Oliver: What does ‘aging gracefully’ mean? It’s a matter of following your own path

Aging gracefully. What exactly does that mean?

The societal rules about appearance aren’t applied equally to both sexes. We learn this almost instinctually from the time we can recognize the difference between a Barbie doll and a Ken doll.

Barbie requires far more maintenance. Barbie is expected to “keep up appearances,” as the saying goes. Makeup. Pantyhose. Hair products. Spanx. High heels. The list goes on and on.

Just watch a few minutes of Instagram or Tik Tok and you know what I mean. Someone is always trying to tell us how we’re supposed to achieve whatever look is trending.

Of course, not every girl grows up to follow these unspoken rules. A lot of us, myself included, find that we play the game for a while and then decide it’s not worth the fuss.

Sometimes it’s a matter of where we are in the stream of life. It’s hard to be “put together” when we’re dealing with young children or serving as a caregiver and never seem to leave the house.

At some point, we women reach that proverbial fork in the road when it comes to aging and our appearance. How hard do we want to fight the inevitable? We know we can’t turn back time, but how hard do we want to try to slow it down?

For a lot of us, that question begins the first time we find a gray hair. Of course, that can be in one’s 20s, so it’s still a bit of an existential question then. When the grays start coming in more frequently, the question becomes whether to begin coloring, highlighting or otherwise masking the “problem.”

For a lot of women, it’s a no-brainer. Usually, though, these are the gals who had been coloring or highlighting their hair for years.

I’ve never been one of those girls. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. It’s just that I’ve always loved my hair color. And I’ve never had the time, desire or money to want to maintain a different color.

My mother used to color her hair, and I saw what a messy, time-consuming task it could be. I also saw how lovely her gray hair became in the years she lived with me. Gorgeous, multi-tonal grays. If I can’t have pure white hair, I’d be happy if my hair looked like my mother’s did.

In my 40s, when the grays were not super obvious but still there, I had people telling me that I’d look younger if I colored my hair. I just shrugged.

I was overjoyed when Andie MacDowell started appearing with her glorious curls au naturel, wearing the gray like a badge of honor. Like a lot of people, at first, I was taken aback. But then I just about did a happy dance. Here was a woman who was embracing the aging process. And a beautiful woman, to boot.

Of course, we don’t need a celebrity’s permission to do anything. However, there’s something empowering about seeing someone in the public’s eye pull off the thing you’ve decided you want to do.

With makeup, things become trickier as wrinkles appear. What used to work for years suddenly doesn’t look so good as it collects in those new “valleys.”

Then along came Pamela Anderson. Who knew that the “Baywatch” babe would become one of my role models for aging gracefully?

Anderson, I must admit, had not been my favorite person back in the day. In fact, she embodied much of what I didn’t like about society’s standards of beauty and presentation.

Then, lo and behold, in the past couple of years she started appearing out in public with a completely different look.

To call it shocking would be an understatement. Here was a beautiful woman without any makeup on. Not only that, but it was someone not exactly known for that.

I could not love her more. I hope that her example allows women the grace to follow their own path in aging. At least now we’re seeing it done a different way.

For me, I’ll allow my long, curly locks to gray naturally. As for makeup, well, that’s on a day-by-day basis these days. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition.

However, I’m thankful to MacDowell and Anderson for setting a standard of aging gracefully that I can happily live up to.

• Joan Oliver is the former Northwest Herald assistant news editor. She has been associated with the Northwest Herald since 1990. She can be reached at jolivercolumn@gmail.com.