Whitley Gilbert Got Older!

Jasmine Guy Has Wrinkles. Thank God.

Jasmine Guy has wrinkles.

Apparently, this is breaking news.

The actress we fell in love with as the elegant, opinionated, Southern-belle-with-attitude Whitley Gilbert is back on our television screens in Netflix’s new A Different World. Nearly 40 years have passed since the original series premiered in 1987. Guy is now 64 years old, and instead of simply celebrating the return of this talented woman and an iconic Black television character, some people on social media immediately went to work dissecting her face. (Macon’s BIN 1670)

She looks older.

She has wrinkles.

She doesn’t look like the Whitley they remember.

Of course she doesn’t.

Neither do we.

And maybe that is what makes some people uncomfortable.

When we look at Jasmine Guy today, we are also confronted with the passage of our own time. The young woman we watched at Hillman College grew older while we were busy growing older, too.

What did we expect?

We say we want women to age naturally. Then when they do, we criticize the wrinkles.

We complain when celebrities have too much cosmetic work. Then we complain when their faces show evidence that they have actually lived.

Women cannot win this game.

So perhaps it is time to stop playing it.

Healthy aging was never supposed to mean looking 35 forever. Healthy aging means having the opportunity to keep living, learning, loving, creating, working and contributing as the years accumulate.

A wrinkle is not a medical diagnosis.

Gray hair is not a disability.

Looking older is not evidence that something has gone wrong.

In fact, aging is evidence that something has gone wonderfully right: you are still here.

This conversation is especially important for Black women. We have spent generations being judged by impossible beauty standards—our hair, our bodies, our skin tone, our weight and now, apparently, whether our faces have the audacity to show our age.

Enough.

Our daughters and granddaughters are watching how we talk about older women. If every wrinkle becomes an insult and every aging face becomes a problem to fix, what are we teaching them about their own futures?

Jasmine Guy should not have to look like the 20-something Whitley Gilbert.

I don’t want her to.

I want to see 64-year-old Jasmine Guy.

I want television to show women with laugh lines, silver hair, changing bodies and decades of experience. I want older women portrayed as vibrant, complicated, desirable, intelligent, funny and still very much in the story.

Because we are.

Perhaps A Different World is offering us more than nostalgia. Maybe it is holding up a mirror.

The question is whether we are mature enough to appreciate what we see.

Jasmine Guy has aged.

So have I.

And if God grants us the blessing, so will you.

Instead of fearing that truth, maybe we ought to celebrate it.

The goal was never to remain young.

The goal is to remain alive, engaged and becoming.

Wrinkles and all.