Aging as a Woman (and Artist)

"Everybody here is suffering from a fatal affliction called 'time,' and eventually it will kill you." -Eckhart Tolle

(a light-hearted reflection to begin today's blog post)

I wouldn't say that I'm the most attractive person in the world. However, through the years, I have received more perks and praise for my appearance than I would say average. I'm aware of how categorically unfair appearance discrimination/favoritism is. After all, there's not a tremendous amount of work involved in being attractive. Extreme efforts and surgeries aside, you're sort of either symmetrical or not.

“A girl I went to college with told me how, at age 21, she had started receiving Botox treatments. My eyebrows raised in surprise- hers obviously didn’t.”

But aging poses an interesting dilemma for all of us, particularly for women and even more particularly for women who have found an identity of sorts in being "attractive," or "pretty," or "hot." Google any former Playboy bunny or supermodel and you'll more than likely find a face and body mutilated by cosmetic surgery belonging to a woman trying to 'keep' what had benefitted them and been their identity for so long.

When I was younger than I am now, I read an interview of a then-seventeen year old Kylie Jenner where she said how much she feared getting older. And I can't help but feel, as my 20- and 30- something year-old peers are injecting here and injecting there, this fear of 'aging' is coming in hotter and faster than ever.

"Aerial"

A girl I went to college with told me how, at age 21, she had started receiving Botox treatments. My eyebrows raised in surprise- hers obviously didn't.

But as I approached my 30th birthday as a woman and an artist, this question plagued my mind...

What does aging mean to a woman?

The immediate answers that my mind volunteered made my stomach churn: Unattractive. Irrelevant. Nonexistent. 

After all, you see far more aged men in the media than you do women. And if there's anything worse than being hated, it's being deemed so insignificant as to be ignored completely.

It would seem that right as women glean some wisdom and life lessons that are truly valuable, they are getting the boot instead of a microphone. 

It feels sometimes as if the message that we're all receiving is: As women, when you age, the show's over. You're irrelevant now.

I wondered. Because I am aging and still have a lot to say.

On a different note, if I was attractive, but upon aging became 'unattractive' by traditional standards, would the kindness of strangers I'd received over the years disappear? Would the attention from men that I grew impatient with over the years vanish? Would I miss my old 'normal'?

“It would seem that right as women glean some wisdom and life lessons that are truly valuable, they are getting the boot instead of a microphone. ”

Salma Hayek once spoke of getting older and says that now when a man checks her out, it's a pleasant surprise that she enjoys, as opposed to her younger years when men would ogle her and she'd grow angry or annoyed. She, seemingly, is just happy to be seen once more.

It's an interesting experience to grow older as a woman and, unless we die tragically young, Botox or not, age is coming for us all. 

So I keep going back to the question: what does this mean to an artist? 

It means that I work through this process and these feelings on canvas, with the goal to emerge on the other side with a new understanding of age. 

Through my recent work, that is what I am doing.

“It’s an interesting experience to grow older as a woman and, unless we die tragically young, Botox or not, age is coming for us all. ”

"Aerial" is a piece that I completed on the topic of aging, based on a personal experience that I had in the days leading up to my 30th birthday. The story of "Aerial" can be found here.

“The fact is that aging as a woman is different than aging as a man... And I judge no woman on her journey through it.”

"DEAR SISTER" is a rebellious piece against the medical and cosmetic fraternities that tempt away the money from me and my fellow women in efforts to prevent or delay what is wholly inevitable: aging. I looked at the money pouring into the anti-aging industry and thought how, perhaps, there could be better uses of those funds- such as women establishing independent financial security or a flood of charitable giving towards one of many incredible charitable causes.

The story behind "DEAR SISTER" will be featured in an upcoming episode of “Art Explained.”

The fact is that aging as a woman is different than aging as a man. There are different dynamics at work. And I judge no woman on her journey through it.

The real beauty is that with the amount of women in art today being bigger than ever, we can shed light on this entirely female experience in ways that are novel to the art world, in ways that Picasso and Dali certainly never could.

We as female artists can pull back the curtain of this dark reality to the world, in an attempt to bring the light (and sanity) in.

So here's to taking you along with me in this journey of aging, for as long as God allows me on it, painting and exploring.

TRISHA WILES