
What do you say when a beauty queen leaps to her death, pushed over the edge by the crushing weight of turning thirty in a youth-obsessed culture?
I said: Fuck.
How can a woman with such intelligence, grace, commitment, passion, success, and incredible beauty believe, in her own words, that “turning 30 feels like a cold reminder that I’m running out of time to matter in society’s eyes”*? Is it really still that bad?
The answer is: yes, it apparently is that bad.
It is clear now that Cheslie suffered from high-functioning depression. Though her essay on turning thirty eludes to the pressure she felt by getting older, perhaps causing her depression to become severe. It sounded like aging felt dangerous to her, and not the opportunity to be free of youthful image expectations like it is for some of us.
There is a certain freedom I’ve felt since I entered my sixties. No more am I concerned with my appearance like I was as a young woman. My relationship with my face and body has been down many a dark road, and I can see the photos in my mind’s eye of when I thought I looked good. Skinny jeans are likely part of that picture. I have never considered myself a beauty though I know I can clean up nice and I have a certain sparkle that makes me prettier than I really am. But that sparkle didn’t really make its debut until I was well over 30—over 40, I’d say—when I turned my attention to more passionate work. A boring job can really take the shine out of a girl. Withering away in a cubicle as a project manager had me longing for a career like I had in my twenties making movies and touring with rock stars. While LITE-FM played from a clock radio on my desk, I dreamed of being an interior decorator or a therapist, calculating how old I would be when I finished school for those jobs. It always seemed too old, as if forty-two or forty-three made me ancient, too old to start anew.
“V-veterinarian, veterinarian,” Raymond sputters in Fight Club, while Tyler Durden holds a gun to his head, demanding to know what he wanted to be. “Too much school.” Was his excuse for not following through. When Tyler threatens to kill him unless he goes back to live his dream, we feel his terror and know he will go back and do that school. With stakes that high, what choice is there?
When the gun was pointed at me, it was in the form of a layoff post-9/11, a couple months before my forty-first birthday. It led to a life coach (with a winning essay about why I wanted to reinvent myself) which led to coaching school and the best career I have ever had (and I’ve toured with rock stars.) Luckily, my face had nothing to do with my success, and I took the time and energy to find out what really made me shine.
Whatever Cheslie learned in her pageant life that led her to believe thirty meant she was running out of time is a tragedy. My heart breaks for beautiful women who have come to believe that as their beauty fades, they become irrelevant. We need to do better. We have to do better! We need to tell every young woman—and the middle-aged ones, too—that their sparkle comes from the inside. That aging is messy and gorgeous, and on the other side of forty is a world of joy if you deliver your gifts. That your sixties and beyond can be magnificent. We need to teach them to seek support when they feel scared, that we will hold them up.
We need to convince them that turning 30 is barely the beginning in the life of a woman.
(Mental Health is so important for all of us. Watch out for one another and reach out if you need help. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 24/7 800-273-8255)
*Allure article written by Cheslie Kryst https://www.allure.com/story/cheslie-kryst-miss-usa-on-turning-30