#bye her a nice sunscreen or something for real skincare 😭

[femmesandhoney]

I can’t explain the sadness I feel that my mum is is obsessed with not looking old. Every time she says something about wrinkles or uses a new product or complains about having less eyelashes or eyebrows, I just…she says it’s skincare as excuse but it’s not skincare to worry about wrinkles and looking old. I’ve asked her before but she gets defensive and throws ‘my body my choice’ in my face. Ive even asked her if she’s not worried about making my niece feel she needs this stuff and she just says she (my niece) won’t.

I love her so much, but this just hurts. She’d hate if I said I didn’t think I was pretty or just didn’t like the way I look, but doesn’t get it when I say the same about her. And I can’t help but think her insecurity was built by the expectations of being a girl and society and I get so mad! The influence is so deep that now it’s here to stay and I’m angry!

The beauty industry is insidious and toxic and needs to die. Nothing wrong with skincare but everything else needs to burn. Generations of women are affected and they carry on the cycle whether they mean to or not.

I’m just so sad for her. And the millions of women and girls like her.

It's very depressing growing up and developing a feminist consciousness about stuff like that and seeing all the ways your female relatives behavior influenced your ideas and how you cannot change their minds. On one hand, some of the fears of aging for women can be understandable such as hair loss/thinning, most people man or woman take that seriously. When it comes to other signs of aging like lines and wrinkles, thats often more developed from society acting like those are unsightly for women. Its very sad bc you know she never saw older women taking pride in their appearances, since we love to hide older women like the plague. We shun them into lonely homes or care centers and say bye-bye. We do not let them grace our television screens, we do not take memorable photography of them, we make them witches in the societal imagination.

I'd advise you to compliment her as much as possible when you see her without makeup or just when shes doing her daily things, i think that will help her better than trying to tell her to not do certain things. When you get to a certain point, I think trying to help them reset their mindset about themselves more gently rather than by force is easier.

Im just saying our mothers and other relatives can be harder to get through to because aging can be a topic that we can get very defensive about, so just be mindful of that :( shes grown up and lived a long adult life with these ideas instilled in her, so just do your best helping her reeval her confidence and how she interacts w your younger relatives. Over time, hopefully she can find happiness with herself more securely.