The Curator’s
Eye:
Still Becoming
Photo Credit: Launchmetrics Spotlight
Time does something interesting to the way we remember people. In our minds, those we first encountered decades ago can remain exactly as they were, even as they continue to age.
For a generation, actress Jasmine Guy is still connected to Whitley Gilbert, the unforgettable character she portrayed on A Different World, a series that shaped how we saw Black college life, ambition, identity, and coming of age.
Jasmine is now a woman in her sixties, and some of the commentary surrounding her appearance on social media has been unnecessarily cruel. The response speaks to something larger: the expectations we continue to place on women as they age.
We celebrate longevity while asking women to provide as little visual evidence of it as possible.
Somewhere along the way, looking vibrant and looking young became almost interchangeable. They aren’t…
I care deeply about aesthetics. I want to look vibrant, stylish, and considered. But I’ve also been thinking about what it means to allow myself to look like the season of life I’m actually in.
I’ve been confronting that in a small way as I allow more of my gray hair to come in. There was no grand declaration. I simply began asking myself: How long am I going to keep coloring it? At some point, I became more interested in seeing what this version of me looks like than preserving an earlier one.
Perhaps that’s the more interesting question as we age: not how closely we can resemble who we once were, but how fully we can inhabit who we are now.
Because what makes a woman compelling has never been limited to her appearance. There is her curiosity, her point of view, the way she engages with the world, and whether she remains excited about her own life.
That vitality has very little to do with the absence of gray hair or wrinkles. It comes from remaining open to life.
Because what makes a woman compelling has never been limited to her appearance. There is her curiosity, her point of view, the way she engages with the world, and whether she remains excited about her own life.
That vitality has very little to do with the absence of gray hair or wrinkles. It comes from remaining open to life.
Photo Credit: Jasmine Guy
The woman pictured in the hero image above, Carolyn Doelling, embodies much of what I mean. Carolyn was recently a guest on MEYVN Moment, our monthly Instagram Live series celebrating bold expression, confident style, and refined creativity.
She began modeling at 74. After years of coloring her hair, she stopped, revealing the beautiful gray you see here. Now approaching 80, she remains deeply curious about what is still possible.
We spend so much of our younger lives figuring out who we are that we sometimes speak of age as though growth eventually ends.
I don’t believe it does.
There are still things to discover and parts of ourselves we haven’t encountered yet. Even our style can become part of that discovery, not a performance of youth, but an expression of the woman we are now.
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— Sheryl
Founder & Curator
