I was 9 years old when *Anna Finch, arguably the most popular girl in my grade who occasionally gave me the opportunity to be friends with her, told me I didn’t “look black.” As the child of a white mother and black father growing up in Alabama, I immediately knew she intended this to be a compliment, which made me feel sick, but my 4th-grade brain wasn’t quite capable of articulating the offense. I knew I couldn’t take it as flattery, but Anna’s saccharine smile let me know that she didn’t particularly care. I bit my lip. I think I probably responded with uneasy silence, a staple of our relationship by that point, and we continued playing on our school’s playground. When I was a kid, and I didn’t have the right words to stand up for myself, or if I got overwhelmed by my own emotions, I just shut down. I told no one, kept it packed deep inside some space underneath my muscles, buried in the blood, and I carried on.
Years later, I found myself navigating these same brackish waters when I came out to my friends and began to hear, “Wow, really?? You don’t look queer!”, sung from the mouths of smiling faces, eyes bright and proud at the “praise” they were bestowing upon me. I was old enough now to know that there was a good reason I felt stung, a good reason I was never sure exactly how to respond; I grew up in the south, so I was used to people cradling me softly with one hand while pinching me with the other. But I had moved to NYC by this point and had started to find my community as I was finding myself, started to feel the real power of that blood splashing over my bones. I smiled tightly, changed the subject.
Now as a professional working actor in television, film, and stage with decades of work under my belt, I am more and more frequently confronted with the newest version of “Let Me Tell You Why Your Shame Doesn’t Make Me Uncomfortable”. It initially manifested itself as “You still look like you’re in college!”, followed in quick succession by “You don’t look 34 at all!”, “38?! You’re kidding!” and “OMG YOU’RE 39?!? THERE IS NO WAY YOU’RE 39!” Of course, they mean it as a compliment every single time. They always have. But I stopped taking these unsolicited remarks at face value long ago.
These days when I share my stories with other people, describe the pain of all the tiny invisible nicks that cover the surface of my skin (which I now know to call microaggressions), their faces fall into the expected folds of disgust about Anna’s blatant racism, about my friends’ unacknowledged homophobia. But they get stuck when I talk about the damage it does to listen to people tell me I don’t “look” my age. They wrinkle their eyebrows in forced sympathy, but most of them don’t truly recognize how harmful it is- they still consider it a compliment. Yes, looking younger than you actually are is considered a privilege across many cultures; it’s called ageism, and I call bullshit.
What I understand now at almost 40 that I couldn’t vocalize in the 4th grade is that when Anna told me I didn’t look black, she wasn’t insulting me, she was exposing herself for the racist her parents and community had raised her to be (she eventually confessed that she didn’t want to invite our classmate Shauntay to her birthday party because Shauntay was black and “actually looked it”. I paused and stared at her, confused, until she explained that “black people steal,” so she “didn’t want one” in her house). I also understand now that when my friends looked at me with pride in their eyes while congratulating me on the fact that I didn’t look queer, what they were actually saying is that queerness is something that clings to you, shameful, dark, and heavy and that no one should purposefully want to be associated with that kind of indignity. They were telling me it was okay that I was queer, as long as it wasn’t an identity that was obvious enough for unassuming straight people to recognize.
I’m sure you are reading this and thinking how awful, how horrible, how obviously devastating it would have been to have someone tell you that the parts of yourself you had learned to take pride in held no value, that these cornerstones of your identity were shameful. Clearly, blackness is nothing to be pitied, clearly, queerness is something to celebrate! Yet here I am, trying to understand how age is any different. What is so despicable about looking 37? 38? 39? Why wouldn’t I want to look 50 if that’s how old I am? We spend so much of our lives eating foods to nourish our bodies and working out to keep ourselves strong and reading books to keep our minds agile and going to therapy to make sure we have long, mutually beneficial relationships so that we can enjoy living on this earth for as long as we can, yet as our age climbs higher, we feel more and more embarrassed about it. Who started this? Who told us we could have both? We can’t. We don’t get to work towards living our healthiest, most sustainable lives while also condemning the fact that we are getting older; one begets the other. So why do we waste so much of our energy fighting against and hiding from and disparaging the fact that we are aging?
Oh, right, the patriarchy.
Our obsession with youth is a direct result of the patriarchal standards that have defined our culture for centuries, and aside from the fact that it inequitably impacts women and femmes, the standards are also patently false and impossible to live up to. When we comment on an older woman’s beauty, we often say that she is “aging gracefully,” but this, too, is an untruth, because what we usually mean is that she looks young. We mean that she doesn’t seem like she is aging much at all. We mean that she makes us feel more comfortable about how many years she has been on earth. We mean, ‘maybe there is a chance that we can get older and not feel bad about it’. But we will. We will always be fed the false narrative that perfection is just within arm’s reach, that once we buy that serum or take that class or read that book or hire that life coach, we can elevate ourselves to our most youthful, attractive, energetic selves. But understand that there is no end to that reach. Behind that bottle of serum is another, more expensive bottle. The class never actually ends. The book is just one in a long series.
Most of us know that traditional standards of beauty are directly related to their proximity to European whiteness, but I am realizing more and more that they are also directly related to youth, and the further women get away from looking like 20-year-olds, the less attractive most of society deems them. We are told that as we get older, our “grace” has nothing to do with the impact we have had on our communities, our art, our families, our relationships, our contributions to the world at large, or our worlds at small. As a man gets older, we treat the shiny salt in his beard as if he earned it steering ships through thunderous seas, the deepening furrow of his brow as if it made its’ appearance after years of battling international spies. Sometimes it seems like all a man has to do to “age gracefully” in our society is keep his hair trimmed and not wear velcro sandals. But women, on the other hand? Our gray hair and crow’s feet are proof that we have “let ourselves go”, our age spots remind everyone that yes, we will all die someday, our plump bodies serve as a manifestation of how asexual the world insists we have become.
Does it matter if we started writing poetry in our 60’s and found out we were actually good at it? If we helped save someone’s life, quietly and humbly? If we continued to show up for ourselves after years of timidity and finally achieved a level of peace that we had only dreamed of? Unfortunately, none of these accomplishments is more powerful in the eyes of the patriarchy than our breasts continuing to sit as pert as possible, even after bringing children into the world. I’m not a mom, but I imagine, “can you believe they had 5 kids?! They look so good!” is another backhanded compliment that makes the rounds pretty frequently. Why have we internalized the idea that being an actual vessel for life is something to be embarrassed about? Why can’t we celebrate the map of our lives painted across our bodies for all to see?
I am still struggling with how to respond to these comments that frame being 40 as some dreadful, secreted fact that shouldn’t be spoken about in more than a whisper. In my industry, youth is currency, and I acknowledge it as a privilege, just like my light skin, my able body, my cisgender, my neurotypical brain. But it’s not lost on me that so much of what is considered valuable in our culture are things we are completely powerless over. No one can help how they are born, what their genes look like, who their parents are. And we shouldn’t. Our ability to age gracefully should rely less on our closeness to conventional attractiveness, less on our closeness to youth, and more on what we have done with all the years we were lucky enough to accumulate on this earth.
Anna Finch wrote to me on Facebook several years ago, before I deleted my account. She started with something along the lines of “You probably don’t remember me, but we went to elementary school together…”. Amazing how one person’s forgotten memories can be another person’s linchpin. Anna was the first person to express to me in words her disdain for my identity, a contempt I had felt from strangers often, my skin burning from the stares that disgusted white people beamed at my family and me as we walked down the streets of Birmingham. But I had never heard it articulated to my face by someone I knew, someone I wanted to be close to, someone I was so desperate to be seen by. Anna had written to tell me how proud she was of me and my career. I promptly replied with the most scathing, angry words I could form into complete sentences, years of fury and hurt and bitterness raining out of my fingertips and onto my keyboard. And then I deleted it and closed my computer. I know that people, especially children, have the capacity to change for the better, and my hope is that Anna found her way down a path that brought her to a place of less hate and more peace, more compassion, more love. But it’s not my job to be her welcoming committee.
I am black, I am queer, and I am turning 40 on April 10th. I am proud of all of these parts of my identity, and I will be celebrating not how I look, nor how other people think I look, but how I feel. I met my partner 13 years ago, and in our time together, we have created the type of healthy, loving relationship that was never demonstrated for me as a kid. That is grace. I turned a childhood rooted in anxiety and fear into an adulthood, where I learned to channel my energy into making, creating art that has inspired and empowered me to no end. That is grace. I have always been guarded, suspicious, apprehensive of opening my personal world to more than a few people at a time, but I am consciously working to change that, to fight against the fear of being vulnerable to the most important people in my life. That is grace.
Aging gracefully doesn’t look like anything, it’s not young or old or ugly or pretty, male or female; it’s not on any binary. It’s just a sense, an awareness that we are striving to be better than we were yesterday and the yesterday before that. An acknowledgment that we can’t be where we are right now without all the years that came before it. A connection with the blood that has been racing through us from the moment we took our first breath up to this very day. A promise that we won’t ever disparage ourselves for being exactly who we are, where we are when we are. Because we deserve nothing less. Happy birthday, y’all.
*Name has been changed to protect this girl from my mom.
20 Comments
Well put. All if it. Happy birthday. And saving Anna from your mom – THAT is grace!
Haha, you know, re-reading this today, I realized that that specific experience might have been one of my first examples of ageing gracefully! Thank you so much for reading!
Beautiful essay. I definitely feel your pain, particularly on the ageism. I am also nearly 40 years old and a physician. Almost every week I have patients tell me I don’t look old enough to be a doctor. (I find this bold considering I’m usually about to biopsy their neck with a needle.) Anyhow, in my field, which was dominated by men for so long, to look young is to look less competent, less experienced, and less valuable. I am so over trying to justify my credentials despite my youthful appearance. Thank you for sharing your experience.
wow! I loved this. These words and wisdom, that is grace. Thank you.
Thanks so much for reading, Yvette!
I appreciate this so much. I am 36 years old with incurable cancer and really appreciate that aging is a privilege. Each birthday I reach is an accomplishment and I am proud to show them outwardly.
Christina! Thanks so much for reading this! Each birthday IS an accomplishment and I hope we get to a point where we as a society stop making derogatory jokes about ageing (“I’m celebrating my 16th anniversary of turning 29!”) and really, sincerely just bask in the glory of celebrating another year on earth surrounded by people who mean a lot to us.
I love this beyond words. Thank you.
Wow you are an amazing author! I love the way you use descriptive words. So refreshing to read. I’m so proud of you and all that you have accomplished in your life. You are an amazing young woman and an amazing actor. I’m sorry you have been through so much in your life. People can be cruel. It’s how you stand up and live a successful life that defines you. I hope you get to come back to the show. You will be missed. Keep us updated on where you’ll be acting. Blessings, Sue
I really enjoyed this. I’m a woman, turning 40 and proud this year. Happy birthday Jasika.
Your article is one of the most astute, refreshing pieces of writing I have read in a very long time. It spoke right to me heart and my mind, Thank you. I am going to turn 50 on Wednesday and also receive the comments about not looking 50, not acting 50, etc. I LOVE that I am about to be 50 and I am singing it from the rooftops!! Because I am petite in stature (4′ 11″), I have often been told that kids like me because I am not threatening looking, they think I am more like them because I am small, etc., not because I have an affinity for children and an innate talent for working with, understanding and loving them, nor because I have spent the last 25+ years of my life as an elementary, middle school and special educator. Thank you so much for your honesty and your exceptional article which will have me thinking and writing for days to come.
– Hope
Lovely essay. Sharing this is grace.
It seems trivial, comparing people to an inanimate object, but–
This piece reminds me of when I got a wok (many years ago), and read a Chinese perspective on Americans and their cookware. They thought it strange to try to keep things looking “like new”; that the stained, burned wok shows the good use to which it has been put, preparing food, nourishing people. That’s kind of how we try to keep people looking “like new.”
Also: I started getting gray hairs very early, possibly in my teens. I would look at the ads where a young woman (totally unlined face) would say “This gray hair makes me feel so old, I’m going to (get rid of it).” I may have tried coloring my hair ONCE, but mostly embrace it (now in my sixties, I wish it were more completely gray). I was surprised at my reaction to a young woman dyeing her hair a gray color. I resented it, feeling that I have earned mine!
WOW! Just WOW! Beautifully written and a truly inspiring story! Stay strong X
Jasika,
I think the first time I laid eye on you’re face was on “Fringe”. I fell hopelessly in love with what little I knew about you. I am a white man age 52 raised all over but born in Arkansas. I went to school in the south and I know the sting of being a poor white boy going to all black public schools in Louisiana. People are mean. Its in their nature some how. Not all of us are that way but far to many are. I am sorry that people have let you down in so many ways. As an adult you have found you’re place. I am glad that you are happy and well. That’s about all of us can hope for any more. I want to sew and have asked for a sewing machines lol but all I have is a embroider machine I bought my wife. Maybe someday. I keep her yarn for her crocheting.
Just thought I would say a few things and wish you a belated “Happy Birth Day!”
Tim
Thank you. This resonated deeply. I’m a teacher and I also get told on a regular basis that I (turned 40) don’t look old enough to be their son/daughters teacher. It’s annoying because it’s never the children who say this, always the parents.
But I just smile and move on.
Really nice. Aging is privileged with experience of life . Keep writing and expressing
Beautiful article. I look forward to sharing it with my friends!
Your article reminded me of a time when I was in brownies (back in the 1970’s) and a girl told me I didn’t “look” like I came from divorced parents. That little sentence changed in me how I interacted with the world from that day forward. (I did my best to be the “best” appearing girl from a “broken” family.)
As a 53 year old I learned a lot from you today to help me re-frame my own thoughts on aging (that I sometimes struggle with). Thank you for helping me grow in this journey.
❤️
Hi, thanks for the article. Tomorrow is my birthday. I’m turning 37. I know the “compliment” you look so much younger as well too. And I was grateful and confused at the same time. I think now it is time for me to stand to my age fully. Your article helps me a lot to stand more to myself and came in the right time! Thanks for sharing your thoughts 🙏 you’re so beautiful inside and outside. Wish you the best, Maria 😘
This is so beautifully written. I can relate so much to the aging part of what you’ve written, and can affirm that “you don’t look like you just had a baby!” is thrown around exactly the same way. Thank you for sharing this!
Thank you so much for this! I resonated so much with this piece. I get the “you look great for having 5 kids!” a whole lot- and it feels exactly as you have described! I’ve NEVER liked turning older since 25, and as someone who is getting ready to hit 40 this year, this has literally been the F word for me. Its been difficult for me to figure out exactly what I’m thinking and feeling. Thank you for helping put thoughts and words together and grow in my own self confidence and identity!