The Truth About Aging, Beauty, and Boudoir
The Truth About Aging, Beauty, and Boudoir
When I ask clients about how they want their photos to look, a response I often get is “make me look younger.” There is often a laugh or a joking tone to their voice.
As a boudoir photographer, it’s not just my job to take pretty photos. It is also my job to analyze what people say versus what they mean, and use it to liberate them and love them.
When clients ask me to make them appear different than they are (thinner, curvier, younger, or some other thing they believe they need but do not have), what they are really saying is this:
“I feel insecure and intimidated by this process. I’m struggling with how vulnerable this is for me.”
If you’ve ever asked a hairstylist or a tailor or another photographer to change the exterior perception of you, it’s because you’ve been taught to believe you aren’t good enough just being you. Maybe you heard a response that they would fix you or “make you pretty.” Or maybe you heard something dismissive like, “Oh stop it! You’re beautiful!” That second statement isn’t wrong, and also, it IS their job (and my job) to make you feel good by showing you the parts of yourself that you love and refining them in a creative and artistic way.
But I want to challenge you and ask you this question: Why do you want to look younger than you are?
Who were you when you were younger? Were you happier? Often when these questions are asked, my clients seem like they are thinking about it for the first time. Their responses may surprise you (or maybe they won’t). The answer is almost always no.
I hear things like 10 years ago, she was stuck in a loveless marriage she didn’t know how to get out of. I hear her talk about how she felt like a doormat to her family and boss and coworkers. Sometimes people even hire me to celebrate finally getting their life back after leaving some person or situation that they never thought they could escape.
The reason some clients want to look younger is because despite all of that pain they carried around when they were younger – all the insecurity and uncertainty and fear -- they felt more physically desirable. They felt like their appearance still gave them options, and that aging means those options are dwindling.
It’s important, especially as women, that we don’t tie youth to desirability or value. Not just because that is self-abandoning and impossible, but because if we are growing, we don’t WANT to be younger, we don’t WANT to be more naïve, we don’t WANT to have the boundaries or views or live the life we lived years ago.
I’m a young person who gets told they look younger than they are. I also get told that people didn’t expect me to be smart or capable and were pleasantly surprised by what I do or how I see the world, as if I am supposed to respond back with “THANK YOU!” Older women also have said to me unsolicited “well you’re so tiny” or “you have a nice little figure” or “if only I still looked like that.” The deeper I walk through life with an awareness of the patriarchy and our internalized misogyny, the more these things hurt instead of feel like compliments. They don’t realize they are saying “life must be easier for you because men sexualize or idealize you more; I wish I had that too.”
That’s not flattering. That’s sad.
Nobody should wish they were less experienced, less wise, less self-assured and less accomplished because it made other people desire them or want to possess them.
I think these things women say to each other and about themselves in our presence, give us the gift of opening up a really good, connective dialogue about valuing women as people, and destigmatizing age, puberty, body type, motherhood and on and on.
The older we get, the more self-sufficient and less tolerant of bullshit we become. Women are supposed to take care of everyone else while also making them feel needed, all while fighting the natural visual cues of the life we have lived. Age, experience and motherhood blots out those traits that toxicity exploits, and we become less easy to control.
It’s not about how we look, if we really dig deep down.
Getting older helps us to make our sensual expression about what we want – not what other people want from us.
And that doesn’t need to be changed or fixed at all.
