We all know that there are a lot of messages that women receive about what they should or shouldn’t be and do when they start getting older. While ideas about how long our hair should be or what we supposedly can and can’t wear are, thankfully, becoming more and more unaccepted, there are still a lot of unwritten, so-called, rules about how we should look as we age. Of course, part of this is based on what one classifies as “older,” and now Firefly cast member Jewel Staite (who now stars on 2022 TV schedule entry, Family Law) has roasted a post that added her to the “pretty older women” category at just 40 years old.
What Did Firefly’s Jewel Staite Say About Being Labeled A Pretty Older Woman?
Societal messages about how we’re all supposed to present ourselves to the world affect pretty much everyone. However, age and how old we look to people also usually comes into play when ideas of attractiveness are brought up (with stars like Jennifer Lopez continuing to wow into her 50s), and after the Kaylee Frye actress landed in a “pretty older women” Twitter post from a sub-reddit of the same name, she roasted the post in her response:
Look mom I’ve made it onto pretty older women https://t.co/nzitAphXHbDecember 17, 2022
Obviously, Staite looks great in the photo, which features a dreamily lit image of her posing on some stairs in nude lingerie. I think her response gets at two things, though. For one, who says that having such recognition for the sexy photo was even important to her? Maybe she just wanted a way that she could enjoy the look of her own self without staring into a mirror. Secondly? Who’s decided that she’s now “older”?
There’s nothing wrong with hitting more advanced ages. It is, after all, something we should all hope for, seeing as how our only other option in life is…well, not so great as far as we can tell. And, it’s not like she turned 40 in 1900, when the average life expectancy for white women in the U.S. would have given ladies of her age just a little over eight more years. She’s 40 now, when people typically have a lot more living they can do for many, many years (Janet Jackson had a baby in her 50s). We’re not living in a Logan’s Run society (yet), people! Staite continued, responding to a follower who also seemed nonplussed by the post:
Pass me my walker.
As mentioned earlier, though, some of this could just be because of whoever runs this account. If you’re 20, someone of Staite’s age is already likely to seem wise, experienced, and, yes, maybe even “old” beyond belief. But, it’s also just a symptom of the world we live in, where a The Watcher cast member like Naomi Watts was warned that her career would decline when she hit 40, way back when she did Mulholland Drive, and Oscar nominee Maggie Gyllenhaal was told (at 37) that she was “too old” to play the lover of an actor who was a whopping 55 years old!
Even the widely thought to be sexy as hell Helen Mirren has spoken out about this issue, calling it “fucking outrageous.” And, Good Luck To You, Leo Grande’s body-baring star, Emma Thompson, called the one-two punch of ageism and sexism women face “completely and utterly unbalanced.” After doing a cursory search on reddit, the channels there that talk about older men (surprise, surprise) appear to only ask advice for one thing or another, and aren’t posting pictures of men who are thought to have held up well for their age, so it’s clear we have a pretty long way to go on many fronts when it comes to women and how they’re viewed once they’re no longer in their 20s.
