'Aging gracefully'. I was a ballet dancer for many years and was often called graceful. The word was always used to imply that the way I moved and stood seemed to lack effort, when in fact it took thousands of hours of effort. Male dancers, curiously, were not called graceful to my memory, but things like 'skilled'. Which implies effort, and acknowledges the extraordinary amount of time (and physical pain) one must invest to move like that.
I do think there are tropes of male effortlessness as well, words that reduce their efforts to naught. There is an example of this that I heard recently on the podcast Articles of Interest in which Jason Jules (famously well dressed author of 'Black Ivy') says that he is often called 'cool'. He feels that this term is dismissive, and often applied to POC to imply that if they look good, it's natural. No effort, study, labor, etc. involved. He drew a comparison to the word 'Athletic' often being assigned to prolific black athletes (who obviously aren't just naturally athletic but spend many thousands of hours honing those skills).
Anyway. I think it's really useful to notice these things! How our ideas about effort reinforce our ideas about race, sex, gender, etc. Thanks Jessica. Terrific piece.
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