What does the average 50 year old look like?
Why I loathe this question trending on TikTok
The original title of this piece was What It Feels Like to Be 53, and it had been sitting in my drafts since August. A few days ago, I stumbled across a TikTok trend: What does the average 50-year-old look like? At first, I felt like I should join in. But the more I thought about it, the more I paused. Where is this coming from? What does average even mean? Who’s driving this trend?
Is it other fifty-somethings looking to compare? And if so, isn’t that just a gateway to: she looks older, she looks good (must have had work done), she looks terrible (should get work done). Is it shaming? Is it uplifting? Did a millennial start it, peeking around the corner to see what’s ahead? Or is it Boomers (flocking to TikTok) wondering if they still “look the part”?
Whoever started it, I don’t love this trend. For a lot of reasons. Mostly because no one walks away from it feeling better. If you look younger, someone else feels worse. If you look older, they tell you. Either way, you land in the crosshairs of whether you did or didn’t have “work.”
People often tell me I look younger than I am. We’re conditioned to believe that looking young equals value. Relevance. Visibility. So when someone says, “You don’t look 52,” it’s delivered like a compliment. As if I narrowly escaped an insult.
But here’s the better question: How do women in their fifties feel?
Day to day? » I feel good. I’m healthy.
My sleep? » I sleep like a dream. (Test me, Bryan Johnson—I’ll beat your score.)
My skin? » Cared for since puberty.
My hair? » Thick. It fell out after pregnancy and during COVID, but it grew back. Greying like a weed.
My weight? » Within ten percent of what it was in my twenties.
On paper, I’m winning. But paper never tells the full story.
Emotionally, 52 is a reckoning. It’s a deep breath. It’s knowing more than you ever wanted to know, and still being surprised when life swerves. It’s realizing there are fewer years ahead than behind, and I say that as someone who is relentlessly optimistic.
At 22, life is rolling hills. Sunlit and endless.
At 32, you’ve taken a few wrong turns. There’s drizzle, but the sun still comes back.
At 42, you’ve weathered storms. Hail, snow, but you’re still standing.
At 52, the tall mountain is ahead. You can’t see the weather at the top.
52 is when another clock starts ticking. Not the biological one. The stopwatch. The one counting down. You realize time is not infinite. The hills are behind you. Is that morbid? Maybe. But it’s also freeing.
You stop wasting time proving your worth to people who never knew how to see it. And maybe being seen is the hardest part of aging. I’m not afraid of failing. I’ve failed plenty. I’m afraid of disappearing. Of becoming invisible in a world that worships youth. Of growing more, achieving more, feeling more, and still being overlooked.
So, how does it feel to be 52?
It feels like standing on a ridge, staring at the last mountain you’ve got to climb. There’s no guarantee of sunshine at the top. The terrain changes. Weather shifts. Fog rolls in. It can rain.
But sometimes there are rainbows too.
Here’s what 50 looked like on me on one of the best days of my life, surrounded by the people I love, celebrating a milestone that meant so much.
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