I recently blew the dust off my X account and I don’t know if I’m regretting my actions because everyday I get on that app, I find something that triggers me—I guess that was Elon’s aim—to make X as toxic as possible.
There’s a DJ called Cuppy, daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Nigeria. She’s one of those people they refer to as nepo-baby. So, I came across her tweet last night, I can’t really remember what it was about but it was very unrelated to marriage or aging but a comment under the tweet struck me.
I can’t quote him verbatim but he said something like:
“You’re running out of time, when’s the wedding bells going off?”
I checked out his profile and he looks to be in his mid forties. I stalked him. I stalked him across other social media platforms and I figured he’s one of those self proclaimed ‘Silver Foxes’ who are very unmarried yet bully young unmarried women from 25 years and above on the internet.
Here’s the thing though,
A man gets older, gets some gray in his beard, maybe a few lines around the eyes, and suddenly he’s a “distinguished silver fox.”
A woman gets older, gets the same gray hairs, the same laugh lines, and suddenly she’s… “showing her age, fading, past her prime,” and the list goes on and on.
It’s actually funny how time seems to be friendlier to men than to women. Or maybe it’s not time at all, maybe it’s us. We created this double standard.
Sometimes it’s not even about marriage. The career clock too, Hollywood, pressure gaps and the most painful of it all is the vocabulary of bias. I mean the Oxford dictionary holds hundreds of vocabularies to describe aging in relation to women. I see young girls too, using it as an insult. When they’re called out by someone a little advanced in age, they clapback with something like “get old my page oldie,” forgetting that Forever Young is just a wishful song. No one really stays young forever.
The Pressure Gap?
Anti-aging creams. Botox. Hair dye. “Look ten years younger in ten days!” Lmfao.
Women are sold the idea that they must fight aging. When did it become a disease? Men? Men are allowed to age out loud. They keep the gray, keep the wrinkles, and still get called handsome. Get called ‘baby’.
The freaking double standards!
