Who Appointed You the Aging Gracefully Police?

When my husband died at sixty, there was one sentence I heard over and over again: "Sixty is far too young to die."

Those words have stayed with me for years. I agreed then, and I still do. But lately I've found myself thinking about them for an entirely different reason.

A few weeks ago, I read an opinion piece about Madonna. The author, a much younger woman, described Madonna as one of her idols before criticizing her for not "aging gracefully." I wasn't particularly interested in debating Madonna's appearance, but that phrase stuck with me.

What exactly does "aging gracefully" mean? Who decides what qualifies? Is it gray hair? No Botox? No fillers? Giving up bikinis? Dressing differently? Stopping dancing? Becoming quieter or less visible as the years go by? Is there really a point in life when we're expected to stop being ourselves simply because enough birthdays have passed?

And, while we're at it, who appointed you the Aging Gracefully Police?

Then the other night I saw a video of Jennifer Lopez performing at one of her concerts. She was wearing one of her usual stage outfits and dancing exactly the way people have been paying to see her dance for decades. The comments underneath the video were awful. People called her disgusting, desperate and old. They told her to "act her age." Someone actually wrote, "Please burn my eyes."

I honestly couldn't understand the outrage. If Jennifer Lopez walked out on stage in sensible shoes, stood behind a microphone and gently swayed to the music for two hours, wouldn't the audience feel cheated? Isn't that exactly what they didn't pay to see? Jennifer Lopez has built her career around performing, dancing, energy and sexuality. That's who she is. Why should reaching a certain age suddenly require her to become someone else?

What surprised me even more was how many of the comments came from women. Why are we still doing this to each other?

Women know better than anyone what it's like to have our appearance picked apart. We're too fat or too thin. We're wearing too much makeup or not enough. We're too ambitious, too emotional, too sexy or not sexy enough. After spending our lives being judged by impossible standards, why are we so willing to turn around and impose another set of standards on women simply because they're getting older?

Maybe there's something deeper going on. Maybe aging itself frightens us.

When we're young, old age feels like something that happens to other people. It's hard to imagine looking in the mirror one day and seeing an older face looking back. But if we're lucky, that's exactly what's going to happen.

The people mocking a 60-year-old woman today will be 60 themselves one day, if they're fortunate enough to get there. And when they do, do they seriously think they're going to care what a 30-year-old thinks they should wear, how they should dance or what they should do with their face?

Think about it another way. How many 30-year-olds are asking teenagers whether they approve of the way they dress or behave? Probably not many. So why would anyone imagine that another thirty years of living is suddenly going to make them more interested in the opinions of people decades younger than they are?

Trust me. They won't.

Years ago, my father said something to me that I've never forgotten. He said, "One day you look in the mirror and you see an older man, but inside you're still that eleven-year-old boy."

At the time I smiled, but I don't think I really understood what he meant. I do now.

I think that's one of the strangest things about getting older. The reflection changes, but you don't wake up one morning feeling like some completely different person called "old." You still laugh at the same things. You still get excited. You still fall in love. You still enjoy music, dancing, sex, adventure and trying something new. You're still you.

Yet somewhere along the way, people begin treating age almost like a diagnosis.

You turned sixty. Something must be different now. Maybe you should slow down. Maybe you shouldn't wear that. Maybe you shouldn't dance like that. Maybe you should start "acting your age."

But sixty isn't a disease. Neither is seventy or eighty. They're ages. If we're fortunate, we arrive at them one birthday at a time.

Of course our bodies change. Pretending otherwise would be ridiculous. Our skin changes. Our hair changes. We may not move quite as effortlessly as we once did. But why should physical change mean we have to stop doing the things we love?

Maybe instead of watching Jennifer Lopez dance and looking for evidence that she isn't the performer she was at twenty-five, we could look at the woman who's standing on that stage today. She's still dancing. She's still performing. People are still buying tickets to see her. Isn't that something worth celebrating?

The truth is, none of us gets to avoid aging. If we're fortunate, we'll all experience it. There is only one way to remain forever young, and I don't think any of us would choose it.

That's why I think we should be a little more careful about what we criticize. The younger woman laughing at an older woman's face today will someday see that same aging process in her own mirror. The person saying Jennifer Lopez is "too old" to dance will someday reach an age when someone younger may decide they're too old to do something they love.

I hope they do it anyway.

Growing older isn't the alternative to youth. It's the alternative to dying young. I learned that lesson in a way I wish I hadn't.

So if sixty is far too young to die, surely it's far too young to stop living. Instead of criticizing people who are fortunate enough to still be dancing, performing, falling in love, dressing however they please and doing the things that bring them joy, maybe we should applaud them.

If we're lucky, one day we'll be the ones still dancing.

And when that day comes, I hope the Aging Gracefully Police have finally retired.