I see a wiser person than when I was younger: having babies, and passing 30, were the turning points. What women in their 40s - I am 39 - lack in gorgeousness, they make up for in wisdom. I love ageing, despite the drawbacks - thinner, drier skin.

Newton contrasts culturally prized youthful “gorgeousness” with the hard-won self-knowledge that can come with age. By naming childbirth and crossing thirty as “turning points,” she frames wisdom as something earned through embodied experience and responsibility rather than simply accumulated years. The quote also resists the usual celebrity narrative of fighting ageing: she acknowledges physical changes (“thinner, drier skin”) while affirming a net gain—greater perspective, confidence, and discernment. Implicitly, it critiques ageism and the narrow standards applied to women’s appearance, proposing that maturity brings compensations that should be valued publicly as well as privately.