Chelsea Fagan: So I completely reject the concept and term "aging gracefully", and it is for three key reasons: The first being that I believe it is our duty as Americans to always question and silence our inner Calvinist. We are a country founded on a very specific interpretation of Christianity. And one of the impacts of that is that it turns essentially every aspect of our lives and bodies and outcomes into a question of moral or character failure. And the entire term "aging gracefully" implies that there is a more noble or worthy or moral way to age.

Which, especially for women, usually just implies more humble, conformist, and invisible. Even something as simple as having tattoos as you get older is perceived as not aging gracefully because we do not think that that conforms to a moral or character ideal of what an older person should do. Secondly, again, especially when it comes to women, most of what we talk about when we talk about aging gracefully comes down to a question of aesthetic, success, or subtlety.

For example, when you look at women in the public eye, you will often see them pit against each other as in one is aging gracefully, the other is not. And in most cases, both of the women being talked about have had some kind of cosmetic work done. We're usually just talking about which one's work has been more successful or more subtle, or as we just talked about, more neatly conforms with our very moralized idea of what an older woman should look like.

And the third reason I reject the concept of aging gracefully is because it fundamentally puts the  power in the hands of everyone around you. Whether or not someone is aging gracefully is left up to the public to decide. And for me, one of the best parts of getting older is you become less and less invested in other people's perception of you.

And if your version of being in, let's say, your 50s or 60s or beyond is wearing a miniskirt and going out dancing, that is exactly what you should be doing. And I personally don't like the word "graceful" at all as it pertains to how we live our lives. But if you want to talk about doing something well, quite frankly, nothing is more embodied and powerful than someone living in exactly the way that feels good to them, regardless of how other people perceive it.

And I would be remiss to not point out that we basically only use this term when talking about women because we're really only ever interested in policing women's choices right up until they die, basically. So anyway, fuck aging gracefully. You should age exactly as you want to.

Welcome to my 10-day video series all about getting older in a world that's so obsessed with getting young. To celebrate Season 2 of my podcast, "Just Getting Good", you can watch the full "Just Getting Good" series on YouTube by checking out the caption below.