I feel compelled to say something about the social media dragging of Jasmine Guy because she doesn’t look the way she did more than 30 years ago when she portrayed Whitley Gilbert on A Different World.

Of course she doesn’t. More than 30 years have passed. What strikes me is how little we hear about the appearance of Kadeem Hardison, who played Dwayne Wayne. He, too, has aged, as human beings are supposed to do. So perhaps this isn’t really a post about Jasmine Guy at all. It’s about the deeply institutionalized misogyny and ageism that teach us to scrutinize women’s faces and bodies as they grow older, while allowing men the simple privilege of aging. When did natural aging become something women are expected to apologize for, conceal, or correct? We seem to demand that women somehow age without appearing to age, through makeup, false eyelashes, Botox, cosmetic procedures, filters, and whatever else is required to maintain the illusion of perpetual youth. There is nothing shameful about looking your age. I also believe some of this cruelty reflects our collective inability to reckon with mortality. Aging reminds us that time is passing. It reminds us that our bodies change, that youth is temporary, and ultimately that none of us will be here forever. Rather than confront those truths, our culture too often turns aging into something to ridicule, especially when it appears on the faces and bodies of women. And women who dare to age naturally, visibly, and proudly are treated as though they have committed some offense, or conversely achieved an extraordinary feat, if "they don't look their age." Jasmine Guy does not owe us Whitley Gilbert’s face forever. None of us owes the world an illusion of perpetual youth. May we have the courage, and the grace to let women grow old. Mary Anne Adams Executive Director