Let’s stop saying “but you look great for your age”?

The first time I got a huge rejection related to the age of others happened when I met a friend on Instagram at a dinner. We had exchanged messages during a trip I was taking in Berlin. She, without a doubt one of the smartest people I know, gave me tips on the unmissable things to do in the city. Back in São Paulo, after a few pleasantries, I asked how old she was. When she answered me 39, I said excitedly: “Wow, but it doesn’t look like it, you look great!”. She retorted: “Am I supposed to be finished?”🇧🇷 I wanted a hole to open up in the ground and I would disappear, returning to the scene only if it was possible to re-enact it.

In the same Berlin that was the reason for our approach, I recently met a friend I hadn’t seen for 10, 12 years. She moved to the city 8 years ago, speaks German with dexterity and speed (what a beautiful language!), works with video and also with refugees, mainly from Africa. Imagine that a chat that I thought would last about two hours extended into the early morning.

Among the many things I heard and learned, the female aging caught my attention. She said that before moving to the German city, she had ended a long relationship. Soon after, the guy started dating a girl in her 20s, when she was 35. The “change” weighed and it was inevitable to think about the relationship with the woman’s most fertile age, which at that time was already starting to make a downward curve.

The move to Berlin, in addition to bringing new directions to her career, made her reframe the passing of time🇧🇷 To put it in a very simple way, people in their 40s, 50s, 60s attend parties there – and they can last for 3 days. Having white hair is normal, no one needs to be held hostage by dyes. If you want to have blue, green, pink hair, great! No one will look at you and say “aff, she is too old for that”. Wear any type of clothing, too. People’s lifespan seems to gain several years. This is just for looks.

Around here, imagine someone aged 50, with colored hair and going to a club? She would easily get cross looks and hear things like “this one didn’t know how to age, she thinks she will be 20, 30 years old forever”. It is hoped that over the years a frown takes over life🇧🇷 You have to settle down, have a house, a family, take one trip a year.

There are times when I think that we live to have equal lives, without even realizing it. The standard imposes itself and whoever leaves it is alternative, crazy, “so different, right?”. For women, things are even more complicated. There is a crazy race for that wrinkle to be eliminated at its first signs. There are industries, fashion, aesthetics, media, which corroborate this desire to be forever young🇧🇷 Getting old is coming to an end, is losing space, is being less of a woman. What madness! And from that stage to old age itself, I always think: when did a woman stop being a woman and become just that cute little old lady to whom we shoot “nhoin, how cute, that purple hair is so beautiful, I wish it was my grandmother”?

meet women who grow old without making it a burden, respecting your stories and the signs of time in your body, is a great learning experience. Let’s look more from the inside out. The glow on the face will prove inevitable, I have that impression. And let’s stop saying “it doesn’t look like it, you look great!”. What are we going to want to hear when they say that to us? Something like “you are beautiful, the way you are, at your age” seems much cooler to me.