What do you check in the mirror before you rush out the door? Is it a thinning patch of hair? Wrinkles on your forehead? What part of you do you try and hide during family photos? Whatever it is, you might not have to worry about it much longer because Paris Fashion Week 2023 has declared that ageing is now ‘cool’.
The event took place in early October and was a celebration of being authentic and embracing your age. Model and actress Pamela Anderson, age 56, went ‘courageously’ without makeup. At age 78, Dame Helen Mirren walked the runway for L’Oréal with her natural grey hair on proud display, as did actress Andie MacDowell, age 65.
It reflects a wider cultural move. September saw the world’s first make-up-free beauty pageant take place in London and several global brands are dropping language like ‘anti-ageing’ – instead ‘promoting the idea that looking your age is aspirational’ (The Guardian).
Good news or bad news?
Maybe, with ageing populations across the world, this shift was only a matter of time. And maybe, in a society that’s increasingly sensitive to any form of exclusion or bias, it’s just the final domino to fall. The American Psychological Association has described ageism as ‘the last socially acceptable prejudice’.
There’s much to applaud about this. It is a step towards equality, which is in line with God’s design and desire for us throughout the Bible. And not just equality for the elderly, but for women, too – who for years have often not been ‘allowed’ to look their age, while men have done so without comment or critique.
But on a more personal level, the definition of ‘beauty’ has widened to include a few more of us – and that’s good, right?
Not really. It makes the world’s standards of beauty seem both generous and within reach, when in reality they remain damaging and virtually unattainable.
Paris Fashion Week reminds us of this simply by its very existence. As a review of the week in The Guardian put it: ‘You can age. But the message is clear: you had better still … make an effort’. There are still impossibly high hoops to jump through in order to be beautiful, even if those hoops are now slightly bigger and come with a stairlift to help the elderly get in and out.
What hope do we have?
Where does this leave those of us who feel so keenly the pressure to be beautiful? Those of us with in-laws who place a premium on looking smart, or with colleagues who always dress to impress, and friends who follow the latest trends. Those of us who are stressed, hurting and exhausted from trying to match up.
If that’s you, you’ll find that the gospel offers you more hope than the world can. The gospel says that anybody can be beautiful – regardless of class, skin colour, weight, gender or fashion choices.
How can this be? Because God doesn’t look at our outward appearance; He looks at our hearts (1 Sam.16:7). Our hearts were once so full of sin and evil that they were the ugliest part of us. But when Christ paid the price for these sins by dying on the cross, all of our ugliness fell onto Him. He faced the disgust and revulsion from God that we should have faced.
And us? We have been covered in Jesus’ beautiful righteousness.
This is what God sees when He looks at us. Even on our worst days. It can be so hard to believe that. Often, we forget He delights in us and think, on some level, that He’s pinching His nose and squinting down at us with pursed lips.
The degree to which we know this precious gospel message is the degree to which we will be free from the demanding beauty standards of the world. It reminds me of a line in the famous Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams: ‘The pink lining to his ears had turned grey, and his brown spots faded. He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit anymore, except to the Boy. To him, he was always beautiful, and that was all the little rabbit cared about.’
The liberty of exclusivity: Choice, freedom and Jesus
I was born in the mid-1970s when there were three television channels in the UK: BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. That …