When I first received the pictures from this photoshoot (which, for the record, I absolutely adore), I momentarily considered asking the photographer to touch up my face. While I got over this reaction almost immediately, I cannot deny this happened*. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t have that impulse because I thought I looked ugly (this has happened on countless occasions), but because I looked old. Or perhaps more precisely, I looked my actual age: in the harsh light outside, you can pretty much count every single one of my 41 years on my face.

For someone who is extremely serious about women’s right to age and still be valued as they do so, this was a bit scary. I mean, not what I looked like in the picture (it was specifically the cover picture for this post), but my own reaction to it. It made me think about ageing in general and my own aging in particular – or perhaps this was just a trigger and these thoughts have been lurking around for a while.

I’m not a person who’s consciously worried about ageing and I didn’t feel any dread when I turned 30, 35 or 40. If I’m completely honest, have always found the drama around these milestones a bit silly. In most ways, I am in a much better place today than I was ten or twenty years ago: more mature, more confident, fitter, kinder, better informed. What I have realised, though, is that ignoring the aging process is also not the right way to go about it.

I obviously do not mean I will suddenly start dressing ‘age-appropriately’ (I despise this phrase with all of my being) or that certain behaviours should be off limits for middle-aged women purely because they are in their middle age. This is obviously complete misogynistic bullshit. What I mean is that change is happening, even if one isn’t thinking about it or even registering it and ignoring this process can at some point cost a lot.

I feel it mostly physically**: I have always been very proud of my extraordinary capacity for work and it is still remarkable, but I find it’s no longer quite the same as 15 years ago. I have to take care of myself better – sleep a bit more, eat more regularly, work out, to be able to work the same hours. I have come close to burnout at least once, partly ebcause I didn’t realise that I cannot push myself exactly the same way that I used to.

This state of affairs is intertwined with a certain reluctance to work these kinds of hours in the first place, to be so insanely dedicated and professional and always on. And this reluctance in itself is a product of age: I do not want to live exactly as I did when I was 25, and that can also be something that takes a bit of time to understand and awknowledge. If you keep thinking that age is just a number – although in many ways it is -, it can prevent you from having conversations with yourself that you should in fact be having and lock you into a person you no longer are or even want to be.

Mentally, too, I feel things have changed, although here the different threads are more difficult to pick apart. Mostly, I am calmer, more reasonable and more self-assured than I’ve ever been in my life. The overall trend since my teens has definitely been an upward-moving one. But recently, I find I am more anxious than I used to be, a bit less resistant to stress. I don’t know if this is ageing or perhaps the impact of the pandemic or a combination of both, the last one sounding the most likely. 

I am not writing this post to say that I have been fooling myself for years and now, I have finally seen the light and realised that alas, I, too, must accept that I will grow old and die and it’s all horrible. Not at all. Well, I WILL grow old and die, but as I said, so far it’s been all a net gain. I have nothing but pity and incomprehension – and occasionally rage – for people who think that older women cannot be beautiful or sensual or rule the world. Few things make me argue with strangers on the Internet these days, but individuals who tell women they have to dye their gray hair (because otherwise they are disgusting, apparently), still trigger me enough to go and do just that.

I am writing this post to remind myself – and hopefully others – to pay close attention to ourselves, to be selfish in the best way and make sure that we know what we need and to provide that as much as possible. Admitting that what you need is different from what you needed ten or twenty years ago is not weakness, it’s wisdom.

Coda.

I was on the train from Paris to Brussels, reading John le Carré’s last book, Silverview. In it, he describes a gorgeous mature woman (well done, John), which made me think how much I myself am drawn to women who are no longer 20. It’s not that I cannot tell that young women in magazines or on Instagram are beautiful. I am not blind and I am acutely aware of what the Western societies consider attractive. It’s just that this beauty very rarely does anything for me these days (it sometimes still does, more in the case of actresses than models), almost every time I discover myself gasping at a picture or staring at a woman on the street, it’s someone a bit older. A case in point, the lady sitting opposite me on the train: olive skin, a fantastic mess of slightly curly dark brown hair, beautiful kohl-rimmed eyes; in a suptous gray sweater, reading a book. I guess it must be the fact that I do not identify with these young women any more, they do not interest me because their beauty is in a different category, something I have left behind. I find this encouraging, proving that it is not youth that I covet (although one can of course claim that coveting beauty is equally problematic). It also makes me think, there on the train, of types of dressing where being older is an advantage. One, I think, is the type represented by the lady on the train – a quiet luxury. The other is the opposite in many ways: I find that doing drama with conviction is easier the older you get. It’s not that women in their twenties cannot wear a dress of red marabou feathers or diamonds a la Elizabeth Taylor, and many would wear them well. But I maintain that they look different and more interesting on women who have lived longer. It’s in this spirit, that I present to you my best take on an aging silent movie star look with this cape to end all capes. 

Cape and dress by Aldo Järvsoo, scarf (worn as a turban) and earrings by Tanel Veenre. Images Getter Raiend, makeup Grete Madisson (the lips painted by me). A million thanks to Sõjamuuseum for hosting us.

*For the record, I’ve never asked my face to be changed in editing, apart from one time when I was scowling so intensely that I looked almost comical. I asked it to be toned down a notch, although the scowl is still there.

**I realised when rereading this piece that this may not sound like a physical issue to others, but for me it is: I feel it’s specifically my body shutting down after months of intense work, while the mind is still OK to go on.