AGEIST
The AGEIST podcast is where we rewrite life after 50. Hosted by David Stewart, founder of AGEIST and Super Age, we talk with extraordinary people—scientists, creatives, and thinkers—about living vibrantly in your 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond. From longevity science to emotional well-being, fitness to purpose, we explore the tools and mindsets that help us stay curious, energized, and deeply engaged with life. This isn’t about aging gracefully—it’s about living boldly.
AGEIST
Stephanie Fairyington: When the World Stops Looking
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What happens when aging and sexuality change not only how we look, but how much of the world looks at us? In this episode, writer Stephanie Fairyington joins David Stewart for a sharp conversation about beauty, the idea of “ugliness”, gender, queer identity, and the strange relief that can come when midlife loosens the grip of outside judgment.
Fairyington, author of Ugly: A Letter to My Daughter, argues that ugliness is not a personal failure but a cultural construction, one tied to femininity, visibility, motherhood, and power. The conversation moves from aging and female desirability to icons like Tammy Faye and Barbra Streisand as well as department-store mirrors and the work of deciding which cultural scripts are worth resisting.
Join Us at the 2026 Super Age Games! Visit games.superage.com to learn more.
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Key Moments
“I experienced the wider culture's disinterest in me as a kind of gift. Like it's a shield or protection from unwanted detention so I can kind of move through the world peacefully without feeling like I'm being assessed and measured against whatever standard because I'm not young anymore.”
“I don't think that female desirability has an expiration date.”
“There's no real liberation from it. Like you can kind of become aware of the strings puppeteering your behavior, right? But you can't clip the strings, right?”
Connect with Stephanie Fairyington
Instagram: @stephaniefairyington
Email: StephFair@gmail.com
Connect with AGEIST
Click Here for the full interview transcript.
Welcome to the Ages Podcast. I'm David Stewart. This week, our guest is Stephanie Farrington. Stephanie's a writer, she's an educator, and she's the author of a book called Ugly: A Letter to My Daughter. It's a book about beauty, it's about gender, it's about femininity, motherhood, and the cultural systems that make people feel as if they are somehow failing at the very basic act of being themselves. This is a conversation at the intersection of culture and the body. And for listeners of all ages, but especially for those of us living life after 50, what I found so interesting here is that Stephanie is not talking about ugliness as a thing that belongs to a person. She's talking about the ugliness of the messages we get around us, the stories we're handed about how we should look, how older people should look, how bodies should behave, and how we spend so much of our time managing how other people look at us. And of course, this lands us right in the middle of what we talk about here all the time: aging, visibility, capacity, and that odd experience of feeling one way inside while the world insists on reading us another way from the outside. Here's a bit of that conversation. You wrote this book, ugly, a letter to my daughter.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00All right, for why did you write this book?
SPEAKER_02Like I didn't want it to be a sweet, hallmarky letter from mother to daughter, which is what I think people expect, which is really tender and kind of sacrine. I wanted it to have a brutality to it and a kind of physical force that a Elena Ferrante novel has, a real punch in the gut, a rawness, and ugly in its extreme vulnerability, and to give the topic the gravity that it deserves. I think a lot of times people think, oh, it's just femininity, it's sort of superfluous, and you know, you're taking it too seriously. And like, but I think a lot of the demands on women and girls related to femininity are really uh destructive and and and hard. Because I think just by virtue of being young in New York City, like in my 20s and 30s, the streets can feel like a catwalk, you know, where everyone's kind of picking you apart and assessing you and looking at you. And that felt really overwhelming when you're young. But then when you get older, I don't know. I experienced the wider culture's disinterest in me as a kind of gift. Like it's it's a shield or protection from unwanted detention, so I can kind of move through the world peacefully without feeling like I'm being assessed, measured against whatever standard because I'm not young anymore. It's a much less pressured existence. And I've I've often heard other older women talk about that. Like there is some kind of liberation. You can you don't have to participate in this very stagey, cosmeticized femininity anymore. You're kind of can relax into this just being, you know.
SPEAKER_00Stephanie on the idea that female desirability does not have an expiration date. I love that. And while weathering, wrinkles, and the imperfection can be part of what makes one compelling. In her work, Stephanie pushes against one of the great traps of getting older: the belief that we are supposed to either fight against aging as if it is the enemy, or disappear quietly into the background. Stephanie suggests something maybe more interesting. Maybe the job is to become more aware of the strings that are pulling us and then decide which ones we want to pull back on. That applies to beauty, it applies to gender, it applies to age, and it certainly applies to the body. Quick plug one string we at Aegist and Superage are choosing to pull back on is the narrative that equates age with physical decline. We change, it's not the same thing. We're doing that with the Superage Games. We're coming to New York City, November 7th. This is the first ever longevity competition, and it is built around a very ageist idea. We are not here to perform youth. We're here to test capacity, celebrate vitality, and see what is possible now. Games.superage.com. Before we get to Stephanie, one quick favor. If you like what we're doing here, please give the AGES podcast a five-star review. It helps more people find the show. Takes about 10 seconds. We'll talk to Stephanie right after a brief word from our sponsors. I know it's a bit of a buzzword right now, but the science shows that protein matters more as we age. That's where true nutrition comes in. Strength, recovery, body composition, all of it depends on getting enough of the right protein. What I like about the protein I get from True Nutrition is the amount of control I have over the ingredients. I get to build my own protein powder, and the tool lets me decide exactly what goes into it calories, protein, fat, carbs, fiber, sugar, the whole thing. My current favorite mix is pea protein with marine collagen, cacao flavor for that dark chocolate creaminess, plus lion's mane, cordyceps, and supergreens. It tastes good, no chalky aftertaste, and it feels like something designed for me rather than some generic tub of powder. Wanna try it? Go to true nutrition.com slash agist and use code AGIST for 20% off your first custom protein blend. That's true nutrition.com slash AGIS, code AGIST. Go build your own mix. Once you've had a protein you actually look forward to, you won't go back. Every movement we make starts with energy, and that energy starts inside our cells. As we age, our mitochondria, the little engines that power us, can become less efficient. That affects strength, recovery, resilience, all the things we actually care about. Timeline developed MITAPU with Urolithin A to support metophagy, the process that helps clear out damaged mitochondria so our cells can work better. I think of it as working closer to the source. Timeline's clinically proven formula is now available at a new, lower price. MidaPure now starts at $79 when you go to Timeline.com slash AGIST. That's Timeline.com slash AGIST. This season I've been paying more attention to the energy curve. Coffee can be useful, but too much of it and I end up wired than flat. Element Lemonade Iced Tea has been a better afternoon move. It uses full black tea extract with electrolytes, so the caffeine feels steadier and there's no sugar, artificial colors, or dodgy ingredients. Sharp and clear is the goal, especially when it's hot out and hydration matters. Get a free eight-count sample pack of Element's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinkelement.com slash aegis. Find your favorite flavor or share with a friend. That's D-R-I-N-K-L-M-N-T.com slash agist. Let's give Stephanie Farrington a call right now. Hey Steph, how are you today?
SPEAKER_02Good. How are you, David?
SPEAKER_00I'm as you can see, it's like an amazing day. Oh my gosh, so beautiful. Where does this podcast find you today?
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. So I am thank you for having me, first of all. I am in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. So I I'm in my teeny little apartment in the window, trying to get some good light in here. It's beautiful here today, too, in New York. Are you in New York? I am. Oh, okay, great. Oh, perfect. Oh, there you go. Okay. I just see beautiful clouds in the sky.
SPEAKER_00It could be anywhere. There's so many things I want to talk to you about. You wrote this book, ugly, a letter to my daughter.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00All right, first. Why did you write this book?
SPEAKER_03Why did I write it?
SPEAKER_02Well, I have to say that first that I initially got the idea for the book, reading Tanahasie Coates' Between the World and Me, which is a letter to his son about the African-American experience in this culture. So it was like a brain like experiment, like a thought experiment. I was like, what would the queer version of that book be? So it kind of came from that book, which is maybe a little strange. I don't know. And even though his kid obviously is African American, my daughter is not queer. But I think just by virtue of being the child of LGBTQ people, she's kind of a queer subject in society. And yeah, I wanted to write a book. Well, the tagline at that time in my head was something like life on the margins of American cultures and ugly, middle-aged, lesbian, you know, just kind of like playing around with it. And I like the idea of calling it ugly and addressing it to her because I actively didn't want this to be a memoir. I wanted to kind of mess with this. Like I didn't want it to be a memoir, like a sweet, hallmarky letter from mother to daughter, which is what I think people expect, which is really tender and kind of saccharine. I wanted it to have a brutality to it and a kind of physical force that a Elena Ferrante novel has. So because I think a lot of times people think, oh, it's just femininity, it's sort of superfluous, and you know, you're taking it too seriously. And like, but I I think a lot of the stuff that uh a lot of the demands on women and girls related to femininity are really uh destructive and and and hard. So I think in many ways, this book is like this really, it can seem like a really angry feminist, aggressive screed. A real fuck you to the patriarchy. But I think that the book makes clear that, I think it makes clear, I hope it makes, I hope it makes clear that individual people aren't ugly, but the systems of meaning that create the feeling of ugliness in us or the notion of ugliness are what are ugly. You know, that's why my dedication page says to the reader, may you try let maybe resist, overcome, and transcend the ugliness of this world, which is the hope that the book will help people do that. And throughout, I'm trying to like kind of unravel ideas we experience as indisputable facts, like race, gender, sexuality, ugliness, beauty. So that by the time you get to the end of the book, those ideas are disentangled, they have last less mass and weight, and don't like sit in in you like this calcified knot. There's space between you and these toxic ideas of our culture. That's the that's the idea.
SPEAKER_00I want to get the look-ism.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00You know, I sort of deal in the realm of age.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00So we deal a lot with what happens as people age, the idea of invisibility associated with age. One of the things that's I I think the confounding the intersections of like sort of what we talk about and and what you talk about is this I as as people get older, their you know, their physical capacity changes, but basically for all intents and purposes, they can like actually do more things than young people can do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But the thing that changes is we look different, right? Yeah. Like physical appearance changes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So talk talk to me a little bit about that, about like how you see this intersection of look-ism and age.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think okay, so I think for me, like I feel like I now at 50, in this very less egoic stage of life, I think the absence of youth makes me less of a target for others and for others' aesthetic judgments of me, and that feels really good. Because I think just by virtue of being young in New York City, like in my 20s and 30s, the streets can feel like a catwalk, you know, where everyone's kind of picking you apart and assessing you and looking at you. And that felt really overwhelming when you're young. But then when you get older, I feel like I don't know. I experienced the wider culture's disinterest in me as uh a kind of gift, like it's it's a shield or protection from unwanted detention, so I can kind of move through the world peacefully without feeling like I'm being assessed, measured against whatever standard because I'm not young anymore. It's a much less pressured existence. And I've I've often heard other older women talk about that. Like there is some kind of liberation. You can you don't have to participate in this very stagey, cosmeticized femininity anymore. You're kind of like can relax into this just being, you know?
SPEAKER_00So w one of the observations or complaints I hear oftentimes from as women get older is this sense of invisibility as a negative, yeah, not as a positive. And you're feeling this as a positive.
SPEAKER_02Well, I feel like I'm visible to the people I want to be visible to. Like I'm visible to my my spouse, I'm just visible to my child, to my queer community, to my to my friends, to my colleagues. Like I don't really feel like I need that wider validation. And also I have a very fraught relationship with visibility. So maybe like for a cisgender, pretty, straight woman, it feels very different. But for me, it feels like, I don't know, like an opportunity to, it's kind of like like you I can opt out and nobody, nobody's like looking at me or you know, judging me. I don't know. It feels to me, it feels empowering. I can think about other things, you know. I think when I was like I think when I was younger in queer culture, I really wanted to be visible because I wanted to be to be desired. And so that was the first time in my life that I actually felt attractive, also because in queer culture you can be almost every iteration of woman and still feel the heat of another person's lusty gaze coming your way. Um and so that was the first time that I felt like really affirmed in my in my aesthetic, being like kind of a run-of-the-mill tomboy. But um, now I'm married, I am perimenopausal, like I'm just in a totally different phase of life. So it doesn't feel pain, that doesn't feel painful to me. I actually we're we go to every year we go to P Town, which province town, which is on the tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and that's like a gay like Mecca. And I love doing that. I love being in this really queer space. That's really fun. So I do find that like the I don't know if I'm look I'm not really looking for attention, it's just more like I'm not the minority there, you know, the sexual minority there. We do we've been going there just our whole our whole marriage, 18 years. So so I guess I like being visible in that context, but I well, I want to ask you about your mom.
SPEAKER_00So wow, okay, you regard your mom as beautiful, right? And how did she, as she aged, how did how did it impact her?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, differently. Um my mom, since I've been a child, has chronically been on a diet, has chronically been like putting all kinds of different things in her face and buying all kinds of expensive cosmetics to uh preserve her beauty. But I also think my mom she could have had a facelift many times, and her neck, and I have her neck also, you can see like her, she has a bad, we have bad necks in my family. Like they they just are very wrinkled necks anyway. It doesn't bother me, but she does she's always complaining about her neck, like doing things like look at me, look, what do you think? Should I do it? You know, she's like showing me her neck. But I also think my mom is not, even though she her looks were like uh a real strength for her in high school and just through life, her power was her power was a lot of capital. Uh there was a lot of capital there for her. I don't think she's very vapid either. You know what I mean? I think she has a lot of depth and dimensionality. I think she loves, she loves golfing, she loves hiking, she loves animals, you know, like she's I I think that offsets the pain, and there is pain of getting of getting older. I think she I think it's hard. I don't think it's great. Like she will, for example, we have a a one of my best friends growing up is like the ultimate Barbie. Like she is like done up, always looks perfect. Like even now, she's my age, she looks insane. And she wanted a picture to see my family, and my mom was like, Don't send her a picture of me. So she still has that. Um, there's a lot of tension around aging. I think it's hard. I don't think it's easy, but I also think she has other, I think she has a lot of depth also, and and you know, tries not to take it too seriously.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you take it seriously, it's a recipe for insanity, I can tell you.
SPEAKER_02Totally. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We're gonna pause here for a quick message from our sponsors. Then when we come back, Stephanie and I talk about aging, invisibility, and whether being seen less by the broader culture can sometimes make room for being your complete self. Protein is one of those key foundational elements that sounds simple until you actually try to get it right. With True Nutrition, I found a customized solution that supports my strength, recovery, and capabilities. Most protein powders are made as though everyone has the same body, the same goals, the same digestion, and the same taste buds. True Nutrition is different because they let you build the mix yourself. That is what really impressed me. The customization is actually really fun, at least for me. You can control the protein source, flavor, sweetener, boosts, and even the nutrition profile. How many calories, how much protein, fat, carbs, fiber, and sugar you want in the mix. My favorite so far is pea protein with marine collagen, cacao flavor for that dark chocolate creaminess, and then lion's mane, cordyceps, and supergreen boosts. It feels like a smart, practical formula built around what I actually want. To build your mix, you pick a base from more than 20 options, including whey, plant, and dairy-free. Next you choose your flavor, your sweetener, and the flavor intensity. Then you add boosts like collagen, fiber, probiotics, aminos, colostrum, you name it. Once you have the mix right, you save it and refill the same formula every time, or play around with different combos. This is a high quality product. That means non-GMO. No fillers, no additives, no gluten, third-party tested, and first party verified. For me, the big thing is that I actually look forward to my daily protein shake now. No chalky aftertaste, no weird heaviness, and no compromise on what I'm putting in my body. Go to true nutrition.com slash agist and use code AGIST to save 20% off your first custom protein blend. That's true nutrition.com slash AGIST Code AGIST. Most of us think about muscle health in terms of lifting weights and consuming protein, but there is a deeper layer underneath all of it, and that is cellular energy. Your muscle cells are packed with mitochondria because muscle takes a lot of energy to do its job. As we age, mitochondrial function naturally declines, and that can show up as lower energy, less strength, slower recovery, and a little less bounce back than we used to have. Timeline has spent more than 15 years researching mitochondrial health and developed mitopure, which contains urolithin A. Urolithin A supports metophagy, the body's process for clearing out damaged mitochondria and recycling cellular components. In one study, participants saw a 12% improvement in muscle strength in four months with no change in exercise. That gets my attention. For me, healthy aging means protecting capacity, the ability to move, train, recover, and keep showing up for the life I want. Supporting the cellular machinery underneath strength and energy feels like a very smart place to start. Timeline's clinically proven formula is now available at a new lower price. Midopure now starts at $79 when you go to Timeline.com/slash AGIST. We were on the call. Before we started here, you used to work at Us Weekly.
SPEAKER_02I did.
SPEAKER_00I find the certain irony here.
SPEAKER_02David, I didn't only work at Us Weekly, I worked at L Magazine as well. So yes. And I worked at Glamour.
SPEAKER_00Glamour? I used to shoot I was a photographer way back. We have a couple of different polls. We have a different worldview, shall we say.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00With those sort of things. And as and you know, as you look at the I actually feel really I I really feel bad for like pop stars and movie stars, especially the female ones, because it's like it's very different, very fraught. Like you could do no right. Like whatever you do, it's wrong. Right? What are your thoughts? I mean, you've so you've you know you've been around pop culture and fashion culture and and then you've written this book called Ugly. So you what's your view on all this?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I think for like celebrities, I mean, pop stars and actors, actresses, I think that, you know, their currency is their beauty in a lot in a lot of ways. So when they start to age, you can understand why they want to put fillers in their lips and like do the botox and uh have facelifts. Um I get that. Yeah, I I get that. Like if someone told me I, you know, oh, someone said that um there's uh national awards for ugly people, like people in right in the in the magazine world, like don't have to be attractive. So, but if if doing the work that I really loved and was passionate about rely or depended on me looking a certain way, I'm sure I would tweak my look to uh accommodate that because I want to do my work, you know. So I feel, I don't know, I feel real empathy for them for having to feel the pressures to do that. But I feel like the people who allow themselves to kind of age naturally are a little bit more and are a little bit more grounded and kind of extended. accept accept the aging process. I think they're probably like healthier in mind and body too. I think that it just like it's I I just feel like that probably is a better way to a better philosophy to have. I don't think Jodie Foster has done a lot of stuff to her. Oh she she and she looks amazing. I mean she also is just blessed with good uh bone structure and like some great skin and all that stuff. Yeah I like it when people just age naturally I don't think that female desirability has an expiration date. I mean that's how I feel I don't know if straight men feel that way but I wish they would I think a lot of women think that they that's not true but it is like I find women I tend to like the wrinkles I like the weathering. Some women feel that way about men. Like people say that about Brad Pitt you know he was so pretty and kind of feminine looking when he was young but as he's aged he's gotten a little bit more rugged looking and women like that but you wouldn't say that about a woman but I would say that about a woman I kind of I think it's appealing.
SPEAKER_00I think that's I want to get that quote that's I don't believe there's an expiration date to female desirability.
SPEAKER_02Yeah I I really don't my celebrity push is more a tyranny and she's not like she's maybe I think she's 10 years older than me so she's 60 I think or maybe 61 and I think she's like the just so sexy and cool and wonderful. I don't know I don't I don't I don't know it's not like I would prefer like the young version of her I like who she is right now. I just think she's exquisite just in every way her essence it's not just physicality but her her whole way is appealing to me.
SPEAKER_00There's a qu a quote from the great fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh who did a lot of you know the supermodel stuff. He's wonderful wonderful man and he said the terror of perfection the terror of like this constant drive to be um aesthetically perfect all the time is is not so great.
SPEAKER_02No it's terrible I mean I feel like that's why in the book I really show her I I reference this book by Jack Halberstam called The Queer Art of Failure and this idea that like or or punk femin punk the punk feminist scene where you they made zines and you wanted to see the hand prints you wanted to see the imperfections. You didn't want it to look overly processed hear the sound be overly processed and perfect. You wanted to see the human imperfection in things and I have like kind of an ode to that in a in a chapter called Weird Girls Rule. So I think there's a lot of ways to delight in falling short of the status quo. I and I kind of learned that when I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley like this idea that you know being the odd girl the freak the queer disruption can be kind of affirming you know you you can see it in an affirming way like you don't have to fit in so you can kind of reinvent how to do things you can do it in your own way and that's one gift and good a good template for mainstream society from queer culture I think. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00A lot of what you're saying is what I hear from people about one of the gifts of getting older is basically you don't give a shit anymore. Exactly where you just or you just well you don't I think everybody still cares what they look like like uh to a certain because that's how people you get reflected right so yeah if you're a sociopath you don't care but for most normal people there is this you still care what you look like but it's a different sort of like as somebody once said to me like what are they going to do to me?
SPEAKER_02Like how bad is it gonna be yeah yeah exactly I feel that way I kind of feel that way as a yeah I I I I really uh that that philosophy or point of view really speaks to me too. And I also just think especially as a woman you're just not on people's radar in the same way you are when you're 25 or 35. You know I'm 50 I mean that it's you know we're we live in a very youth centric culture. So the focus is on youth, you know but I do feel like with women who are where they felt like their looks were their greatest asset, I I think that it is really painful for them to suddenly be eclipsed by younger women and not not be visible in the same way anymore for sure.
SPEAKER_00As maligned as they are I I I have a certain empathy for you know like Kim Kardashian. Yeah Kim what what's the mom's like Chris? Chris, yeah I think it's older than I mean I'm 60 yeah I think she's 70. Yeah I don't and so this desire for perfection you're gonna hit a wall here. Yeah inevitable yeah you know you can only pull so much for so long and then I didn't interview I photographed Ivo Pitongay who's the inventor of plastic surgery. Oh wow and I interviewed him in Brazil and he had invented plastic surgery for childhood burn victims. Wow and interesting so you go to like an Ivo's library it's just like all these like medals of honor and he's helped all these burn victims but he was also you know they they realized like oh we can use this to sort of you know beautification and so he did a lot of the 80s movie stars and I think some of the recent batch of you know supermodels have visited clinic Petonga and I I asked Ivo I said so tell me like like how do you deal with yourself he's a man of now like vast economic resources and he's like I've removed all the mirrors from my house I don't look like so he's you know he has a private he's a private island his helicopter and stuff and it's like no I don't like I just know from what I've like seen with others like I I I'm not going there like at all. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Wow that's interesting that's one way to solve that those hot feelings about aging just remove all the mirrors I mean I I I interviewed this woman this is a little different there's I interviewed a woman or she interviewed me for the cut her name's uh Whitney Friedlander and I thought I was the only one that did this I couldn't believe to hear someone else say that they do this. She doesn't believe she's attractive I disagree but whatever I mean that's neither here nor there it's just the feeling that you have whatever you were being measured against growing up determines how you're gonna feel about yourself probably in a lot of ways. But she doesn't feel attractive and she was talking about how she when she's in the bathroom, you know, she goes and washes her hands and stuff but she doesn't look in the mirror. She doesn't want people to see her looking in the mirror I have the same thing she would go into the bathroom and use her mirror on her compact to to like retouch her makeup and go uh because she feels so vulnerable and like she's not good enough and people are gonna like and I've had that same feeling like I kind of like wash my hands and avoid the mirror like I don't want people I don't know I feel more judged by women in some ways like they're assessing my felled femininity and like why you even look in the mirror when you look like that. I don't think the mirror has always been my greatest friend but like I'm talking about in public where I'm under surveillance or being I feel like I'm being monitored. And I mean I talk about that in the book too like also going through department stores. My mom loves shopping and she loves makeup and she loves all those things and so does my daughter. They're like twins. But I always felt self-conscious because my femininity didn't quite I was kind of gender misaligned I wouldn't say non-conforming because that implies intention but I just was misaligned with femininity and I I was like I knew I was supposed to be like oh my God isn't this cute look at this look at this giant like really get into it but I didn't feel that way and um I really couldn't put that theater on. So I was hyper self-conscious going through malls and and being in bathrooms where like you know women are like women look at the I'm like amazed that women can sit there and be like you know and like you know what I mean like I can't do that. Like that's so humiliating to me. And this woman felt the same way and she's a straight woman. She's it's not like a queer thing. I mean she's straight married two kids and she felt that way too so it's not just us. There must be others out there like us.
SPEAKER_00Let's take a quick break and when we return Stephanie I get into style self-expression Tammy Faye Baker Barbara Streisand and the complicated business of deciding what is really ours and what has been handed to us by the culture. I used to think the afternoon fade was a caffeine problem. Have another coffee push through keep going but caffeine mostly mutes the signal that tells you you're tired. The fatigue is still there building underneath and when it wears off you feel the drop. What I like about Element Lemonade iced tea is that it takes a different approach. It uses full black tea extract. So the caffeine comes with L-theanine and polyphenols the way it exists in the plant. Then it adds a meaningful dose of electrolytes, sodium, potassium and magnesium, the same foundation as Element's core hydration mix. For me that makes sense in the summer heat, training, travel, long work days, all of that asks more from the system. I reach for lemonade iced tea when I want something that feels clean, steady and actually refreshing, with no sugar, artificial colors or strange ingredients. Get a free eight count sample pack of Element's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinkelement.com slash ageist. Find your favorite flavor or share with a friend.
SPEAKER_02Once again that's D-R-I-N-K-L-M-N-T.com slash agist talk to me about your experience of being with your daughter in a department store who's behaving like who's reacting these things very very differently how do you how does that how do you process that well I mean I have to say like because it's not me looking for the quotes I'm just like support in the background while she can kind of like take center stage and like do her thing. I don't know like I delight in femininity too my friend I did the my first reading with the launch of this book was at Rosoli bookstore in New York City and my friend was my conversation partner and she's like but this is really ironic because you're attracted to feminine women you know so it's not like I don't like femininity I just feel like I I don't I haven't been able to successfully perform femininity myself but I love that my daughter she's very creative when it comes to clothes and style and and I love how much she delights in it. So fun like her birthdays because mall malls are a novelty living in in in the city she always wants to go to a mall for her birthday and just be able to like have a certain amount of things maybe like a hundred dollars where she can just buy what she wants and just be at the mall all day that's like her heaven. She thinks it's so fun and that was my nightmare growing up so we're very there's a big contrast between us.
SPEAKER_00I love how you know I'm I'm gonna put words in in your mouth here so correct me if I'm wrong but it's like you you delight in other people's enjoyment of the way they of their looks yes did I get that right yeah I mean I mean I'm queer I'm not really attracted to masculine women like that's just not my thing.
SPEAKER_02So I think my friend was thinking that it was very ironic but I don't think it is like I'm not I'm not saying I'm not like and a lot of women have sort of not a lot but women have felt affronted by my book in this way. They feel like I'm acting like any form of adornment is submission to the status quo and to patriarchy when they say it's not that it's fun it's a it's an expression of self it's creative. Yeah. But I would say that it's both. I don't think that we can you can't literally like separate the two I think like there's such an it's it's such a cultural imperative for women to cultivate their beauty and part of cultivating their beauty is cultivating their femininity which is nails and like you know makeup and fabulous clothes and heels and like all that stuff. And it's not to say that I I think that there's no real liberation from it. Like you can kind of become aware of the strings manif puppeteering your behavior right but you can't clip the strings right because we we live in this society but you can pull them I think become aware of them and kind of pull them in the direction that you'd like and I if I was really down on femininity I wouldn't be using you know Tammy Faye Baker is a model and uh weird girls rule for my daughter because she wore makeup in a garish drag queen way that everyone made fun of right con chronically made fun of her and she didn't change it. She could have been like oh I be I'm being made fun of I better put it the right way the right way you know quote unquote she didn't she was like no this is how I like to wear my makeup so fuck you. Yeah yeah I think that's cool.
SPEAKER_00I think that's cool you know you pointed out I've got I I've never given really Tammy Fitbaker credit for that but I it's like kind of cool but she's like this is who I am this is what I like so get over it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah like okay there's so many examples like I talk about Roseanne Barr as like just grilling her and like you know coming at her in an interview about her makeup. Larry King did did the same he was more like gentle about it.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. I have newfound admiration that if I understand this right yeah it's the pushback is against the societal pressures to be something you don't want to be exactly or to be something you you don't feel you are.
SPEAKER_02Yeah don't feel and that okay gotta yeah I think that's cool. I mean I use like uh the other women I use in the book and I picked women that my daughter that speak to my daughters uh at least at this point in her life she's very young she's gonna be 11 in August but but I pick women that I know will resonate with her at least at this point in her life women that love creative women like Barbara Streisands with her her nose she didn't ever change her nose and she talked about how there was so much pressure to do so and then not just her nose but all kinds of stuff and how she was just like no I don't my nose my my imperfection she has a deviated septum and they she thinks that that might be why she sounds the way she does as as and her voice is so like otherworldly beautiful right so I use her and I then I use Tammy Faye Baker I there's a there's a cisgender drag queen in San Francisco named um Monique Jenkinson who does her makeup kind of like Tammy Faye but like even more wild like blush all the way up here. It's just like all over and she's like a straight woman who really likes drag and is doing it um kind of poking fun at the status quo like having fun with it. I think that's cool. I think you just have to become aware of how you're being manipulated by the culture to have agency. So that that's the goal I think.
SPEAKER_00Again I'm gonna bring this back to age okay I guess somewhat with guys but it's mostly with mostly with women you get this you these comments like you're too old to dress like that. So there's this confusion which you're you're you're you're getting to the age where you're gonna get it yeah like but here I am I'm at this age I never like I feel a certain vitality yeah but there's this like number attached to me. So how do I how do there's this sort of misalignment that happens.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You see people like my age dressing as the 25. And but that's how they feel right yeah so they're they're trying to match their inside with their outside. Yeah and sometimes they get pushback about it and then you know at the other extreme you see people who who want to go for like full like gray sack invisibility just like I like I didn't I just don't exist anymore. Yeah it's an interesting thing in the context of what we're talking about like how much yeah I I think it's this this idea of being able to just discern who am I what am I doing what's important to me versus what's all this signaling that I'm getting in that I feel like I have to like perform for.
SPEAKER_02Yeah absolutely I mean I have I so my response to that is I have a scene in the book where my daughter is playing with these LOL dolls which they look like high they look like escorts basically they're this these little dolls and they're super amped up and little club ready you know one day we were playing and she saw there are these huge these high heels that went all up the doll's leg and she said ooh I want to get those I want to wear those with a really small short skirt so that everyone could see how fabulous they are and my response to that was well you have to be careful what you wear because you're communicating something to the world about who you are. Be sure you're okay with that message that you're sending. So that's what I would say is like do whatever you want but there are consequences for like for example I dress like a 15 year old boy. I mean I really I mean I and I wear Converse and like beat up Adidas and like I'm 50 but that's fine with me. I don't look like a I don't look like a sophisticated 50 year old woman in any in any way but I think it's like and maybe I do pay the price for that societally and s in different ways that I'm aware of and not aware of but I think it's okay as long as you're doing it you know what you're doing you know how you're being read in the culture and you're doing it in because you want to like you're you know you want to deviate from the norm and it's it's fun to you or whatever. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Exactly it's back to Tammy Faye right Tammy Faye. This is who I am this is what I do.
SPEAKER_02This is how I feel this is the face I feel good in.
SPEAKER_00That's right. And I think that's like you know if we can sort of put a bow on this it's like how do you feel best about yourself?
SPEAKER_02I just feel like it gets problematic when you make choices and you're not ready to and you can't deal with the consequences of those choices on a societal level. But if you can walk down the street you know in the example you gave a 50 year old guy 40 year old 45 year old guy wearing clothes that are appropriate conventionally to a 15 year old then who cares? Do it have fun.
SPEAKER_00Cares what people say I think there's a lot to be said with for like just you know not giving a shit like you said earlier about you know and just kind of like doing your own thing and it gets tricky here when when because you can align with what's coming you know the sort of messaging coming in yeah or you can rebel against yeah which is also you're either one you're in a state of reaction. Yeah right you're absolutely yeah not you you're not like sort of in yourself and I think sometimes you get this you know the the pushing away like is is also sort of an I don't know I was just I was on the what train was on I was like on the five train going up to how to do something today. Oh yeah it's what I love about New York I mean oh my god like the subway like the the the range the scope of acceptable appearance on the subway fantastic yes I just know it's like kaleidoscopic whatever you can imagine it's an interesting thing and I find that you know some of the research that we've done about age that we find that it takes about 45 or 50 years for somebody to like sort of walk the earth and realize like are they either like in alignment with their like parental values or societal values or are they acting in opposition and either one of them is reactive they're not really coming from who you are but it takes a certain amount of like being alive to like sort of like be like yeah this is who I am I finally figured it out.
SPEAKER_02Yeah yeah no totally I think that what you're describing though is also like this idea that you can't really be liberate yourself you can't you can't liberate yourself from it you're you're entangled with these systems of meaning yeah and they as long as you're aware of that I think it's just the awareness is sort of the key to um yeah knowing yourself and like being aware of how you're you're being uh puppeteered and as far as your values go your behavior goes all of that stuff beliefs go and and trying to kind of figure out what feels right to you I think is the it's really hard.
SPEAKER_00I mean there are some people like you know that like 13 they just like this is who I am this is what I do done. Yeah and I I admire these people like how did you yeah what do you like it's you know struck by God and like where did where did you get this message?
SPEAKER_02Yeah yeah you're tapped into some higher consciousness or something I don't know yeah it's wild.
SPEAKER_00What's next for you Steph?
SPEAKER_02What's next? Well I actually am wrapping up the school year I work at this really great um elementary school in in uh Park Slope I have eight more classes I have to take I already have a master's in education but I'm gonna I'm trying to get my teaching credential because I love working with kids. So I think that's what's next for me for now and I'm writing stories this summer tethered to the book you know the themes in the book and doing that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful yeah I know you're busy and I I want to thank you for your time today. Well this was really fun it was really great to talk to you and meet you yeah Stephanie Farrington ugly a letter to my daughter and there's a lot of look look confusion as people older. Yes well at any age what I what can I say? Yeah totally good to help unpack a little bit of this yeah so appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02Well thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00My pleasure all right have a great rest of the day so you too be safe bye-bye. That was Stephanie Farrington author of Ugly A Letter to my daughter I'm compelled by Stephanie's point that the problem is not the aging face or the queer body or the woman who does not perform femininity correctly or the older person who refuses to dress the way the culture expects. The problem is often the frame itself it's the system out there doing the judging. And I gotta say the Tammy Faye Baker thing, I've just become a huge Tammy Faye Baker fan. I never really thought of her and thinking about it the way Steph puts it. I spend a lot of time thinking about age and the body. I track things I train you know I pay attention to my sleep food strength biomarkers all that stuff but this conversation reminds me the external has to stay connected to the internal in some way it's always worth a quick check in to ensure we strive for longevity and aliveness versus trying to outperform that 25-year-old version of myself. I know I've given that one up Stephanie talked about awareness seeing the strings knowing how the culture is trying to puppet us around beauty, youth, desirability I don't think we ever really fully get free of that. We live in the world and that's a lot of the way the world is but despite our best efforts you know when I spoke to Ivo Pitongay he even comes across mirrors sometimes we see other people seeing us and that's what's really important but maybe we can get a little more honest about what we actually want, what makes us feel capable and what makes us feel alive and ready to maybe tune down the performing a little bit. That's it for this week. Stay strong, stay vibrant. We'll see you next time