‘We, especially women, don’t allow ourselves to age gracefully. We don’t allow other women to age gracefully.’ It’s a confronting statement from Cameron Diaz, from an interview which has recently resurfaced, but it’s one which still feels depressingly relevant today.

In an interview with the LA Review of Books in 2014, Cameron Diaz discussed her book, ‘The Body Book’, about what it means to be healthy and why she wants to change the way people – mainly women – approach ageing. We say ‘mainly women’ because men are not denied the right to age in the way that women are. They are not routinely criticised for their frown lines, called out for getting Botox, or pulled apart online when they talk about getting older. It’s something that happens to women, and it’s something that women do to each other.

A clip from the interview has recently resurfaced on TikTok and – unsurprisingly – the comments reflect how little progress we have made. A lot of the comments on the viral video point out that it’s ‘easy for her to say’ that we shouldn’t touch our looks because she’s so ‘naturally beautiful’ anyway, but isn’t that just her point? Unfortunately, no woman is exempt from the illogical beauty standards that pull us in different directions on a daily basis. Women are allowed to age, sure, but only in a certain way that doesn’t feel affronting to anyone else. Then again, if women successfully hide all signs of ageing, they shouldn’t also dress younger than their age, because that’s tacky. Instead, they must tread the impossible line between maintaining ‘youthful’ beauty – taut, smooth skin, a toned body and coloured hair – and ageing in a way that’s deemed acceptable. Sadly, this is as true for celebrities as it is for everyone else.

In the clip Cameron goes on to say, ‘We feel like if we’re not how we were when we were 25 years old, if we don’t look the same, that we have failed in some way. We have not done our job by staying in a stagnant place. I always want to be changing and I always want to be getting older. I always want to be getting wise. That, to me, is a privilege.’

She then points out: ‘Not everybody gets to do it. The only alternative is that you’re dead.’ It may sound curt, but it’s probably not something we give enough thought. Ageing is something that everyone should appreciate as a sign that they are still alive. And if we all hate our appearances and focus on the negatives now, when we’re at our youngest, then we have a long, long road ahead. (If we’re lucky). 

What’s particularly alarming is that one commenter admits, ‘I’m 23 and feel like I’m old and I’m terrified. There’s no reason anyone should feel that way.’ In the original video, Cameron Diaz, now 51, was 43. Today, there are girls 20 years younger than she was describing the same feelings of inadequacy. This comment doesn’t exist in isolation either. There is a rising trend of age anxiety amongst women in their teens and early 20s on TikTok – women who have grown up with social media, face tuning and are targeted by anti-ageing products and trends before they even hit puberty. If 23-year-olds are worried about being old, when will it ever end?

That’s why the simple act of ageing has become somewhat revolutionary. For anyone, particularly those in the public eye, to embrace it is still something to behold. Take Pamela Anderson, whose ‘no make-up era’ started in September 2023 when she attended The Row show in Paris without a scrap of make-up on and it sent the internet crazy. The former Playboy model chose to bare her natural (and still incredibly beautiful) face, and it made headline news.

Speaking to Allure she said, ‘It wasn’t a political statement, I just wanted to have my little weird face sticking out of the top of those great clothes. […] My intention is to accept where you are in your beauty journey.’

If anyone knows what it’s like to be at the mercy of other people’s beauty ideals, it’s Pamela. She added, ‘I’ve tried Botox, I’ve tried filler, but I haven’t had anything like that for over three or four years. […] I look like a different person… and I thought why am I doing this shit? So I’m free and clear of that stuff and I look like myself again.’

While she has been praised for embracing her natural self, Pamela’s choice shocked a lot of people. And still does. In June, she posted a make-up free video of her skincare routine, and the comment section is, again, unsurprisingly disappointing. Someone commented, ‘Sorry, she still needs some mascara or something to bring her eyes out.’  Another wrote, ‘Wtf??, are you 80 years old???’ Another added, ‘Sucks to get old, huh?’ Pamela is 57 – it’s possible we’ve got to a point where we can’t even fully grasp what different ages look like.

 Let’s not forget, those who take a different route are chastised as well. Jennifer Aniston, for example, faces a daily torrent of abuse for her changing face. Following tabloid reports that she’d had a $50,000 face lift, the Friends star has been called ‘puffy’, ‘a freak’ and had people ask, ‘what on earth has she done to her face?????’

The same thing happened to Meg Ryan, 62, who was deemed ‘unrecognisable’ by tabloids when she attended a documentary screening in New York last summer. Immediately, a spate of articles questioning what surgery she’d had done and how different she looked followed. To the interest or benefit of whom?

This is quite simply not something that happens to men in even remotely the same way. Men aren’t interrogated about their appearance or asked if their decision not to dye their grey hair is a political statement. Men don’t lose out on roles because of their age, because it’s not thought of as important. In a Vulture study about the age of female leads cast opposite men in their 40s and 50s, it found that even the oldest male actors are rarely paired with women their own age – or even women older than their mid-30s. ‘Instead, you get 57-year-old Denzel Washington paired off with 35-year-old Rebecca Hall. Or 50-year-old Tom Cruise with 33-year-old Olga Kurylenko. Or 50-year-old Steve Carell with 29-year-old Olivia Wilde,’ it reads. And people have the audacity to question why women want to look younger.

Resisting this toxic and pervasive idea that women aren’t allowed to age is something that, sadly, we must all do together. We must resist it on a personal level, and we must resist it when we’re judging other women. It’s really a waste of everyone’s time – time, as Cameron rightly points out, that we’re lucky to have.