GUEST POST: IMAGES OF SPIRIT: BEAUTY OF THE AGING WOMAN

Here's another article I came across, which I think my female readers could learn from and most probably relate to. It's a great article written by Bente Mirow.

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Images of Spirit: Beauty of the Aging Woman

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the beholder has been manipulated. Culture and the media have led us to believe that female beauty belongs only to those who are young and skinny.

As the female body changes with age, so do our perceptions of it. Body image and confidence rule many women’s lives, leading to a perpetual pursuit of the perfect physical form. Media projections of the ideal female shape amount to nothing less than a massive lie about what a female body really looks like. What most women see in the mirror has little to do with the endless images of “perfect” women who seem to populate the glossy (and often airbrushed) world—whether it be too much skin that can move independently, pouches extending out too far, or lines reflecting lifetimes of love, difficulties and laughter.

Each of us sees the world and ourselves in it, not as it is, but as we are conditioned to see it. For women, this is often a reflection of the confusing contradiction between our bodies as an advertising tool and the body we see most often, not on film, TV, and magazine pages, but in the streets.

Most mirrors will reflect what happens to a woman’s body as she ages and refuses to overrule nature with plastic surgery or medical interventions, combined with an unwillingness to devote the kind of time and energy it takes to keep up the perfect appearance.

The mirror doesn’t lie, but neither does the eye of the camera when worked by a skilled photographer as a cultural mirror. The photographer has the power to project beauty in ways and places that we do not always perceive it to be. Marin County photographer, Glen Graves, wants to help change what constitutes female beauty.

For nearly 10 years, Graves has been working on a project that he calls “Images of Spirit,” involving women over 40 celebrating the beauty that comes with aging without needing to hide or change the stories scribbled on their maturing or matured bodies. The stories told by each woman in this photographic project reflect her ability to see through her own darkness to attain a heightened understanding and appreciation for who she is. Graves aims to help redefine beauty in a way that defies the traditional cultural definitions and as such, presents each woman’s unique beauty through the telling of her own story, the lessons she has learned, and her personal, spiritual and emotional evolution.

The women involved have taken the bold step to reveal themselves in body and soul to make this statement: Real beauty and happiness come from doing the hard work of dealing with life’s challenges, listening to our internal voice, dancing to our inner music, and letting our light and beauty shine through to the world. Some of the women simply wanted the world to see that they are beautiful, desirable and proud.

These are women who are not willing to fade graciously into the wallpaper, to be considered unattractive or dismissed as old and useless. They embrace their age with no desire to be younger, knowing that their hard earned experiences and wisdom reflect back to the world a different kind of beauty.

Graves developed this project as a result of becoming a single parent to a 15-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter amid nagging concerns over how to give his children a solid foundation for their future when issues of body image, peer pressure, personal sexuality, and media manipulation took center stage. As he realized that the lessons and values that we obtain in our early years are likely to stay with us for a lifetime—both the positive and the negative ones—a desire formed to further the discussion of what is really of value in our lives and how we can go about becoming whole and happy human beings.

“My personal and professional goal was to create images that challenge this culture’s commercialized perception of beauty and show that beauty comes in all ages, shapes and sizes,” says Graves. “The pursuit of the ‘perfect’ woman has created a mythical image of the female form that is virtually unattainable and has been a devastating burden for so many of our youth and an issue for all of us as we grow older.”

Comparing the aging of our bodies to nature, as Graves does in his brief introduction to the project—through trees bearing scars, growing twisted, or losing limbs, creek beds altered, and rocks eroded by water and cracked in half by the forces of nature—women’s bodies show the bearing of children, loss of breasts, softening, wrinkling, slowing, liv-ing, loving, survivals, and triumphs.

The photos are outstandingly sensitive to the women expressing themselves in the nude. Graves interviews the woman to find out what she wants to express, then makes himself invisible while trying to pursue truth in the images he captures. The woman writes a short accompanying commentary to create a synergy to guide the viewer into a greater understanding of her as an individual, her statement and how she has embraced the changes in her life.

One of the women involved with the project, Sashana, comments: “As women over 40, we have the opportunity to contribute, to help our culture remember what beauty is about. We have been told over and over that our bodies are not beautiful unless they conform to a strict code that has more to do with control and deprivation than celebration of life, embodiment and spirit. At whatever age we are, it is not too late to learn to celebrate the bodies we live in, to honor them for the wonderful houses they are and to see their form as what makes us beautiful creatures of nature. When we are deep within our own psyches, connected to all those who have come before us and those who will follow, we have a deep knowing of beauty and it transcends the body. Looking at each other through these eyes can only bring healing.”

Photography has the ability to challenge assumptions and Graves’ approach and artistic vision is based in non-attachment. Filled with information about how the woman he is working with sees herself and wishes to be seen, he releases expectations to be free to resonate with the present and the environment at hand. He focuses on the constant flux of life through his lens. Grounded in his technical skills, he becomes the observer who intuitively knows the moment when he is able to reflect back the image of the woman’s spirit as revealed in her expression of herself and her body.

As Graves captures those moments of mature women’s spirit with his camera, he moves beyond the notion of photography as a snapshot of reality, blending the impermanence of nature and the human vessel into a moment of transformation. Such an aesthetic journey into the spirit of the aging woman encourages new insights into what might constitute female beauty while silencing any question of the photographer’s role as cultural commentator.

Philosopher Joseph Campbell once said, “It is not until the later stages of one’s life that you look back and see that each experience has a symmetry and reason and fits perfectly into the fabric of your life.”


Applied to the experience of aging and whatever our bodies’ challenges might be or have been, the photographer gives the viewers an opportunity to examine their own attitudes towards a difficult and uncomfortable subject.

“I know that aging women are beautiful,” says Sashana. “Glen is a bridge between this knowledge and society’s vision of beauty. With an eye for the link between inner and outer beauty, he is able to produce images that will jar the memory of all who look at them so that they remember the knowing they have inside about the truth of beauty.”

So when the eye of the beholder becomes unconditioned from sub-scribing to a perceived truth of beauty, able to see the human body as a reflection of time and nature, perhaps we will start to recognize female beauty as kindness, charm, emotional maturity and personality, as reflected on her body and gracefully adjusted through time.

Posted 4th February 2010 by Bro Nudist

Reblogged from nudist-of-borneo.blogspot.gr