The theme for Older Americans Month this year, which happens every May, is "age my way."
What does that mean?
Well, according to the Administration for Community Living (ACL), which leads the effort to celebrate Older Americans Month, which was established in 1963 by then President John F. Kennedy, is about how older adults are re-defining themselves and declaring their independence.
Indeed, a few striking examples are provided by the actresses Jamie Lee Curtis, 63, and Michelle Yeoh, 60, who star in the recently released film "Everything Everywhere All At Once," which not only challenges our assumptions about time and space (and will permanently change the meaning of "everything bagel" for you), what a super-hero movie should be, and what roles older women in Hollywood can play, but also what it means to age.
At the Radically Reframing Aging Summit last month, Curtis blasted the way we talk about aging.
“This word 'anti-aging' has to be struck,” she said. “I am pro-aging. I want to age with intelligence, and grace, and dignity, and verve, and energy...I don't want to hide from it."
Indeed, for her role in "Everything," in which she plays both a sinister IRS auditor and Yeoh's hot-dog fingers lover, Curtis insisted that there would be "no concealing of anything." Indeed, that meant no make-up and not sucking in her belly or clenching her jaw.
"I've been sucking in my stomach since I was 11...I very specifically decided to relinquish and release every muscle I had that I used to clench to hide the reality," she wrote in an Instagram post. "That was my goal. I have never felt more free creatively and physically."
Which addresses one of the most difficult aspects of aging for a lot of people: accepting how your body changes.
“I’m not denying what I look like, of course I’ve seen what I look like," Curtis told the audience at the summit. "I am trying to live in acceptance. If I look in the mirror, it’s harder for me to be in acceptance. I’m more critical. Whereas, if I just don’t look, I’m not so worried about it.”
Yeoh, a Malaysian actress best known for her role in Ang Lee's Academy Award-winning martial arts film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," and who performs martial art sequences in "Everything," pointed out it was usual for Hollywood to champion such roles for older women.
“Just because you are now an older actress, they think, Oh, no, no, no, no, we should let the guys do all these kinds of things,” Yeoh told Refinery29. “And thank God the Daniels (writers and directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) didn't think like that. They thought outside of the box — or the universe.”
Like Curtis, Yeoh isn't content to impose limits on herself because she's getting older, and provided some wonderful advice in a recent NPR interview.
"I think you have to be present. This life is yours. But if you're not present, it's wasted," she said."Time waits for no one. When we're born, we age and then we die, and God forbid, we die before we have lived our lives. So we have to be present in whatever universe, in whatever life, because if you give up on being present, then you give up on your life."
This article originally appeared in C-Ville Weekly’s GenNow section.