HOLLY WAINWRIGHT: Mother-daughter lingerie shoots and your ideal 'freezing age'.

Fifteen?

Eighteen? 

Twenty?

There’s an age at which, apparently, a female body should be frozen in time. 

A time when you skate closest to the exact proportions agreed to be Perfect.  

Agreed by whom? Well, there's a question, but since youthful women's bodies have been used to sell us everything from fast food to true love, let's just go with... the world.

Of course, for the majority, there’s plenty of distance between us and that version of Perfection. In its strictest form, that comes with requirements other than youth. Whiteness. Blondeness. Thinness. Long legs, perhaps. Boobs that are big but not too big. The world is picky about women. 

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But in our youth-obsessed world, there's a time, somewhere after you've moved out of kid sizes, when you'll be close to your freezing age. 

This is a truth that's on bald display in two recent underwear campaigns that feature celebrity mothers and their daughters. 

Heidi Klum is a supermodel. She’s 50. Her daughter Leni is 19. In their knickers, for Intimissimi, they look almost identical. 

Mel B is a Spice Girl and a reality TV judge and a sometime Australian. She’s 48. Her daughter Pheonix is 24. They are advertising Pour Moi lingerie together and again… they look the same. 

Of course they do. Women over 40 in bikinis or lingerie are only celebrated as empowering if they look 24. Or 19. 

So good for her age, we say. When we mean… so good for not looking your age. 

No shade to these women. All of them of are beautiful, have every right to make a living and I love nice undies. Mel B's shoot also has a charitable element, donating some proceeds from the range to Women's Aid. But what these mother-daughter twinning shoots tell us is what we already know. 

When it comes to women and their bodies and ageing, there’s a very clear memo, and it’s: Don’t ever change.

No matter what comes - hormonal shifts, babies, illness, medication, mental health dips, metabolism changes, medical procedures, the inevitable advancement of time - stay frozen at your "peak" of perceived hotness. Otherwise, put it away, please. 

Spend large chunks of your time, and your energy and your willpower, trying to get back to - or hold on to - that golden moment when what you looked like was… okay, in the world's eyes. 

The shape and size and texture and hue of your physical self is only worthy if it is static. And even then, for God’s sake, do something about it. Smooth it, shave it, pluck it, paint it. Keep yourself nice. 

If there is a period of mandated change - a baby is growing inside you, perhaps - then you will be given a brief reprieve. But only on some of the terms of this arrangement. Ideally the only part of your body that changes is your stomach. That is permitted to get round and hard like a basketball. But please, can everything else stay the same?

In what other area of our lives to we value this lack of evolution? The inability to grow? 

And in what other area of our lives do we dedicate quite so much time and energy to trying to be something we no longer are? That we - realistically, logically, scientifically - can no longer be?  

The toll of trying not to change from a particular image of you that once existed - maybe it was your school formal, your wedding day, your first beach holiday with friends - is immense.

How many hours has the average woman Mel B’s age spent thinking about food in her lifetime? Eating it. Not eating it. Counting it. Not counting it. Considering whether if, if she eats this, but doesn’t eat that, will she be “good” today, or “bad”? How many gym memberships and step counters and food delivery services and calorie calculators? How many beauty appointments and procedures and jabs and tweaks? How many dollars? How many moments spent feeling your clothes digging into your flesh and hating yourself for your weakness? 

A lot. That's how many. 

It's impossible to stand still in a world that just keeps moving on. 

But these mother-daughter photoshoots offer us all hope that maybe it isn't. Maybe with enough dedication, and time, and energy, we could recapture the taut skin and toned thighs of a teenage girl, or a young woman.

Of course, it's about time as well as beauty. Our crepes and creases remind us it's moving on, in one direction only. And we all want more time with the people we love. 

The tech giants of Silicon Valley are popping pills and plunging in ice and eating tiny amounts of algae only, and breathing bespoke oxygen in the quest to live forever. To continue to give their gifts to the world. To carry on cluttering up the place for eternity. 

But for women (and very few of those people are women), it's presented to us as retaining the "best version of ourselves". 

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Celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Aniston have no embarrassment in admitting they would "try anything", "do anything", to "look and feel younger." 

Because we all silently agree that younger is best. 

Experience is nothing if it doesn't come with a flat stomach. Wisdom is nought if your nipples point downwards. Perspective is worthless if your thighs come with dimples. 

Women can and should enjoy their bodies and show their fabulous selves off to the world as often as they desire. Mums shouldn't cover up and there's no time-limit on knicker-flashing. 

But this celebration of stasis? It's nonsense. We are meant to change and grow and shift and spread.

There's nothing empowering about being trapped in a version of yourself you outgrew long ago.

Feature Image: Instagram