Beauty, confidence and ageing with Suzi Dent

with Suzi Dent

After a career as a leading award-winning makeup artist in Australia, Suzi Dent found the shoe literally on the other foot when she became a beauty queen at the age of 54.

A woman who didn’t wear dresses and had never worn a pair of high heels, Suzi found herself representing Australia on the world stage in the US, as Mrs Earth Australia competing alongside women half her age.

Not only did she have to get comfortable wearing frocks after a lifetime of covering her body, she had to learn how to stand and walk in a pair of high heels for the first time.

She shares the hilarious and transformative experience in this podcast interview, as well as her thoughts on women, beauty and ageing and how we should be feeling our most confident as we head into our 50s and embrace a time in life where we can do anything.

Here’s a few of Suzi’s thoughts from the show:

“We’re all getting old, we’re all going to age. Being in your 50s, as far as I’m concerned, I’m in the prime of my life now. I am a more well-rounded woman than I ever was when I was younger. You get to this stage in your life and you really start to know who you are.

It’s like mind over matter. It’s all about your mind. Sometimes we have thoughts in our mind about who we are that are not our own, a lot of my body image problems

We are all beautiful, but it comes from the inside. We may age on the outside, but wrinkles, they’re life. You know, the wrinkles that I have, they’re my wrinkles, they’re my laugh lines. That’s my journey on my face.

We need to support women when we get to a certain age. It seems to be, you know, from 46, 45 onwards, there’s a big gap in society where we’re actually not supported because we’re going through this natural process and we’re still not very old.

I’ve got a lot of life in me.

So now I get to spend the second half of my life being really whole and confident. The world’s my oyster.

And that’s what I wish for other women – to get out of their own heads, to realize that women are fantastic creatures. You know, we’re amazing.

We just need to shout it out to the rooftops to society that being 50 or over 50 doesn’t mean you’ve got one foot inside the grave,

Have whatever life experiences you want, go for it in a big way. Don’t stop yourself by your negative self talk. You’re never too old. You’re never too anything. You can do whatever you want to do.

You can be whoever you want to be. You just have to go for it. And you know what? When you open that door and you say yes to the opportunities that life brings you, because it does, it brings it to us all the time, you will grow, you will learn, experience so much stuff and you’ll stop shutting the door in your own face.”