Let’s Define Beauty on Our Own Terms
Imagine a beauty industry where age is celebrated and our beauty knows no bounds.
Hello Beautiful, I’m Dara Goldberg
Lover of Midlife and Pro-Age Advocate
How it all began…
It all began when I walked into my favorite beauty supply store and noticed one word was infesting everything:
“Youth.”
The serums and potions and creams and lotions all promised younger looking skin, bouncier youthful-looking hair, and stay-young-forever features. But reading between the lines, these products and brands were all saying the same thing:
Aging is bad. Aging is something to hide. Aging equates to a loss of beauty.
A different world…
From that moment on, I imagined a different world. A world where the beauty industry understands its role to be helping women of all ages maximize and showcase our natural and endless beauty. A world where the industry focuses on developing products and providing advice that supports our health and highlights and reinforces our beauty at every age and every stage of life.
In this ideal scenario, the industry embraces the truth:
A woman’s beauty is not reserved for the young.
They reject fear-based tactics and instead offer us products that nourish our skin and hair, allowing us to radiate and take pride in our timeless beauty. Women, in turn, welcome this kind of beauty industry as an empowering ally, grateful for the support and inspiration it provides.
Strides toward change
While this ideal world may still be a work in progress, we are making strides toward change. Age-positive brands and products are emerging, offering endless beauty skincare collections, hair health leave-in conditioners and forever radiant oils that celebrate our beauty at every age.
However, we still face challenges. The beauty industry continues to inundate us with products and messages focused on “looking young”, “avoiding aging”, “fighting to preserve our beauty”, etc. Society tells us that our worth and visibility diminish as we age.
But I invite you to question this narrative:
Do we truly desire to look young?
OR
Do we seek to look and feel endlessly healthy and beautiful (inside and out)?
Reclaiming our power
Like many of us, I’ve fallen victim to the allure of creams and lotions promising to make me “look the way I once did.” But the truth is, I’ve only grown more beautiful with age. The struggle is real – I can’t stand my crepey legs! Hearing aids, here I come! – but our greatest battle lies in rewiring our thinking and reclaiming our power.
Our beauty is indeed endless, and we must push back against a beauty industry and societal norms that tell us otherwise.
We can choose to stand firm in our knowledge and experience that we are beautiful forever, both inside and out. We can feel confident and vital in our own skin at any and every age.
AND, we can use our incredible purchasing power to make a statement that will affect the bottom line of these brands. The brands we support play a significant role in showcasing who we are at our core. Let’s be super selective and choose only those brands that embrace, celebrate and help us reinforce our endless beauty; brands that recognize our wisdom, strength, and brilliance; brands that admire us for aging.
For Our Future Generations Too
Ageism is a prejudice against everyone’s future self.
We are all on this inevitable aging journey and, despite what society tells us, there are so many beautiful aspects to it. Aging grants us freedom—to love ourselves, to settle into who we are, to open new chapters, and to choose the beauty brands that truly support us.
Together, we can reclaim the power that fear-based, age-shaming brands have held over us. Let’s give them a knowing smirk, but not our hard-earned money. Let’s be the agents of change, redefining the beauty industry as an ally that helps us maintain our health and showcases our endless beauty throughout our lives.
Let’s do it for ourselves – and for our future generations.
Join me at the checkout counter of sisterhood and self-love. Together, we can rewrite the narrative, celebrating beauty without boundaries. I am here for you, celebrating you in your journey every step of the way.
With endless beauty and gratitude,
Dara
