Absolutely. The pride I feel at being able to walk uphill without getting winded is unparalleled. Do I also like having glowing skin and visible abs (the latter for the monthly 12.5 seconds that I'm not being terrorized by my period)? Yes. They’re time-sensitive enjoyments, though, I will remain extremely hot long after they've both left the building.
Aesthetics as a byproduct of “health and wellness” makes me smooth-brained and happy; separating them entirely starts a failed-feminism shame spiral. It doesn't help that wanting to make the most of the time you have (internally and externally, with one body you've been given) has a lot of potential overlap with “optimization,” and the weird, blood-replacing, health-bro Bryan Johnsons of the world really make that feel…dumb. I don't want to live forever (let alone look 25), but I am interested in selectively partaking in the smorgasbord of choice on offer.
Maybe your face blooms like a flower after a good night's sleep; perhaps you are dyeing your hair. It is my understanding that many of us are micro-dosing peptides. Middle-aged womanhood is a spectrum, and if you’re cruising through it having fully and irrevocably freed yourself from previously ingrained societal constraints, I salute you, please send postcards from the promised land. I just reject the idea that you need a wellness-centered, anti-patriarchal, or even intellectually palatable justification to opt in or out; you can have a functional understanding that it's all bullsh-t and still decide you want Botox.
It’s not lost on me that I’m thin and able-bodied (for now) and (permanently) white, with expendable time and resources—and therefore a veritable nepo-baby of mainstream body and beauty standards. I’m not slinging universality, I just clearly spend a lot of that aforementioned free time thinking about myself, and am glad to be doing so in a moment where midlife is a thing.
There are endless articles/books/podcasts about, yes, the Aging Cliff, but also supplements, serums, lymphatic drainage, and hormone replacement therapy. This onslaught of information comes at the literal cost of middle age's ever-expansive monetization, but the upside is that the ensuing (and also ever-expansive) discourse works to debunk the idea that youth and its accoutrements are interchangeable with “good” and “virtuous.” There are so many other urgent and accurate measures against which those can specifically be stacked, and as many ways for the word “hot” to evolve over what is ultimately a very finite timeline.
Shiny hair and muscle tone were not built to last, and I’m sorry, but anyone with grandparents really and truly should have at least some sort of handle on this. In the meantime, I am the one person on the planet who looks exactly like me, and that stands whether I’m 21 or 45 or—dreaming big, here—a cliff-scaling, bone-dense 78 with a sly little look and a sexy f-cking turtleneck. Should a laser or two cross my path before then, so be it. And if there comes a day in which the mirror no longer offers even the smallest of pleasures, another of my gently held delusions is that I’m the smartest woman alive, so let me assure you—I’m already well on my way to figuring something else out.
“Delusions, Gently Held” emailed out 1.20.2026 with newsletter-only exclusives. Subscribe here.