Nigerian dancer and choreographer Kafayat Shafau, popularly known as Kaffy, has criticised the growing tendency among women to hide, alter or apologise for their age, arguing that women have been taught to see getting older as a loss of value.
In a video shared on social media, Kaffy questioned why women who have spent years praying for long life become uncomfortable when the years they asked for actually begin to show. Her comments came after she saw a video of a young woman celebrating her birthday, only for someone to change the numbers on her birthday cake.
According to Kaffy, the woman reacted with alarm as the number on the cake was changed to her actual age, which was older. The incident reminded Kaffy of similar videos she had seen of women trying to escape their actual ages, including women approaching their late twenties and thirties who react as though reaching another birthday is something to be ashamed of. Kaffy questioned where the fear came from. “Why is it that women are afraid to age?” she asked, arguing that society has created an age bracket in which women are considered desirable, after which growing older is treated as a form of decline. She also pointed to the contradiction in how women pray for long lives while being taught to dread the physical and social realities of getting older.
“We brainwashed ourselves to believe that the more a woman ages, the more she’s depreciating in value?”
She connected the fear of ageing to the wider ways women are taught that their value depends on remaining young, attractive, sexually desirable, married and able to have children. She also pointed to the conflicting standards placed on women around marriage and motherhood. A woman who has children can be criticised for how she has aged after childbirth; one who does not have children can be questioned about why she has not given birth; a woman who remains unmarried can be mocked, while another who has a child outside marriage can also be shamed.
Kaffy argued that these seemingly separate judgements feed the same message that there is always something about a woman’s life that can supposedly make her less valuable and be criticised. She recalled seeing a social media comment describing a single woman as “second hand material”, questioning why such language about women has become so normalised.
“And somehow women have enabled this whole idea,” she acknowledged, adding that women also need to examine the ways they have internalised the standards used to judge them. Kaffy, who recently turned 46, said she has no intention of hiding her age.
“I’ll not hide my age for anything; I turned 46 a few days ago. I’m looking forward to 50 and even 80, because I will be an amazing 80-, 90-year-old woman.”
She also rejected the idea that looking younger should be the goal of ageing. Although she acknowledged the desire to care for one’s skin and body, she stressed that looking young and being young are not the same thing. “We cannot stop the natural process.”
She also examined the striking difference between how ageing is treated in men and women. While an older man is often described as experienced, mature or wise, women can be made to feel that the same passing years have made them less attractive and therefore less valuable.
“Why is it that when a man is older, it’s attributed to wisdom and coming of age, but for women, it’s degradation of self?”
Kaffy argued that the opposite can be true: as women grow older, they can become more confident in themselves, more experienced and more useful to their families and communities.
“A woman becomes herself the older she becomes. She’s more useful to society. She embodies wisdom.”
Her argument also challenged the obsession with preserving the appearance of youth at all costs. Rather than treating every wrinkle, sagging skin or other physical change as something that must be hidden, Kaffy encouraged women to take care of their bodies for their own wellbeing while accepting that ageing is part of being alive.
She said her own responsibility is to care for herself physically, mentally and emotionally so that she can enjoy mobility and independence in old age while retaining what she described as a youthful spirit.
“Ladies, embrace your age and stop letting people shame you for it”
Kaffy also connected the conversation to her Sister Cycle initiative, a platform she described as focused on helping women become confident in themselves and own who they are. She acknowledged that she had experienced her own struggles with self-esteem, but said growing older had brought her a stronger understanding of her femininity and womanhood.
The discomfort surrounding women’s ages is hardly confined to birthday cakes and social media jokes. Women are routinely reminded that youth is something they are expected to preserve, even though ageing is the one outcome that nobody can permanently avoid. A woman can spend her twenties being told she should settle down, her thirties being questioned about marriage and children, and her forties being treated as though she has crossed some invisible line of desirability or “expired.” The rules and benchmarks keep changing, but the message remains constant: a woman’s value is always measured by how closely she can stay to youth. Kaffy’s answer is to stop playing by those rules. And that is the part worth sitting with a woman who has stopped treating every additional year of her life as something that needs to be concealed.
