Jasmine Guy is 64, she is back as Whitley Gilbert, and the internet spent last week inspecting her face.
She returned in Netflix’s “A Different World” sequel, and a chunk of the response went straight to how she has aged. Then a counter-wave named the pile-on for what it was: ageism, pointed at a Black woman, dressed up as concern.
Guy answered it herself.
“Growing older brings change, and I won’t pretend every change is easy,” she wrote. “But beauty, style, and joy don’t have an expiration date.”
And then the harder line.
“The internet can be brutal to women as we grow older. It asks us to celebrate life while criticizing every sign that we’ve lived it.”
Here is the trap. “Black don’t crack” gets handed to us as a compliment and quietly becomes a job. If the phrase is a fact, then aging visibly is a personal failure, something you let happen.
Dr. Cranla Warren traced where that comes from: “The roots of this phrase lie in a long history of how Black people, and Black women especially, have been viewed through a lens that focuses primarily on our physical attributes.”
That is the whole thing. A standard that looks like praise, enforced by us on each other, leaving no acceptable way to get older.
Guy’s closing instruction is the one to take:
“Let’s spend less time judging ourselves and each other, and more time loving each other.”
She has lived 64 years. The lines are the receipt.
