Millennial and Gen Z women have grown up with the language of loving yourself. But as one fiftysomething writer reports, the self-love movement can leave older women cold. After a lifetime of being her own worst critic, Xenia Taliotis asks...
‘Who sat on your glasses?’ I was wearing a broken pair – taped with a plaster – when a colleague posed the question. I was taken aback. I wanted to say I’d just broken them, but they’d been like that for months. Truth be told, it had been so long since I paid any attention to my appearance that I no longer saw myself. I imagined I was invisible to others, too. His comment stayed with me, as did the look when I told him how long I’d neglected to resolve something so basic. It forced me to admit, if only to myself, that the reason I hadn’t replaced them was a lack of self-love. Or perhaps I should call it what it really is – an abundance of self-hatred.
For half a century, I’ve lived with an inner bully. She’s diminished my small successes, exaggerated all my failures and mocked my every intention to make positive change. The emotional damage she’s inflicted has curtailed me academically, romantically and professionally. She’s talked me out of crucial exams and prevented me from applying for promotions. I’ve only ever been able to see myself through her eyes and the person she sees has barely been worth a first look, far less a second.
Now, at 57, I’ve had enough of the self-laceration. There was no one catalyst that brought me to this stage, but a series of moments: the friend who sent me an article on ‘hate-dressing’ because my wardrobe is filled with sackcloth; the realisation that a pandemic thrice as long wouldn’t have made any difference to my haircare; comparing the product-packed make-up bag of a friend with my own, which featured a 30-year-old palette from The Body Shop. Then there’s the deep melancholia that grips me, often without warning. While it’s difficult to prove that low self-regard leads to depression, rather than the other way around, I’ve interviewed enough psychologists to know that high self-esteem correlates with better mental health, while low esteem is linked to anxiety and dejection. But there is hope – in the form of a concept I’ve only observed from the sidelines; a phrase that’s evolved from a swirlyfonted meme to a formidable phenomenon. I didn’t come of age with the language of self-love, but as I approach my seventh decade, I want to know if self-love can be learned.
Global warning
‘The worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself;’ wrote the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, nearly 150 years ago. ‘You lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests.’ I sincerely hope his words make little sense to you. If you treat yo
