How beauty standards promote the invisibilisation of middle-aged women

Author Shunali Khullar Shroff points out middle-aged men are fetishized, but there are no flattering terms for physical characteristics of women of same age; Komal Wadhwan, 53, likes taking care of herself physically, mentally and emotionally so that even her three daughters know how to be comfortable in their skin. Pic/Anurag Ahire; Kiran Manral has noticed that middle-aged women—who know what they want and have a disposable income—are often overlooked by sales staff in favour of catering to the youth

"Zeenat Aman had to get on Instgram to be seen," says author and podcaster Shunali Khullar Shroff, "It means that all those magazines who are celebrating her now had forgotten her or holding on to a nostalgic version of her." It's a conversation that stems from the assumed compliment given to a woman, "You don't look it"; which is also seen as the only response to a woman telling you her age.

Is there a stencil of how a woman is expected to look at each decade? And what does that look like? Who manufactured this and who is giving it currency? A quick ask on social media had everyone in agreement: "You don't look your age" is one way of saying, "Aunty ne apne aap ko maintain kiya hai" that "You are easy on the eye"; that "You are not repulsive".

"Normalised beauty standards," says Shroff, who hosts the Not your Aunty podcast with writer Kiran Manral, "equate beauty with youth, which leaves no scope for older women." She points out that as a species, we are rigged to respond to visual delight - "we stop to take a picture of a multi-hued bird and keep cute looking pets."

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the youth of women is a commodity, which middle age takes off the shelf. With ovaries shriveling, the invisibilisation of a woman begins at 45, in tandem with the fetishisation of the middle age of men. "Silver fox, and even dad-bod [soft-centred, pudgy torsoed] in men is sexualised," points out Shroff, "but there are no flattering words for loose skin around the jowls of women. Every word points to how hard you are to look at." Shroff is 48
years old.

With beauty standards set in concrete, response comes mainly (but not only) in two ways - to align with youth, and thus value, through surgery, lifestyle and diet to youth; or to rebel against it with greying and silver hair. The COVID-19 pandemic influenced beauty routines - salons were shut and hair dye was not an essential. Most men and women let the dye run off.

Here's another perspective we found: Women just continue being themselves at every age, responding not to a number on the calendar, but to life's challenges. Doing what they've always done that makes them feel good and most themselves. Including wearing shorts and colouring their hair electric blue at 28, 38 and 48.
Like Komal Wadhwan, mother to three daughters and grandmother to some too. At 53, she says, she "feels awesome because she takes care of herself physically, mentally and emotionally". The yoga teacher and Chembur resident exercises every day, eats simple meals with some cheat days, moisturises and cleans her skin in a morning-night routine, does indoor and outdoor chores to get her dose of Vitamin D. She's dressed daily in co-ordinated cottons and has never felt the pressure to look a certain way because she is "surrounded by open minded people".

She gets told often that she doesn't look her age, and she takes it as a compliment. "It makes me feel good about myself, confident," she says. "As the mother of three daughters, I want them to be comfortable in their skin," she says, "And how would that be possible if I, their mother, wasn't comfortable in all I did."
To consider it a response to invisibilisation of middle-aged woman would be to take away agency - Wadhwan is doing what she likes, because she likes it.

"The erasure of women from society," says Manral, "begins in malls and stores. I was standing in a high-end store - me, an experienced shopper who knows what she wants and a person with a higher disposable income. But I had to beckon to get the shop assistant's attention; they were busy with young women who left without buying anything. That's when I knew it had started." Manral is 52. She said this was followed by men choosing to stand in front of her while she waited for elevators.

What surprises society, says Manral, is when women refuse to go away. They still stand there in their short dresses, hair done the way they want, looking how they want to. "You don't look it [age]," is the response to this. One of the reasons for this, says Shroff, is because we are not dressing like our mothers. Case in point was a recent magazine picture of Elon Musk's mother Maye in a swimsuit. Popular opinion was that since she wasn't young, she wasn't beautiful, and hence, her body should not be exposed such. In essence, commoditised; because no one was supposedly buying. Leave alone that Maye was wearing a swimsuit because perhaps, she swims.

Manral, who had a birthday last week, posted a celebratory picture on Twitter with no undertones of eliciting validation. "Many kind persons said ‘You don't look it, etc. etc," she says, "while one person said, ‘That's not 52, that's 63."

Which brings us to the unboxing of the term ‘aunty'. Familial affection aside, it truly means, according to Manral, "You are unattractive. Unable to procreate, you are of no use to society; give way to the young fillies."

But when the young fillies do come, will society say, ‘Oh you're 15/18/25? You don't look it'?