Aging Women Quotes

“It Hurts To Be Alive and Obsolete:

Often when men are attracted to me, they feel ashamed and conceal it. They act as if it were ridiculous. If they do become involved, they are still ashamed and may refuse to appear publicly with me. Their fear of mockery is enormous. There is no prestige attached to having sex with me.

Since we are all far more various sexually than we are supposed to be, often, in fact, younger men become aware of me sexually. Their response is similar to what it is when they find themselves feeling attracted to a homosexual: they turn those feelings into hostility and put me down.

Listen to me! Think what it is like to have most of your life ahead and be told you are obsolete! Think what it is like to feel attraction, desire, affection towards others, to want to tell them about yourself, to feel that assumption on which self-respect is based, that you are worth something, and that if you like someone, surely he will be pleased to know that. To be, in other words, still a living woman, and to be told that every day that you are not a woman but a tired object that should disappear. That you are not a person but a joke. Well, I am a bitter joke. I am bitter and frustrated and wasted, but don’t you pretend for a minute as you look at me, forty-three, fat, and looking exactly my age, that I am not as alive as you are and that I do not suffer from the category into which you are forcing me.”
― Zoe Moss, Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement

“You're the loveliest you'll ever be...until tomorrow and then you will be even lovelier.”
― Robin Caldwell

“Women not only bear the brunt of the equation of beauty with youth, we perpetuate it—every time we dye our hair to cover the gray or lie about our age, not to mention have plastic surgery to cover the signs of aging.”
― Ashton Applewhite, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism

“Charlotte didn’t care. She was floating away in a sea of happiness, wrapped up in the beauty of second love.”
― Lindsay Detwiler, Then Comes Love

“At forty-two, I was still holding up pretty well, but my once effortlessly lean body now look as though it belonged in a Dove firming cream ad -- the one where they give women permission to have thighs. When I unbuttoned my jeans at night, I swore I heard the same sound that Pillsbury dough made when I twisted the cylindrical container. My hair was beginning to gray, and when I smiled, the parentheses around my mouth remained. My least favorite position in yoga class was the downward dog because, as I hung my head downward, I always felt the skin from my face was about to splatter against my mat like a pancake batter hitting the griddle. So being called the top model by a young Italian was a wonderful souvenir, though cheaper than the toys sold outside the Pantheon in Rome.”
― Jennifer Coburn, We'll Always Have Paris: A Mother/Daughter Memoir

“They were growing closer and closer every day, and Charlotte was finding something magical at Wildflower, something she never thought she would find again—love.”
― Lindsay Detwiler, Then Comes Love

“It’s commonplace to find people who look old at forty, or young at sixty. The reason isn’t the number of little wrinkles that may be sprouting, but in the way they use their bodies. 'Old' people have lost their flexibility. Their joints stiffen up from lack of use. Their capillaries constrict and less blood comes through to the tissues. That means the complexion is undernourished, too. And everything starts to taper off. When they stop moving vigorously they slow down mentally. They’re old in their minds even when they’re still on the happy side of middle age. And it shows!”
― Joan Crawford, My Way of Life

“Let's remember that every bit of progress we have made in our own lives, as women, toward living out loud, in our power, and in the light, has been made possible not only by our own hard work and perseverance, but on the backs of the pioneering women before us, who literally put their lives on the line for us to be able to do so.”
― Dr. Mara Karpel, The Passionate Life : Creating Vitality & Joy at Any Age

“Age did not have to prohibit or inhibit a woman’s ability to make money or a living. Age did not diminish a woman’s usefulness as a self-employed person or entrepreneur. Age did not limit the ways in which a woman made money through self-employment or entrepreneurship.”
― Robin Caldwell, When Women Become Business Owners

“En esos días en los que aún no existe el miedo a envejecer.”
― Antonia Corrales, En un rincón del alma

“all you have to do to become invisible is be a woman of a certain age, without any outstanding features: it is automatic. Not only invisible to men, but also women, who no longer treat her as competition. It is a new and surprising sensation, how people's eyes just sort of float right over her face. They look straight through her, no doubt looking past her at ads and landscapes and schedules.”
― Olga Tokarczuk

“I was thirty-one at this point. I was deep in the grips of Hollywood conditioning. The thing is, I was always playing roles that were younger, at least five years younger, which amplified my twisted perception of aging. You have done something wrong! You have lived! You start feeling crazier with each birthday that passes.”
― Rose McGowan, Brave

“Two things to celebrate, the first is your aging and the second is your maturity”
― J. Lepika

“There is always a younger, prettier girl right behind you. That's one thing every woman learns quick--whether you're in the business or not.”
― C. Mack Lewis, Black Market Angels

“When are you going to start getting old like the rest of us?” “Please. If you only knew what I looked like naked.”
― Boo Walker, The Singing Trees

“When you were living in the moment though, it wasn’t possible to truly understand how finite it all was. Don’t we all secretly hope that we are the exception to the rules of time? We might even be immortal. Then, one day, something happens, you see your aging reflection in the mirror, really see it, and you know you’ve been fooling yourself. You can’t go back and relive it again and remembering can be a beautiful thing, but it can also break your heart.”
― Kristy McGinnis, Motion of Intervals

“With age comes a softer view. You learn to pick your battles or just walk away altogether. You learn that it’s okay to not always
feel okay, and you learn to embrace the gray areas. It’s easier to stand in peace than struggle in winning every fight.”
― Gabrielle Jordan, Help! My Face Is Falling!: Aging: No Grace Required

“Whenever you feel like you’re too old, that you don’t have the right clothes to wear, need to lose weight first, feel self-conscious, or
think it’s easier to just crawl back under the covers and hover your remote—that’s the moment—the exact moment—to let go of your
fears and ‘Just Do It.”
― Gabrielle Jordan, Help! My Face Is Falling!: Aging: No Grace Required

“She remembered what her aunts had told her about a woman’s vaginal walls becoming thinner and drier in later years, which could lead to discomfort and even pain when penetration occurred. At that later stage in her life, she decided that having a meticulous, seasoned deep-sea pearl diver, a lover who understood various ways to please her, would be far more advantageous than being with some insensitive Neanderthal slamming his clumsy, Moby Dick harpoon into her tender, late vintage sugar walls.”
― David L. Wadley

“She wore bright red lipstick, and her ash colored hair was pulled aside in a long braid. She struck me at once as warm and spirited.”
― Sarah Penner, The Amalfi Curse

“MH turned to Sam. “When I turned 50, I was divorced, my son was grown up, and I realised I still had decades to go. It was the oddest thing - just as the culture began to lose interest in me, just as the world decided I was irrelevant, I began to feel more myself than ever. Louder, smarter, stronger. It felt truly adolescent, like I wanted to take drugs and drive fast and shave my head.”
― Dana Spiotta, Wayward

“In 2024 I proudly joined the 'Women over 40' club, somehow arriving without coloring my hair, getting botox, fillers or plastic surgery. In today’s predominantly 'plastic cookie-cutter' culture, that’s a beautiful and rebellious statement— one celebrating authenticity and humanity in its purest form. Living long enough to earn wrinkles, grey hair and deal with an aging body is a privilege not all of us are granted. That is why I will always wear my age with gratitude and fierce passion.”
― Elena Levon