are we EVER going to talk about the ageism against women properly?
bc it has been growing rampant in gen z and the arguments against it aren't exactly addressing the issue through examining the double standards people have for women and men.
yes, ageing is a privilege but i don't think that this argument is doing anything to dismantle the patriarchal mentality that is ingrained in our culture.
in many ways, people's counterpoint to "women expire after the xyz age" is basically "well, ageing is a privilege and natural so you should be ok with being an expired undesirable grandma whose only purpose is taking care of children bc at least you're not dead". we are never going to actually dismantle the ageism against women if this is our only argument.
we have to address the fact that women aren't allowed the same standards that men are.
men are allowed to have two types of desirability - a boy and a man. we don't say that men in their 50s look good *for* their age, we say that they grew well into their age, we simply say that they are attractive 50 years olds.
but women can only be and feel beautiful and desirable if they are young. if a woman in her 50s is objectively fine, we say that she looks good *for* her age, insinuating that there is no way she could ever *just* look good at 50, no "for"s, since she isn't 19-25 anymore and that's the only age range when a woman is truly attractive and desirable.
isn't this actually abhorrent? the fact that people can live up to about 100 years but women are taught to believe that only in 6 of these years they are in their prime? that patriarchy tells women that after their early 20s they are expired and the only valid way for them to be desirable and beautiful is to try to replicate the qualities of the 20 years old version of themselves that according to the same patriarchy, older women can no longer posses?
and the argument that women should not wish to be desirable at all in the name of feminism is very faulty, imo. it often comes from young and pretty women who don't really understand what being deemed "undesirable" in society means. the assumption that women being ok with the patriarchy telling them that they should feel expired after 25, should feel like they looked better in their 20s even if they take a better care of themselves now, should just do the "grandma" stuff while their male counterparts still get to experience romance and the life to its fullest, is not going to be some kind of a feminism win.
the "ageing is a privilege" has started to feel like an argument for women to once again settle for the bare minimum (at least you aren't dead) and conform to the unfair limitations the patriarchy forces on women.
i think what needs to change is us giving these misogynistic double standards any sort of validation. they are not rooted in some kind of universal truth about the inherent difference between men and women, they are rooted in patriarchy. we need to stop acting like younger and older women are in competition and start acknowledging that both are desirable and beautiful in their own ways.
i know that this post won't get much traction, but i feel like we need to talk about this topic more bc the internalized ageism that gen z women have is going to mess them up and the counterpoints to their assumptions are sometimes weak and unhelpful.
edit: thanks for yall's input in the reblogs! i would love to hear more from people so please feel free to reblog and say all that's on your mind regarding this subject since we really need to start addressing this and keep the conversation going!
❤️❤️🙌🏽