On a recent random scroll through Instagram traffic, I slammed to a sudden stop at a video clip of Demi Moore at an event several weeks ago, looking frighteningly skeletal. I sat for a moment, stunned by the image before I noticed the lead comment, honking something like, “Demi Moore, aging like a fine wine…”
First, women are not wine—or donuts, or strawberries, or vaginas (at least not only vaginas), as we are often referred to in marketing of all kinds, but especially beauty marketing. And though I understand the metaphor about improving with age, this one sours pretty quickly when you consider that even a fine wine at some point will turn to vinegar (in general, the point at which a woman is no longer perceived as reproductively viable). Moore, at 63, presents as a much younger woman. I suppose this is what precipitated the comment suggesting that she is aging well. But aging well is not about looking younger. It’s about being healthy, and consequently looking healthy. And there seems to be some confusion about that.
The ramifications of an unhealthily low BMI (as a rule, under 18.5) are legion and unpleasant, especially if you’d prefer not to die early: It’s associated with an increased risk of mortality, one that’s significantly more than in a woman with what’s considered a normal BMI. It’s also associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. That’s the really bad news.
Aging well is not about looking younger. It’s about being healthy, and consequently looking healthy.
The run-of-the-mill bad news is that underweight women often suffer from reduced muscle mass (sarcopenia), which older people in general are prone to, and low bone density—another perimenopause/menopause pitfall best avoided, as it increases the risk of fractures. Might you be concerned about your aging skin? Excessively thin women are prone to chronic skin fragility and skin tears (dermatoporosis). And that’s in addition to the normal age-related increased skin fragility that often results in bruising.
And while we’re on the topic of skin, you might have noticed that faces—even the faces of young women—when they’re extremely thin, emphasize characteristics caused by age, among them sunken eyes and cheeks.
The point is that women in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond, if we want to age well, need to be aiming for the opposite of the image that Moore and many of her Hollywood peers present. We need to be thinking about ways to increase physical strength, focusing on healthy nutrition, building bone density and muscle mass, and maintaining both physical and mental agility. In our later 70s and 80s, there may come a time when we experience unintended weight loss and consequential frailty that could limit our movement. All the more reason to keep our bodies as robust as possible while we can.