“Beauty Expiration Date -Best Used By” Sally Edelstein Mixed media 10” x 12”
Today I turn 68 and to believe the media, I have long passed my expiration date of desirability as a woman. But here’s the un-botoxed- wrinkle in that. Every woman is an “ageing woman.” Yet the window for beguiling is a short one in our youth culture, one lasting only a third of our life expectancy.
Women’s attractiveness seems at best highly perishable. Not unlike a container of milk there seems to be an expiration date, a best-used by date of about 30 years.
The insistence that there is an arbitrary expiration date for women and their perceived beauty has not lessened its strong grip. In fact, it has only accelerated as more fillers, serums, and procedures lay in wait to correct the “problems,” fix the “flaws,” and reverse signs of aging.
To turn back time.
Time marches on, and I’m happy to walk to the beat of my own drum.
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Envisioning The American Dream 
All the best everyday dear Sally! Love this!💝🌸💝🌸💝
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Thank you dear Beth!
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i’mma filthy Hippie at 62. idgas about conventions
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Nor should you. They tend to be more repressive than helpful.
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Happy birthday, Sally! You’re absolutely gorgeous and that will never change! I’m 61 and I still think I’m pretty hot, world be damned! I hope you have a wonderful year!
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Thank you! I have no doubt that you are hot and others see it as well. And you know what, you will only get hotter. I guaranteed that. Women were brainwashed about aging. It truly gets better.
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Also, are you selling prints of this?
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I do sell prints of that as I do all my work. You can email me at Sallyedelstein@yahoo.com and we can discuss.
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i’m 62, a decade post stroke and incurably incontinent {on a Medicare budget} and we have kinky sex 3x./week.
I wfh as a medical transcriptionist all my adult ,life, raising two kids whose medical needs bankrupted us
Since I read library books and craft instead of consuming media, I’m blissfully free of concerns about how I should act.
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Happy Late Birthday, Sally! Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in “Sunset Boulevard” was described as a 50-year-old faded silent movie star. Swanson would have been 50 or 51 when she made the film, a living version of the film’s Desmond.
Amazing, isn’t it, that 50 was considered an over the hill women then. Now, 50 barely seems old, and many women look pretty great into their 70s.
Of course, in 1950, a man wouldn’t get old in that culture, he became distinguished or had craggy good looks. A pipe and grey at the temples…well, in movie land, that fellow would become the romantic interest of early age 20s future princess Grace Kelly or sex goddess Marilyn Monroe!
You at age 68, incidentally, look darn good!
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Thank you for your kind remarks.
I’ve always marveled at Norma Desmond being so over the hill and washed up at 50. When beauty ads warned women of having “middle-aged skin” they were referring to 35-year-olds. I like to think women look good into their 80s or 90s and not just “good for their age” but that we find all ages attractive and viable.
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I agree totally!
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