Instagram influencer Jane McCann wants women to confront the pressure to age a certain way
Our obsession with youthful beauty has created generations of women who fear ageing. Are we finally ready to talk about it?
The first time Jane McCann noticed a new line on her face, she thought she’d just slept funny. It soon set in that this oddity — this wrinkle — was permanent. And there’d be more to come.
“It was pretty confronting,” McCann says of her experience in the early stages of menopause, which began eight years ago. “I used to joke about my sons going to bed one night looking like boys and waking up the next day looking like men. But in a three-month period, my body had completely changed.”
At the time, McCann, who hails from Victoria, had recently separated from her husband of 21 years and was raising her two teenagers while working to provide support to patients in medical care (“no one believes me when I say I was the person holding the colostomy bag when people came out of the hospital!”).
During the period of intense life change, McCann turned to Instagram to find answers from other women in online communities.
“It’s all over socials now, but back then, there wasn’t [аs] much information about menopause and perimenopause,” McCann says, “I was basically on Instagram looking for the good news about menopause because all I had heard about was the bad news. I was like, ‘Who out there is going through this? Can you let me know what made you feel better?’”
In exchange for finding support from middle-aged women globally, McCann began sharing her own experiences of the “pressures to age a certain way”. Through her Instagram account, @themiddleagedgoddess, she was no longer merely asking questions about menopause, but fielding them. She has now amassed a following of over 200,000, who interact with posts featuring hashtags like ‘ageing is amazing’ and ‘normalise ageing’.
But it was a tragic catalyst that made McCann re-focus her attention on changing the discourse around ageing.
“I was 48 when I watched my sister, one of the people I loved the most in my life, die because of breast cancer at only 57,” McCann says. “It just made me realise that I do not want to be worrying about how I look or what people think of me. I wanted to be making the most of my life. She didn’t get the chance to do that.”
For McCann, it wasn’t enough to drastically shift her own lifestyle; she wanted to communicate her experience to other women going through menopause, too.
Earlier this year, the influencer took her popular online messaging offline to present on the Kailo Wellness Summit’s ‘Ageing Gracefully’ panel. At the event, which was hosted by Kath Merlo and Kristy Morris of Brisbane’s Kailo Medispa, McCann spoke to her mantra of “giving herself permission to let go”. “I even enjoy sex now more than I ever did because I’m not so self-conscious of my face and body,” she added.
McCann notes that women’s faces are often the first parts of the body to exhibit signs of ageing. “A lot of us grew up in an era that was so focused on looks and weight. And I’ve always had trouble with my skin,” she says, “Acne in my 20s and really severe rosacea during menopause. I’ve also spent my life out in the sun, but didn’t discover sunblock until my 50s.”
These skin concerns are not merely superficial but “genuine skin concerns that significantly impact the quality of life” of women suffering from them, according to Dr Michele Squire of Brisbane-based but nationally-operated QR8 Mediskin clinic.
“Women are seriously overlooked in this part of medicine,” Squire says. “Their skin concerns are seen as frivolous or driven by vanity. But when we talk about anti-ageing in Australia, we’re talking about cumulative sun damage, which a significant percentage of people in their (older years) will experience … and it’s never too late to start using sunscreen.”
Skin health may also be perceived as an outward sign of how healthy a person is generally. “It’s inextricably linked to wellbeing. So when the ageing process speeds up around menopause – due to the loss of oestrogen – a lot of us become quite desperate [to find solutions].”
In times of discouragement – and in a field where medical misogyny continues to cast women’s health concerns into the periphery – more individuals are turning to social media for advice.
According to figures quoted in the British Journal of Dermatology, demand for strategies to combat the skin’s ageing process will drive the beauty industry up from $US 24.6 billion to approximately $US 44.5 billion by 2030.
It’s a phenomenon leaving experts, like Squire, concerned that individuals will continue to shift away from trusted medical advice.
A recent global study led by the University of Sydney found that online influencers overwhelmingly promote misleading information about medical tests on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. The review showed that 68 per cent of the influencers studied had financial interests – such as sponsorship or partnership with brands – in promoting certain medical advice.
While there is much conversation around how social media negatively impacts perceptions of body image for young women, emerging research suggests that women in their 40s and 50s aren’t escaping the online zeitgeist.
Dr Isabel Krug, an associate professor in clinical psychology at the University of Melbourne, says that the experience of body dissatisfaction and appearance anxiety increases as women get older because of internalised ageism. In extreme instances, this low self-esteem can lead to depression, anxiety and even disordered eating later in life. “In a society where women’s value is really tied to youth and beauty, ageing can often feel like becoming invisible,” she says.
“The more we investigate this age (demographic), the more we see there is a sense of comparison to the younger appearance – looking at images and comparing your body to what it used to be,” says Krug.
Finding the balance between respecting your skin as you age without pressuring yourself to look a certain way remains a challenge for women in an era of extreme mixed-messaging. But there is some hope that the more discerning female consumers become, the more discourse around anti-ageing begins to shift.
McCann says that she doesn’t feel shame for using skincare products that leave her skin “feeling amazing”, but she does refuse to promote products with anti-ageing labelling. “I appreciate the brands that are making an effort to find different ways to [market] their products – I mean, if you get to age isn’t that amazing?”
Director of skincare brand Biologique Recherche Australia Meghan Horn, who appeared alongside McCann at the Kailo Summit, adds that the beauty industry’s “pursuit of youth” is slowly waning.
“Consumers today are far more informed and discerning; they expect transparency and authenticity, especially when it comes to how age and beauty are represented,” she says. “More brands (are) … instead placing greater emphasis on skin health, integrity, and personalisation.”
While the brand is among many still selling products marketed for mature skin, Horn explains “the brand has been mindful in its marketing choices” by refusing to use models, celebrity endorsements or “idealised imagery” in its advertising.
“At any age, the focus should always be on maintaining the quality of the epidermis … without creating unnecessary anxiety around ageing. Caring for the skin should be a form of self-respect, not pressure,” she says.
McCann, too, shares this message of relieving women from the pressures of feeling they must reverse the ageing process. Finding communities to reduce the stigma around ageing is at the core of her mission, one she shares with millions of women in the digital sphere.
“What a gift it is to age,” she says, “A lot of women online are finally doing the same thing I am; encouraging other women to age the way they want, not the way society expects.”
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