Simona Ferrar, 36, Spain
Age Esteem is self esteem related to age. It means feeling good about yourself and feeling good about your age and the stage of life you’re in.
I think one of the main fears in my case is that I am 36 years old and I don’t have children yet, so that is my main worry concerning aging. If one day I don’t have children I won’t be able to have them anymore. So I think that is the most important one. I am at the stage in life where that could or could not happen. That is going to influence my life in a big way. Otherwise I do see and feel my body change. I see wrinkles and grey hair which I didn’t have before. They just keep appearing more and more. I’m kind of trying to figure out how to deal with them. I’d like to say that they don’t bother me, but at the same time I feel they are new and I need to get used to them.
Since I also work in acting, appearance is quite important and is very much taken into consideration when people choose you for a job . For example I did an audition for a role and I sort of suspected that they were looking for someone who was quite a bit younger; it was for television and for television they quite like to have someone with very young looks. They didn’t take me for that role, but then they called me for another role which I did get and am happy to have it, but I also realized it was a role of someone older who had a daughter of 20. So I started calculating and realized I could be a grandmother already at this age.
Yes, I think that I am in a phase of figuring out how I want to deal with these issues. A lot of actors and actresses do face surgery for this reason. It is something I don’t really want to do now, or later, but it is something one thinks of and hears about in these professions.
In dancing there’s a tendency to say that you can’t dance after a certain age. It is certainly true of ballet where it becomes very difficult to find a job after 35 or 40 years of age. However, I believe that most dancers are able to dance after that age. Someone just decided at some time that that age is no longer good for dancing. Wonderful proof that this is not true is Sylvie Guillem who is still a ballet star at 46. I’m not in ballet right now, and I also started dancing relatively late compared to standards. At the same time I feel that dancing is something that I should be able to do as long as I want. That’s exactly what I’m going to be doing, so I am organizing my life and my way of working in function of that. That is why I am working on creations, because I know people won’t come and say you can’t create any more. If you create your own work, then you get your job easily. I think people are dancing to a later age. One of my favorite choreographers is a person called Pina Bausch who passed away last year. She’s a very well-known dancer in contemporary dance. She’s a director of dance theater. She’s German. She died at the age of 68 and I saw her dance a few months before she died. It was beautiful to see her dance. She has people in her company who are past the age when one says they should start thinking of doing other things. She actually did a big choreography of a 3 hour performance with people over 65 years old. It was beautiful. I loved it. I think these things are happening more and more. By the time I am 65 or 70, I think I will have a lot of co dancers that age.
Simona’s Tips: Aging comes with a lot of good things such as lots of experience, one’s own experience and the experience of others around one. I feel I’ve learned so much. The older I get the more I know and I get to know myself better. I think there are a lot of people older than me around me, people in my family and other people I really look up to as being models for me. I just feel their experience is so valuable, or just their being there for me is something very valuable. I had and have such nice relationships with my grandmother on my mother’s side and with my grandmother and grandfather on my father’s side. For example with my grandfather we had quite a formal relationship up until very recent years when we got really close. For me these are special relationships which involve caring and just being with each other. I really value these people and I think that society should.
Love your body and enjoy it. Don’t let yourself think that you cannot do something because you are too old or too young. If it feels right for you, then it is probably your right time. The body is what one leaves when one dies so I think we have to enjoy it as much as possible. That’s why I enjoy dancing so much. It is a wonderful way of experiencing one’s body and expressing feelings. There is a lot of humor in dance, too. Enjoy your body. What I see in people when someone’s happy is that they are beautiful, whatever the age. I know children are drawn to happy people. – And it doesn’t depend on age. So yes, just enjoy yourself and your body and feelings and soul and the relationship with others through soul and body.
Simona Ferrar is an actress, dancer and choreographer.
Bonnie Fatio
Bonnie Across-generations, Secrets to AgeEsteem age-esteem, AgeEsteem, face surgery, Pina Bausch, secrets of age esteem, self esteem, Simona Ferrar, Sylvie Guillem
Big Bird
To “mothers” of all ages
