EXCLUSIVE | Olympic champion Cate Campbell opens up about unrealistic anti-ageing beauty standard

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to look like anymore.” 

That’s the realisation Cate Campbell recently made as she grapples with relentless beauty standards – the goalposts of which seem to consistently move further away from reach. 

Since farewelling her Olympic career last year, Campbell has taken on more onscreen roles in the media and seeing herself on camera more and more has left her “hyper-aware” of her insecurities, she tells 9honey.

READ MORE: Unlikely way romance blossomed between soccer stars

She’s become particularly aware of her wrinkles and fine lines. While she knows these are perfectly normal, she’s begun to feel pressure to address the way she looks, by way of anti-ageing beauty procedures, to keep up with an impossible beauty standard.

“Now that I’ve moved into the realm of a public figure and into the media, I’m suddenly looking around at what best practice looks like,” Campbell tells 9honey, referring to the other faces she sees in the media and in audience-facing roles. 

“When I look around and I see best practice, I don’t see a lot of people who look like I do and I’m starting to feel the pressure to do something about that.

“And I don’t think I should have to feel that, because I don’t think that we have the same standards for men as we do for women.”

READ MORE: Subtle detail in Meghan’s new post that deviates from tradition 

With so many anti-ageing treatments and procedures available today, Campbell feels there is an unspoken expectation for women to do everything in their power to avoid any signs of ageing, and not doing so can be seen as a failure. But it’s not something she wants to subscribe to.

“I’m 100 per cent not judging anyone for what they choose to do with their face, or not, and their appearance, or not. It is 100 per cent up to your own individual choice,” Campbell says.

“But I was starting to feel like I didn’t have that choice and it was starting to feel like, if I want to be successful, addressing my appearance to make it look more ‘perfect’ was something that I needed to do.

“And it is a tax I’m not willing to pay in terms of time spent on it and money spent on it.

“I just think that I spend enough on my skincare products, I don’t need to be doing anything else and I don’t need to be sitting in chairs when I have better things to do with my time.”

Of course, Campbell is aware it’s a tricky line to walk. It’s everyone’s prerogative to do whatever they like with their appearance and, in a world where beauty standards are so intense, you can understand why an individual may choose to alter their appearance. But to what extent does the prevalence of such treatments further push the anti-ageing rhetoric?

“I think that we like to pay tribute to beauty diversity on the surface, but underneath it we’re still being told to buy all the serums and to get all the procedures and to conform and look a certain way,” Campbell says.

She feels it’s important that, as a society, we change “how we view ageing”. 

“Ageing is not seen as aspirational. It’s something that we want to push back, push aside and hide. We don’t want to celebrate major milestone birthdays. We don’t want to actually tell people how old we are,” Campbell reflects. 

“Yet with age comes wisdom, comes knowledge, comes growth, and all of those things are so incredibly valuable.”

READ MORE: This little girl wouldn’t believe what she’d grow up to be

Campbell is also only 32 and yet she is already feeling this pressure. She worries what it means for those younger than her. 

“It’s frustrating, because I see more and more, in young girls, this message of what you look like will affect how successful and/ or happy you can be,” Campbell says. 

“I was very lucky to grow up not having that message projected at me all the time…I just feel like I wish that the young girls today didn’t have those messages projected as strongly at them as they are.”

The athlete recently opened up about her insecurities in a video on her Instagram and touched on these intense beauty standards – particularly when it comes to this perception of ageing.

While many shared their support and agreement, her message was also met with online trolls doubling down on Campbell’s insecurities, telling her she looks ‘too old for her age’.

READ MORE: We rarely see Prince Harry like this

This response only further clarified for Campbell just how much this anti-ageing sentiment runs rampant in our society. 

The comments were cruel but Campbell, who has spent her entire adult life in the public eye, wasn’t surprised they came. In fact, whenever she chooses to share something with the public, she knows to expect some kind of negative response and sadly, as a woman, it’s often commentary about her appearance.

“However, even when you’re aware of that and you anticipate a blowback or a pushback, it still doesn’t feel nice when you see the things that people are saying about you,” Campbell says. 

“Because they’re probably saying the things that you think about yourself at your lowest moment.”

For a daily dose of 9honey, subscribe to our newsletter here.

In a follow up video, Campbell addressed the criticism. She didn’t do so to inspire sympathy or compliments but rather to shed light on a bigger issue. 

“My intention [was] to start having a conversation around the unrealistic beauty standards,” Campbell says.

She knows it’s not an easy conversation to have but she’s eager to try. 

“I think it’s really difficult because I still don’t know the answers. I am a fully grown adult with a fully formed brain and I am still feeling the incredible pressures and the desire to change myself to fit in with a narrow, expectation of beauty standards,” she says. 

“I always say that you need to be the change you want to see in the world and I would love to be in a world where appearance matters less.

“So, if I want to see that change, then I have to be willing to be that change and it might start with a small group of people but I think that I’m in a position where I’m in a public facing role and I can effect change.

“That’s something that I really want to do. I want to give an alternative to young girls out there. I think that we should be talking about what women can do, not what they look like while they’re doing it.”

FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay across all the latest in celebrity, lifestyle and opinion via our WhatsApp channel. No comments, no algorithm and nobody can see your private details.