Millie Bobby Brown is living the paradox of ageing online in your 20s
The question of 'how and when are women allowed to age?' has become even more complex in the digital era
By Nadine Shanahan Graduate Teaching Fellow, University of Liverpool
This article is from academic website The Conversation. It represents the author’s views alone, not those of The Female Lead.
Women have known for decades that ageing naturally is unacceptable. Older women are rarely seen on screen compared to younger women, or are praised for their age-defying looks. Now, as a reminder of the increasing impossibility of beauty standards, it’s clear that appearing to age unnaturally, or “too soon”, is also seen as a failure.
In early March, 21-year-old actor Millie Bobby Brown spoke out about “bullying” by journalists, after columns and social media comments accused her of looking too old for her age.
Having entered the spotlight as a child star, Brown no longer looks like her younger self, which appears to have caused backlash. The response to Brown having the audacity to grow and age out of her teens reveals how society requires women to not only be young, but to look it, forever.
I am researching how women perform femininity (and navigate ageing) on social media, and it’s clear that the question of “how and when are women allowed to age?” has become even more complex in the digital era.
Social media has become the gateway to the anti-ageing industry, with influencers acting as living billboards for cosmetic treatment. Many of the women I have spoken to have highlighted how popular procedures like Botox have become on apps like Instagram, particularly for younger women. Some of the women I spoke to were happy to discuss their “tweakments,” admitting that they’ve had Botox and filler, while others expressed surprise at the early age people were seeking these treatments.
“I’m amazed at how young people are, and how they’re getting Botox at 20. It’s quite shocking,” said one interviewee.
Ageing online
Even if they aren’t getting invasive procedures, the unspoken age requirements of social media have led to meticulous and intense beauty maintenance trends. “BeautyTok” shows how it’s done, through “high maintenance to be low maintenance”, where women engage in several time-consuming and often expensive activities that shave down their daily beauty maintenance time.
Similarly, the “morning shed” shows women removing numerous beauty products that they have slept in, usually including some form of anti-ageing products like chin straps or wrinkle prevention tape.
Many of the women engaging in these activities are in their 20s, before any visible signs of ageing appear. We are now in an era of prevention rather than attempts to reverse ageing, though doctors dispute the efficacy of preventative measures.
Some women claim that these routines are a form of self-care, providing them with joy and a sense of routine, and maybe even act as a form of camaraderie. I am hesitant to dismiss this, as women’s interests are already widely criticised and often depicted as trivial. But it cannot be ignored that the pressures of beauty standards can have detrimental effects on mental health, with over 1 million people in the UK reportedly suffering from body dysmorphia.
These pressures do not exist to the same extent for men, who are largely encouraged to age naturally, becoming a “silver fox”. However, body dysmorphia is on the rise for young men, though it may manifest differently.
The pressures of anti-ageing culture may have been exacerbated by the rise in working from home culture and an increase in the use of Zoom, giving people the chance to stare at their own faces for hours at a time.
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AI and other tech-enabled editing tools are also contributing to these expectations, giving anyone the ability to drastically alter their face or remove signs of ageing with the tap of a finger.
Many of my interviewees observed how some beauty trends and filters online are changing what is considered beautiful, a phenomenon that has been termed “Instagram face”.
“Now everybody’s having the same thing done,” remarked one woman. “Everyone looks exactly the same, like robots.”
When are young women supposed to age?
Social media enables a culture of commentary, where anyone and everyone can comment on your physical appearance, often replicating the harsh critique of tabloid journalism.
On TikTok, “how old do I look?” is an especially cruel trend that emerged in 2024, where women ask thousands of strangers on the internet this burning question. This usually ends up with 30-year-olds being told they look 50, or young women asking how to reverse the effects of (completely natural and standard) ageing.
In recent months, several slightly older celebrities have been looking uncannily similar to their younger selves, such as Lindsay Lohan and Christina Aguilera. The internet has responded with largely positive reinforcement, requests for their surgeons’ details and even speculations on the price of treatment.
Simultaneously, celebrities have received criticism for their overfilled faces, now referred to as pillow face, revealing the new requirements for work to be “undetectable”.
This is confirmed by cosmetic surgeons and “experts” who post their own videos weighing in, explaining and criticising the work they think celebrities have had done.
Usually it’s only those with cash to spare who have the ability to get “good” (undetectable) cosmetic work. However, I have found that a lack of cash is not stopping the young women I’ve spoken to from engaging in these practices. Some have even gone into debt, whether through credit cards or payment plans, in an attempt to achieve these ageless looks. These investments appear to increase as women get older.
If ageing too soon is not allowed, and ageing too slowly is also suspicious, what are the young women of today supposed to do? As the digital age plays an ever-increasing role in the production of ideal femininity, the message is very clear to all women, not just women in their 20s: do not visibly age, ever.
These pressures are relentless, but how can we challenge this? By embracing natural ageing and allowing women to age on their terms. Doing so collectively would be a radical and defiant act of empowerment.
Love this!
This hits so deeply. Thank you for naming what so many of us carry quietly.
The grief under the beauty myths. The hours and years we’ve spent trying to earn ease, safety, love… through appearance.
It’s not just personal. It’s systemic.
And the reckoning, especially around aging, is nice and real.
I’ve had so many conversations lately with women untangling themselves from this. It’s raw. It’s powerful. It matters.
Appreciating you for bringing this to the surface.
Gave it a nice restack!
It is a very worrying trend and as a father of a teenage daughter, supporting her through this has already started.
What genuinely surprises me is that this is seemingly becoming more of an issue not less of an issue.
The patriarchy plays a major role in building men’s expectations and privileged beliefs up and convincing women they need to look and be certain things to be liked and accepted. Both are utterly wrong and utterly damaging.
How we support the levels of self confidence and self belief in young people, especially women in this particular article’s case, has to be a shift away from making youth the most desirable thing, which in turn means making acceptance of ALL ages, sizes and appearances more important than a stereotyped version of the male fantasy.