The Anti-Aging Industrial Complex Is Gaslighting Women Over 40

Apparently, somewhere around 40, my face became a problem that needed a project manager. There’s the retinol for the wrinkles, serum for the dark spots, cream specifically for my neck because regular moisturizer apparently stops working at the jawline, collagen powder for whatever structural emergency is happening from the inside, and a red-light mask that makes me look like I’m about to interrogate someone on a spaceship. My hair would also like to remind me that it is turning gray, my eyelids have reportedly become “hooded,” and there is now something called “crepey skin,” which I was blissfully unaware I needed to fear until the internet informed me. I was just over here getting older like some kind of idiot.

And apparently, I’ve been doing it all wrong.

Because aging as a woman has somehow become less of a biological process and more of an ongoing home-renovation project where the home is your body and the contractor keeps finding new shit wrong with it. Fix the forehead lines. Tighten the jawline. Brighten the skin, whiten the teeth, cover the gray, firm the arms, flatten the stomach, lift the butt, plump the lips, restore the volume and, for the love of God, do something about your neck. You can buy creams, supplements, injections, lasers, peels, masks, rollers, patches and devices promising to “reverse,” “repair,” “restore,” “renew” and “turn back time.” Turn back time to what, exactly? Twenty-seven? Because I was there once, and frankly, I remember making some questionable decisions.

Here’s where it gets interesting: while women are being encouraged to embrace aging, an enormous amount of money is simultaneously being made convincing us not to look like we're doing it. AARP research involving more than 7,000 American women found that the most commonly identified beauty standard was reducing signs of aging, cited by 48% of respondents; Botox and fillers came right behind it at 44%. In other words, “love yourself exactly as you are” apparently comes with an asterisk reading unless your forehead moves. We are being sold acceptance with one hand and correction with the other.

And women over 40 aren't exactly sitting on the sidelines of this economy. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, people ages 40–54 accounted for about 5.6 million neuromodulator injections such as Botox in 2024 — 57% of the total performed by ASPS member surgeons. They also accounted for half of hyaluronic-acid filler procedures and 45% of liposuction procedures. ASPS itself describes Gen X as driving the majority of cosmetic procedures in 2024.

Now, before someone comes for me with a syringe in one hand and a Sephora rewards card in the other, I am not anti-Botox. I am not anti-makeup, anti-hair dye, anti-serum, anti-plastic surgery or anti-do-whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-your-own-face. If Botox makes you happy, Botox the shit out of it. I have products in my own bathroom promising things that would probably require minor intervention from God. The problem isn't women wanting to feel good in their own skin. The problem is how extraordinarily profitable it has become to make women afraid of looking old.

And that distinction matters.

Because the message isn't usually, “Here's something fun you might enjoy.” It's “Here's something you should probably start fixing before it gets worse.” Preventative Botox. Age-defying serum. Wrinkle correction. Firming treatment. Anti-aging cream. We have taken completely ordinary evidence of having remained alive — wrinkles, gray hair, changing skin, changing bodies — and given it the vocabulary of damage. And once something has been labeled damage, someone can conveniently sell us the repair.

The World Health Organization defines ageism as stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination based on age, and says those stereotypes don't just affect how we see other people; they can become internalized and influence how we see ourselves and what we believe we're capable of doing. That last part should get considerably more attention. Because ageism isn't always someone telling a 62-year-old woman she's too old to do something. Sometimes it's the 62-year-old woman quietly deciding it herself before anybody gets the chance.

And women have been given plenty of material to work with. A WHO framework on women and aging noted a particularly ugly gender difference: prevailing attitudes have historically portrayed men as gaining wisdom as they age while women become increasingly invisible, partly because women's value has been so closely tied to youth, beauty and reproduction. AARP's research isn't exactly reassuring either: two-thirds of women 50-plus say they rarely or never see themselves represented in today's media, and they believe older women are authentically represented only 31% of the time. We spend decades barely showing women what aging can look like, then act surprised when they're terrified to arrive there.

So we learn the rules. Gray hair on George Clooney? Distinguished. Gray hair on a woman? Have you considered a root touch-up? Lines around a man's eyes suggest character; lines around ours launch an Instagram ad featuring a woman staring sadly into a mirror. A man gets older and becomes a silver fox. A woman gets older and apparently needs peptides.

Then there's my personal favorite: “You look great for your age.” It's meant as a compliment, and most of us have probably happily accepted it as one. But buried inside it is the assumption that looking our age would be unfortunate. Imagine telling someone, “You look great despite being 52.” That's basically what we're saying with better manners. And we've heard versions of it so many times that we rarely even notice.

Here's the part that pisses me off.

While women are being encouraged to devote enormous amounts of money, attention and mental bandwidth to making sure nobody notices we're aging, there are things happening inside our bodies that deserve our attention far more than the wrinkle between our eyebrows. Muscle matters. Bone matters. Balance matters. Cardiovascular fitness matters. Mobility matters. The ability to get off the floor matters. Carrying groceries matters. Picking up your grandkids matters. Being able to haul your own suitcase through an airport at 73 matters a hell of a lot more than whether the woman sitting beside you thinks you look 58.

But strength doesn't sell fear nearly as efficiently as wrinkles do.

And maybe that's the realization I've been slowly stumbling toward as I get older: I don't actually want to look younger. I want to be capable longer. Those are two completely different goals. One asks me to spend the rest of my life looking backward, trying to preserve evidence of who I used to be. The other asks me to look forward and start building the woman I'm going to need twenty years from now.

Because here's the really weird part: women themselves seem to become increasingly comfortable with aging while the culture keeps insisting we shouldn't be. Recent AARP research found 76% of women 50-plus say they feel more comfortable in their own skin as they age, and 68% say they've grown substantially into their authentic selves. Earlier AARP research similarly found women over 50 were more likely than younger women to say they felt free to dress however they wanted and kinder toward their own bodies as they aged. Maybe women aren't actually failing at aging. Maybe we're getting pretty damn good at it.

Maybe the industry just hasn't caught up.

Because imagine what happens when millions of women stop believing youth is the prize. Imagine replacing “How do I look younger?” with “What do I want my body to still be able to do at 70?” Imagine walking into your 50s thinking less about erasing the evidence of the life you've lived and more about building the strength required for the life you haven't lived yet. Suddenly aging isn't something happening to you. It's something you're actively preparing for.

That doesn't mean throwing away the moisturizer. Please moisturize. Nobody needs to become unnecessarily crispy just to make a philosophical point. Dye your hair. Don't dye it. Get Botox. Don't get Botox. Wear makeup. Get the facelift. Buy the expensive serum because it smells amazing and makes you feel fancy. You don't earn some kind of Feminist Aging Merit Badge for refusing all of it.

The difference is knowing why you're doing it. There's a massive difference between “I like this” and “I'm terrified of what happens if I stop.” One is a choice. The other is a business model built around making sure women never quite feel finished fixing themselves.

So maybe the most rebellious thing a woman over 40 can do isn't “let herself go.” Maybe it's finally deciding where the hell she's going. Maybe she trains for the hike, lifts the heavy weights, wears the crop top, books the trip, learns something completely new, starts the business, grows the gray out or dyes it hot pink. Maybe she stops treating her younger self as the best version of herself and starts getting curious about the woman she hasn't met yet.

You are allowed to want to look beautiful. You are allowed to care about your skin. You are allowed to hate your gray hair. You are also allowed to love every damn wrinkle you've earned. None of those choices make you enlightened or shallow, feminist or anti-feminist, good at aging or bad at it. The point is that you get to decide what aging successfully means before somebody trying to sell you something decides for you.

Personally, I'm increasingly uninterested in aging gracefully. Graceful sounds like I should be sitting quietly somewhere in beige linen waiting to become wise. I would rather see how strong I can get, how many places I can still go and how much trouble I can cause when I get there. I don't need my 30-year-old face back. She had her turn.

I'd much rather build my 80-year-old legs.

And if I happen to do it wearing retinol, fabulous.