Philosopher Susan Sontag has written about the way in which men are allowed to age and women are not. She says:
The great advantage men have is that our culture allows two standards of male beauty: the boy and the man. The beauty of a boy resembles the beauty of a girl. In both sexes it is a fragile kind of beauty and flourishes naturally only in the early part of the life-cycle. Happily, men are able to accept themselves under another standard of good looks — heavier, rougher, more thickly built…

There is no equivalent of this second standard for women. The single standard of beauty for women dictates that they must go on having clear skin. Every wrinkle, every line, every gray hair, is a defeat.
Proof of that? Four posters below that are part of a new marketing plan for the forthcoming movie, The Counselor.


Men are considered more attractive with age, whereas women have faces that are so smooth, you know they've been photoshopped. You and I obviously haven't noticed this trend since it's been so ubiquitous.