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Kelly Ripa, 52, says it’s ‘hurtful’ that people expect her not to age ‘under any circumstances’
Kelly Ripa is pulling back the curtain on the realities of aging.
In an interview with theSkimm, the talk show host discussed her new anthology, Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories.
In the collection of essays, she writes candidly about aging as a woman. She also addresses the double standards about who is "allowed" to age and how the incessant comments about her age make her feel.
"I wish that I could sit here today 33 years in the business and tell you that it doesn't affect me, and that it rolls right off my back. And I don't pay attention to that. But that would be a lie. And it's I'm a human being. And we are all human beings. And it is hurtful when people expect you to somehow not age ever, under any circumstance," she said, noting that she receives the majority of her most judgmental comments when she shares older family photos online.
"If I post a cute throwback photo of Mark, and me and our children and our children are toddlers in the photo, the number one comment is 'Wow, Kelly got old.' Well, actually, we all did, because my children are adults now and I don't know why it's perfectly acceptable for the toddlers to become adults and for my husband to get older, but we so fixate our ire, in particular on women aging, it's almost not allowed to happen or something we're supposed to vanish or evaporate in some way," she said.
Her first-hand experience with the pressures to hide or "reverse" the signs of aging have pushed her to become more open about the taboo topic of cosmetic procedures.
"I'm really honest in those chapters about cosmetic surgery, about cosmetic dermatology, about the methods by which people, not just myself, but people in the industry and outside of the industry, I think even more so. Because people who don't work on camera have time to recover from all sorts of medical procedures, where, where, if you're on camera every day, that's trickier," she said.
In challenge of the status quo surrounding women and their right to age, Ripa questions what it would look like if men were held to the same standard.
"There's this ire towards women about aging and I find it fascinating and so, another reason I wrote these chapters so honestly was because I want to flip that narrative. What if we treated men the way we treated women? What if we started attaching to them words that we attached women so cavalierly, and so casually? What if we expected men not to age, or said, 'oh, he gets like a fine wine'? It's always like a fine wine, isn't it? Men are like a fine wine … and women, it's almost like, 'How dare you get 30 years older over the past 30 years?'" she said.
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