Why more powerful women should flaunt their wrinkles

In just her first year as US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy combined the business of diplomacy along with learning to surf, visiting a drag race, upbraiding a few male journalists. (Photo by SAMUEL CORUM / AFP)

By the time you reach your mid-sixties, there aren’t many role models left but I’ve found one that fits my aspirations for a healthy, adventurous older age where the goal is to make a contribution but not give a toss about what others think of your choices or your looks.

Caroline Kennedy is the US ambassador to Australia and, more pertinently, she is my age. In just her first year she combined the business of diplomacy along with learning to surf, visiting a drag race, upbraiding a few male journalists and she’s done it in her own way and – more pertinently for this article – in her own skin.

It is remarkable to see a powerful woman in early old age, who has lots of wrinkles. It shouldn’t be remarkable but it is, especially a woman from a country where nobody knows what a 50-year-old woman really looks like. I can think of few other women in power who proudly wear the face of an active life, although I can think of hundreds – thousands? – of men.

This doesn’t seem fair but it’s obvious why women of a certain age are wrinkle shy. Powerful women in their sixties/seventies were the ones who muscled up with giant shoulder pads in the 1980s; pretended that the double shift was doable; put up with sexism and worse to get ahead and they knew they had to be twice as good as male candidates to be considered for a job. They knew that wrinkles and a belly make an older man look powerful but make an older woman look past it.

Owning your age is not just a courageous move, it’s so unusual that if you search for “Caroline Kennedy and wrinkles” you’ll find a lot of posts suggesting she has a medical condition. She does, it’s called 65-itis.

But there are other older women showing us a different path to a powerful old age. Actor Maggie Smith is now appearing in ads for Loewe handbags looking sassy and all of her 88 years. And in recent years Judi Dench, Miriam Margolyes, Helen Mirren, Diane Keaton, Maye Musk (Elon’s mum) and lots of Insta celebrities are filling screens with images of the real life of older women (as opposed to the real housewives of Hollywood-dom).

When older women first appeared on runways several years ago, it seemed like a gimmick but there are encouraging signs that the markers of ageing – grey hair, wrinkles, lower cleavages and a careless attitude to criticism – are becoming less frightening. And the push is coming from younger women.

Younger women – the ones that fashion brands like Loewe want to woo – are kicking down many of the shibboleths of femininity and age. These are the women who swapped heels for sports shoes and work boots; they ditched underwire bras for free-form ones; they grew eyebrows bushy and prefer natural make-up looks. For them, grey is the new black. Not only are 40-something women giving up on dyeing their hair as a sign of acceptance but more younger women are dyeing their hair grey, often as a sign of protest.

These women aren’t spooked by older women wearing their age. Perhaps they are thinking of their future selves; perhaps they appreciate authenticity above aesthetics, or they don’t fancy a future of frills, frippery and fillers. Maybe they just like reading a wrinkled face and seeing, not fillers, but a life that has been filled with joy, hardship, hard work, plunges into the ocean, the odd sausage sizzle and tussles with men, who don’t take women seriously.

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