There’s No Way to Be a Woman in This World

Time is linear and that's such a drag

Time is linear and that’s such a drag. There’s a beginning and an end, and when it comes to the “end” of our time on earth, there is only a vast chasm of the unknowable and that’s fucking terrifying. Sometimes, if I let my mind wander to that place, I’ll think, “One day, I won’t be here. I just won’t… be.” And I let myself stay there in that space for a moment, until the center of my chest fills with the blackness I assume my entire being will be enveloped in one day. But I only let myself stay there for a very brief stint of time, because it’s too unknowable and too scary and there doesn’t exist a single person on this earth that can make it less so.

This blackness, this feeling of existential dread that no one can help you escape, is the only thing that makes the way we expect women to stop aging make sense—because no one wants to die. I’m taking liberties with that statement, because there’s no way it can be true, but for the sake of this argument let’s embrace it as fact. No one wants to die. It’s why we lament that youth is wasted on the young, it’s why we look at pictures of our 20-year-old tits and wonder if we knew they were so perky at the time, it’s why every year that brings us closer to that linear end starts to feel like a slow burning fuse that’s speeding up and heading for destruction. Self preservation would dictate that we’d like to slow that fuse down, no? To stop our trajectory toward that vast, infinite, unknowable chasm?

This is a lot of stream of consciousness to get me to the place where I talk about Madonna’s face. Madonna’s face is making everyone realize that they too will die some day, and people hate it. We love our icons, but we hate to see them age, and when they happen to be women, we simply don’t allow it. So when you have an aging icon, doctors who will do literally anything to your face that you ask, and a lot of people who are not okay with women aging (but also not okay with them trying not to age), you’re going to get the uproar like we’ve seen recently over Madonna’s face.

madonna

A post shared by Madonna (@madonna)

If you somehow avoid the internet, you may not have seen the news that Madonna dared show her face on stage at the Grammys on Sunday night, and it made news. Never mind that she’s Madonna and it was the Grammys and she’s fucking Madonna. She has what some deem to be too much filler in her face, her cheeks are too full for her age or something, and people don’t like it. So rather than focus on the importance of the moment—that Madonna was introducing the first trans woman to ever perform on the Grammys stage—people focused on her face. Specifically, the work they assume she’s had done.

“Once again I am caught in the glare of ageism and misogyny That permeates the world we live in,” Madonna responded on Instagram after the show. “A world that refuses to celebrate women past the age of 45 And feels the need to punish her If she continues to be strong willed, hard-working and adventurous.”

It’s not Madonna’s responsibility to make us all feel like we’re going to live forever. No one would be batting an eye at her transformation if they still felt like it looked “natural.” We hate that it doesn’t and that she hasn’t allowed us to believe that stopping time is possible. It’s not. We hate that she’s getting old, because if Madonna can get old, then so can we. Yes. We can and we will. Fuck, this is exhausting.

If you can just look 30 forever, even though we know that’s not possible, if you can just somehow get some superior work done to your face that allows you to stop time without it being obvious that you tried, we’re okay with it. But goddammit, if we have to see all the work you’re trying to do to stay young, well that is just not okay. Jennifer Lopez and her perfect 50-year-old-ass-that-still-looks-30 is going to die, too. And so is every other woman who manages to pull off modifications to their faces or bodies to make it appear as if they haven’t aged. But when we look at them, we’re not reminded of it.

Why are men immune from this conversation? That’s a whole different post I’m too exhausted to attack today.

TLDR: Leave Madonna alone. Yes, we will all be dead someday.

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