J-Lo and I have so much in common. She’s 51, and I’m turning 51 soon. Also… ah, wait, that’s all we have in common.
I haven’t changed my name to H-Vn, as cool as that sounds, nobody has ever come close to being fooled by the rocks that I’ve got, and I can’t actually find any recent photos of myself, whereas a recent photo of J-Lo has just broken the (admittedly fragile) internet. Again.
You may have seen the photo. It’s the cover of J-Lo’s new single, 'In The Morning'. She’s completely naked, except for a diamond ring. She looks like some kind of warrior woman, pure rippling muscle, like she could open a jar of salsa with her bare hands and not have to ask someone else to hold the jar while she tries to turn the lid, like I do. A goddess to be worshipped. Hot. Hot. Hot.
I look at the photo and just want to see Celeste Barber’s take on it. Oh, here it is.
Apparently, J-Lo is redefining what it means to be fifty-something. She is proving that age is meaningless, that a 51-year-old can look as good as a 21-year-old.
I say that’s taking the fun out of being 51.
The nice thing about being over 50 is that you don’t have to care anymore. You don’t have to try. No one is expecting you to be hot. That pressure is gone.
You don’t feel men checking you out, so you don’t have to worry if they like what they see, or even if you want them to like what they see. As one of my friends told me recently, “It’s great. I can wear the same clothes all the time and no one notices because they’re not looking at me.”
Side note... here's how you self care according to your horoscope. Post continues below.
You can look down at your slightly pudgy belly and tell yourself that it’s fine because it’s just not normal to have a flat belly at your age. You don’t have to stress about the lines on your face because you have the beginnings of a saggy neck and it would look weird if you had a perfectly smooth face on top of a saggy neck. You can save so much time and money and mental energy by not feeling like you need to be hot.
See, this is what it takes to look like J-Lo at 51, according to J-Lo:
And the big one, exercise. Lots of it. Every day, no excuses. Her core workout begins with 50 hanging ab raises, 50 rope crunches, and 50 incline sit-ups with a 20kg plate. (I don’t know what all that means, but it sounds tiring. And normal people have excuses for not exercising every day.)
Before you accuse me of being sexist (I’m not) or jealous (I am), let me say that J-Lo is amazing. I am totally in awe of her. It’s part of her job to look good, and she does it incredibly well. Through a mix of lucky genes and hard work, she’s a knockout.
What I object to is the idea that she’s redefining what women in their fifties look like.
For those 51-year-olds who do want to look 21 and are prepared to put in the effort, that’s great. But let’s hope we don’t get to the point where fifty-somethings start to feel they have to look like J-Lo.
Give us a break. We don’t need pressure to be hot. We’ve got too much else going on.
Feature image: Instagram/@jlo and supplied.
