Thanks, I’ve Moisturized
I’ve spent the better part of four decades being told I don’t look my age. ID’d well into my forties. Colleagues doing the math twice when I tell them about my adult kids (and granddaughter). There’s a particular satisfaction, if I’m being honest, in the pause before someone’s face rearranges itself into surprise. You’re how old?
Yes. I know. Thanks, I’ve moisturized.
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So, when a perfectly pleasant gentleman looked at me last week and said, “You’re at least 50, right?” - I nearly swallowed my tongue.
At least 50. At least.
I smiled, nodded and moved on to the next conversation. And then I went home and stood in front of the magnifying mirror in my bathroom (come on … you know you’ve got one), and I did what any self-respecting woman who has spent months writing a book about breaking free from the approval of others would do.
I completely rethought my skincare routine, drank a huge glass of water with electrolytes, and wondered how quickly I could get a Botox appointment.
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The Good Girl doesn’t just show up in my professional life, swallowing opinions and laughing at jokes that aren’t funny. She’s in my bathroom, my living room, my bedroom, my kitchen. She is thorough.
We’re taught early - so early that surely it’s fact - that a woman’s beauty is a component of her worth. Not the only component. We’re smart enough to know that. But the reminder is constant. It’s on the ‘Gram. It’s in the commercials. It’s in the clothing that’s “right-sized” for vanity. It doesn’t ask permission to move in. It just does, and then it makes itself very, very comfortable.
I’d been ahead of the curve for so long that I’d confused the reprieve of looking young for an all-out escape from the system that made looking young matter in the first place.
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There’s a whole chapter in The Good Girl Exit: Why Being Good Isn’t Working about beauty - about what we inherit when we inherit these standards, and what it costs us to keep paying into them. I won’t give it away here. But I will say that I didn’t fully understand what I’d written until a stranger told me the truth in an office building, and my first instinct was to make sure it never happened again.
That instinct? That’s not vanity.
That’s a Good Girl who built part of her identity on criteria the system handed her and hasn’t quite decided yet what to build instead.
I could tell you I’m 100% okay with aging. That I’m proud of the little wrinkles at the corners of my eyes and the loss of elasticity in my neck.
And on some days, I really am.
But other days - like the one I just described - it takes me down a couple of notches. The old math kicks in: If I’m not young and beautiful, then am I old and ugly?
No.
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But I notice how quickly the mindset rises up. How automatic it is. How little effort it takes for a stranger’s offhand comment to send me straight back to the mirror, tallying what I’ve lost instead of what I know.
That’s the thing about the Good Girl. She doesn’t announce herself. She just quietly picks up the hyaluronic acid, deep peel, super moisturizing mask, slathers it on - and wonders how long it’ll take to smooth it all out again.
The work of The Good Girl Exit isn’t learning to love your crow’s feet. It’s noticing who/what handed you the mirror in the first place.