How Men and Women Really Feel About Aging

Aging: that sneaky little thing that happens while we’re busy buying collagen powder. But here’s the fun twist, men and women don’t exactly approach aging with the same attitude. One gender tends to panic quietly, buying eye cream and spirulina. The other just slips into their comfortable jeans and insists aging makes someone look “distinguished.” Guess which is which.

Let’s start with the guys. Despite having receding hairlines, laugh lines, and ear hair that seems to gain strength with every birthday, men remain confident about their aging appearances.

Meanwhile, women are out here trying to hold back time with an arsenal of tools that could rival a NASA launch. Serums, rollers, supplements, laser facials, if it vibrates and costs more than $99, we own it. An AARP study done in 2025, “Mirror/Mirror: Survey of Women’s Reflections on Beauty, Age and Media” reflects gender bias towards the aging woman in everyday encounters. Apparently, older women are either invisible or undesirable as the Media celebrates only young women.

Meanwhile aging men are viewed as icons of peak wisdom and power. Salt-and-pepper hair? Sexy. A bit of a belly? “It’s called a dad bod, and it’s in.” For women, aging is portrayed as the first step into the descent into hell.

The dating scene really highlights the desirability discrepancy between men and women when it comes to age. Men often seek younger partners as they age, and the sight of a 60 year old man with a 30 year old woman is met with the comment-“Attaboy-way to go!” Meanwhile the reverse scenario has people shaking their heads at the shameless behavior of this “cougar”. Apparently, women age in dog years and men age like fine whiskey.

So, what’s the takeaway here? Age may be just a number, but the way we react to it says a lot about gender expectations. Men are taught to equate age with gravitas. Women? We’re told to age “gracefully,”as long as it involves Botox, filters, and silence. But here’s a radical idea- what if we stopped measuring our value by the number of candles on the cake, or the lines on our face and instead judged our value by the accomplishments in our lives and the people that we’ve made happy?

Because at the end of the day, aging beats the alternative. If men can walk around with liver spots and confidence, then women can walk into their older years with laugh lines and zero apologies. We need to resist conforming to society’s declaration of female worth, which prizes youth in a woman as a standard of perfection. If time is seen as enhancing a man’s presence in the world, then it must also be seen as a force that strengthens a woman’s impact.

It's easy to see why men have a more positive attitude than women regarding aging. Wouldn’t you rather be called a “Silver Fox” than a “Hag”? I think I know the answer.