Watch Kelly Clarkson, 41, and Lauren Graham, 56, Open Up About Aging in New Interview
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Lauren Graham and Kelly Clarkson discussed aging on The Kelly Clarkson Show.
They specifically discussed how the pressure to maintain youthful looks applies largely to women only.
Graham’s latest book, Have I Told You This Already? Stories I Don’t Want to Forget to Remember, dives deeper into the topic.
The Kelly Clarkson Show brings audiences a bit of light-hearted relief from the work day—sometimes it’s a silly trivia game or a welcome dose of “Kellyoke.” But the daytime program is also a platform for important conversations, like the one Clarkson recently had with Gilmore Girls star Lauren Graham about aging—and aging as women, specifically.
Aging is one of the themes of Graham’s latest book, Have I Told You This Already? Stories I Don’t Want to Forget to Remember, which is a collection of autobiographical essays that she called her “greatest hits.”
“[The title] is sort of a nod to the age I am, [55], which is an age where I’ve had such good friends for so long that in some cases, I can’t remember if I’ve told them the story already, if they were there with me when it happened,” she said. “It came out of pandemic times, of thinking of the stories that have meant a lot to me in my life.”
Clarkson then read the following quote from the book:
“Maybe turning fears about aging and mortality into contemplation and comedy is just one of those things women are better at.”
Clarkson, 41, asked Graham what the passage meant, who explained that, when she tried to research men’s writing about aging and compare it to that of one of her favorite authors, Nora Ephron, she found nothing.
“There [are] less men writing about aging in any kind of comedic way or contemplative way. And I thought, ‘Gosh, this is maybe just something that women are really trying to process,’” Graham said.
To add, Clarkson pointed out that pressures around aging are simply not projected onto men in the same way as women.
“I feel like people talk about [aging] more with women... For men, they’re always like, ‘Oh, he’s a fine wine. He got better as he aged.’ Nobody says that about women,’” Clarkson explained.
“I find age beautiful because I’ve had friends that didn’t make it past 30,” she continued. “You know what I’m saying? We’re lucky. I find these wrinkles... I earned these. I got these. And it’s a beautiful thing because not everybody’s earned that chance, to have that lifetime.”
Graham agreed, adding that “age is awesome.”
An excerpt from Graham’s book published in Time earlier this month goes into more detail on the subject. In it, she recalls turning 50, and soon after, breaking her foot and wrist in subsequent fluke accidents. It was a wake-up call about her age, to say the least.
And with a new awareness of her physical vulnerabilities came the pressure to stay as young-looking as possible. “Sometimes, a person will tell me that I ‘look exactly the same’ as I did years before,” she writes. “And I always think, No, I don’t, and if I did it would not be due to natural practices—and what kind of pressure is that?”
When she looked “her best” by society’s standards, Graham writes that she felt her worst. “I smoked, was underfed, ran high with anxiety, didn’t get enough sleep, and still never felt good enough,” she recalls.
What’s her solution, then? It’s not getting laser treatments or Botox. It’s simply letting nature take the wheel and having fun with it. “All the Restylane in the world won’t make 80 the new 30, so why not laugh about it?” she writes. “Maybe the through line here is, ‘Let’s all give up!’”
Have I Told You This Already? is available for purchase now.
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