Â鶹Éç

Available for over a year

Good morning. Nora Ephron wrote a book about ageing called ‘I feel bad about my neck.’ After watching the BAFTA awards at the weekend, I’m thinking of writing one called ‘I feel bad about my forehead.’ Age defying and ageless are adjectives that have been approvingly doled out in the aftermath of the awards and are still preoccupying social media and adding inches to news columns. No doubt they'll be repeated too after the forthcoming Oscars. Who wore what is always an annual cause for interest at these events, but for women the question, who still looks young is also a preoccupation. Fashion designer Vera Wang, who is 74, was hailed as ‘immortal’, and praised for appearing to ‘age backwards.’ In a world where representation matters, I wish I could see more women in the public eye and on my social media feeds with foreheads like mine; indelibly etched with the lines from 44 years of frowning and eye-brow raising. Instead, what I increasingly see are heads which are smooth, unblemished and wrinkle free. It’s hard not to feel bad about my own ageing when it seems to only be happening to me. Is this a vain thought? Probably. I’m only human, and if we live long enough to not be young our faces provide ample evidence of it. Our current cultural distaste for ageing isn’t something I find reflected within Christianity, which tells me that God values me no matter how wrinkly my forehead. A tradition which includes the stories of older women such as Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, and Sarah, wife of Abraham, who are known best for birthing babies beyond menopause, but who are inspirational because they were chosen to be repositories of new life and possibility, despite their age. Their wrinkled bodies were valued enough to be integral to the story of God, and this is something to hold onto when I’m scrutinising my face in the mirror. Did I prefer how I looked when I was younger? Yes. Do I want to be that young woman more than the middle-aged woman I am now? Not one bit. This is who I am, after the veneer of youth has been sanded away by time. Ageing is the price to be paid for a long life well lived, and the experience and wisdom that you pick up along the way. For me, it’s a sacred exchange. I am exactly who God made me to be. For all of us, with every passing year, with every new grey hair and with the deepening of every wrinkle, we’re all only human, privileged to be ageing at all.