No crop tops or long hair: Jade Seah and Sheila Sim discuss unsolicited comments women in their 40s receive

We've all heard the saying 'life begins at 40'.

But for some women, turning the big Four Oh might come with unsolicited comments about what they should and shouldn't do. 

That seems to be the case for local model Jade Seah, actress Sheila Sim and their producer Jacqueline Khoo, who discussed the topic on an episode of their new Wonder & Wellness YouTube series.

Jacqueline said: "When you reach your 50s, there are a lot of things that society says that you can't do. Like for me, a lot of people say that I shouldn't have my hair so long."

Jade quipped that "somebody had recently told [her] that too", despite only just having turned 40.

"I have only recently heard that you can only keep long hair to a certain age, like 50 is the cut-off point for it," she added.

Sheila, 39, interjected: "Where do you hear all these horrible things?"

Jacqueline went on to share that people would even tell women to their face that they looked like "pontianak". Jade defended her, saying the latter had long, beautiful and thick hair even in her 50s.

She also went on to proclaim that, if she still had hair into her 60s, she'd still continue to keep it long.

"For me, it will be time [for my hair] to go when it thins," Jade added.

Another no-go is in the realm of fashion, where Jade revealed that someone had recently asked her "how long" she intends to wear crop tops and shorts.

It was Sheila this time coming to Jade's defence, saying: "But you have such nice abs!"

'Mum already, why still wear until like that?'

While Sheila claimed to have "changed a lot" since she became a mother, she confessed to having passed judgement in the past on other women based on what they wore.

She explained: "When I was 10, my mum once wore a skirt [which rested] above her knee."

Jade interrupted, saying that her own mum was above 60 but still wore skirts above her knee.

"In fact, a bit higher," she said.

Laughing, Sheila continued: "I asked [my mum], 'Why you wear like that?'

"And before I became a mum, there was this friend of mine who went for ZoukOut and she wore this sexy, lacy thing — and she was a mum of two. I was like, 'Mum already, why still wear until like that?'"

If her friend hadn't been a mum, Sheila said she wouldn't have judged her for her clothes.

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"But now that I'm a mum, I'm like, 'Why cannot?'" she added. "Mothers also need to have fun what!"

Jade asked if it was because Sheila believed how a woman dressed could set a bad example for her children, and the latter agreed, adding that she was being "judgemental".

"People who are not in their 50s, maybe they are able to say [such things] because they're not there yet," she posited. "It's very easy for them to say something mindlessly, but they don't understand that all these mindless words are actually very hurtful for people in that situation."

Since becoming a mum of two herself, Sheila has apologised to many of her friends for her past judgement.

"Now that I'm a mum, I realise that going out is so rare," she added. "If I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna go all out and dress up."

So, what did Sheila wear six weeks after giving birth? A crop top.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKe0Dp8wHJw&ab_channel=WonderandWellness[/embed]

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drimac@asiaone.com

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