- Jennifer Aniston, 52, shared a perspective on aging that she learned from her mom.
- “What my mom used to say to me was, ‘This is about longevity. It’s a privilege to grow old, but we don’t have to grow sick,’” she told Vogue.
- The actress focuses on feeling good and taking care of her body over looking young.
At 52, Jennifer Aniston is just as jubilant and lively as she was in her Rachel Green days. And she doesn’t credit that to a particular procedure or retinol cream (in fact, she’s not a fan of the skincare ingredient). Instead, she says her youthfulness comes from a mindset—the desire to stay healthy.
As long as Aniston feels good, age really has no meaning, which is something she learned from her mother.
“My mother was always so healthy and beautifully fit when I was a kid. I’ve always had that as my foundation,” the actress recently told Vogue. That meant she didn’t eat junk food as a kid, and when she got older, she tried pizza and Wonder Bread to “rebel,” but quickly learned that her mom’s food choices made a difference.
“I started to look at my mother, and my grandmother, and the elders in my life. They didn’t have the knowledge we have now about ingredients and exercise. Yes, it’s great to be fit and look great… but it’s about your cells, your muscles, so we can grow old and thrive,” she said.
To her, aging gracefully means energy and health fueled by nutrition, exercise, and an inquisitive mind. “I’m at the age where I’m more interested than ever in my health, and my life is thriving, but according to society this is when I should be going out to pasture. No, no, no,” she explained. “Youth is wasted on the young, I get it. But I want to keep putting information in my head that’s going to inspire me.”
In the end, her mom taught her “this is about longevity”—the privilege of growing old. “It’s just sort of been a theme in my life: to enjoy the age I am and not look at aging as a negative, but as the privilege that it is,” she said. “We all age!”
Say it again for the people in the back, Jen!
Kayla Blanton is a freelance writer-editor who covers health, nutrition, and lifestyle topics for various publications including Prevention, Everyday Health, SELF, People, and more. She’s always open to conversations about fueling up with flavorful dishes, busting beauty standards, and finding new, gentle ways to care for our bodies. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University with specializations in women, gender, and sexuality studies and public health, and is a born-and-raised midwesterner living in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband and two spoiled kitties.
