I’m Aging Sexy
In December of 2021 at the end of what felt like a very long day of being a school social worker, I stood in front of an ever so temperamental copy machine trying as was quite common, to release paper jams. My lovely thirty something school principal Kesha stood beside me attempting to no avail, to help. As we yanked paper from the machine and chatted, I happened to mention that I was going to be fifty in June. I’ll never forget that moment when Kesha looked at me and said “really fifty, wow, you’re aging well”. My reply came as a complete surprise to even me; having never said these words before, “no… I’m aging sexy”. We giggled and went our separate ways. I wondered, where on earth those words had come from?
Later on that evening sitting cross legged folding laundry on my bed, the conversation gently floated back into my thoughts, “aging sexy hmmm, it feels so right and yet so wrong.” What kind of fifty year old woman refers to herself as "aging sexy”? Could I be so bold as to own that title? Maybe even change my usernames on social media and start to talk and write about the way I felt about aging. To say I weighed and worried about what other people might think, is an understatement. After all, women can be sexy, that’s allowed and even celebrated; but to verbally lay claim to our own sexiness, to fully own it with a name, to put it in writing, that was a whole other thing.
The societal messages had been clear, so I, like so many of you, spent my life walking the tightrope of being allowed to feel good about myself, but not too good. I was supposed to be proud, but also humble at the same time. Creativity was encouraged, but only while withholding the most honest parts myself. I could dress sexy as long as I hid my nipples, my not so flat belly and the outline of my full vagina. I should shine, but not too brightly of course. Somehow all of these rules seemed designed, to never make another woman question the way in which she saw herself.
Regardless of how we choose to live, women are judged. That is after all what we have been raised to do, to brutally judge ourselves and those around us. Yet at that moment, six months before my fiftieth birthday, I made a decision. I was no longer willing to play small. I would here on in, be living out loud. Because while it’s true, I am aging well and gracefully and even like fine wine, but what I really am... is Aging Sexy!