2 Ways Older Women Are Defying Ageist Beauty Standards

‘Advanced style’ and nudism couldn’t be more different, but they both help women embrace and accept their aging bodies

“What could older female consumers possibly teach us about being stylish?”

That’s what Ela Veresiu, an associate professor of marketing, wanted to know. So she delved into the world of the “advanced style” movement, in which older women deconstruct and defy gendered and ageist fashion and beauty standards as influencers on Instagram.

Miniskirts? Bold colors? Tight clothes? Fishnets? Stilettos? Flashy jewelry? Who says women can’t wear things like that after a certain age? Who says we’re doomed instead to adopt the shapeless, black, white and beige clothing that, like a character says in Nora and Delia Ephron’s Off Broadway show, “Love, Loss, and What I Wore,” announces to the world that “I give up”?

While upping style and beauty is one way for midlife and older women to lift a middle finger to those who insist “you can’t wear that,” much of it still is playing into our consumerist society.

I’d like to deconstruct and defy gendered and ageist fashion and beauty standards and feel good about my aging body, too, but I’d like to do that without consuming. One thing the pandemic has taught me is just how little I need.

A comment on my last column, Older Women Display Their Sexuality — Get Over It, opened my eyes to a way to do that, one that I (and probably a lot of other women) might never have considered — social nudism.

Stick with me on this!

Being naked in front of people you aren’t having sex with opens you up to a different kind of vulnerability (and a lot of women aren’t comfortable being naked in front of the people they are having sex with, so there’s that). V. Pendragon (who left the comment) discovered that when she began living in a clothing-optional community 12 years ago. Although she only gets naked before others at the community’s weekly dance parties (which COVID has temporarily disrupted), what she’s experienced doing that as a woman in her mid-70s who is disabled by scleroderma has been nothing but total acceptance. As she tells me:

“Here, it’s like I don’t even have crippled hands. There are so many variations of bodies and of ailments. We get people in wheelchairs, we have people with colostomy bags; you get all kinds of very visible maladies here. Nobody stares. Nobody would even dream of staring. Everybody is acutely aware of what it takes to be able to be naked in front of a bunch of people. Everybody in a place like this has said, I’m willing to be vulnerable, I’m willing to be open.”

I’ll be honest. While I don’t have any hang-ups walking around naked in front of my lovers and galfriends, doing that in front of my neighbors, even close ones, or strangers is just not me. Yet I enjoyed being topless on a beach on the French Riviera years ago, and I love skinny-dipping and then sunbathing naked on the rocks during the backpacking trip my friends and take every summer. One year, we surprised a few 30-something men who’d made their way to the lake just when we were in full display. After some apologies and nervous laughter, they left, and my friends and I joked about how we’d probably traumatized them for life: Who would want to see a bunch of middle-aged women naked?

All jokes aside, that response just plays into what Two Naturists Blog says keeps many women from taking part in nudism — the belief that “no one wants to see this” (aka an imperfect or aging body):

This loaded phrase of ‘no one wants to see this’ makes us furious, not at the speaker, but at a society which goes out of its way, for profit and/or control, to create and sustain such a mind-set. Because, let’s be honest, body negativity is promoted to women from the moment they become sentient beings.

Can you relate? Body negativity only gets worse as we age, and if you’re not feeling good in your own skin, it’s not only going to interfere with your sexual pleasure (and yes, we older gals still want sex), but life satisfaction in general.

To nudism’s credit, a recent study indicates that hanging out naked with other naked people of all shapes and sizes— not just the idealized body women believe we “should” have — makes us feel pretty good about our own body. And, in a complete reversal of the “advanced style” movement, nudism is also “a great leveler” — you can’t be judged for what you’re wearing.

That’s what British fashion photographer Amelia Allen discovered when she began taking photographs of naturalists. As she says:

“Nudity demands that we look the person in the eye, to assess them for who they are, not what they project. Shorn of clothing, people must connect as equals, regardless of wealth, occupation or status.”

There’s a lot to be said for that, as well as a willingness to be vulnerable before others.

“No one wants to see this.” “You can’t wear that!” — think of all the damaging messages women hear as we age. I call BS.

I greatly appreciate that for some women, living au naturel helps them accept and embrace their aging body and for others, it’s upping their fashion in a sassy, in-your-face way. What would help you?

Hey, I’m working on a book on changing the narrative about middle-aged and older women. Interested? Follow me here, on Medium, and on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. And if you’re interested in changing marriage, please check out the book I co-authored, The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels. You can support your local indie bookstore (please do) or order it on Amazon. We’re also on Audible.

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