They don’t.
Rather, society tends to find aging traits in men more attractive than aging traits in women. Take somebody like George Clooney, for example. Aging like fine wine, right?
Sure, he looks great, but he’s also wrinkled, gray-haired, and decidedly older. He’s handsome at 63 but that’s largely because he has good facial structure, not because he’s magically got fewer wrinkles or something like that. But we tend to see that graying, grizzled look as very attractive, so he gets a pass on aging. Another factor is the ability to grow a beard, which literally covers many wrinkles.
Now, compare George Clooney to Jamie Lee Curtis.
If you asked most people, they’d probably say that Clooney has “aged better.” But has he? Considering Curtis is a few years older (66), with roughly the same hair color and number of wrinkles…I don’t think that’s all that true. Just, on a woman, gray hair looks older because we don’t tend to think women with gray hair are beautiful. And Curtis happened to not be as unusually as good-looking as Clooney in the first place.
More importantly, it all varies from person to person. How about comedian Jack Black?
He’s 55. Has he aged well? By Hollywood standards, no. By normal standards, sure. If you compare him to, say, 54-year-old Jennifer Connelly I’m sure you could argue she’s aged better and thus women age better than men do. Of course, it’s also hard to account for the makeup, cosmetic surgery, and hair dye that actresses often resort to so that they fit the rigid view of what “aging well” means. Men don’t usually have to do that.
One last thing — you also have to account for pregnancy.
Pregnancy tends to accelerate biological aging in women (at least at first). Comparing women who’ve had multiple children with men isn’t exactly a fair comparison. Only one of them went through a 9-month ordeal to fashion an entire person out of their womb. There are many such things that can age people prematurely (drug addiction, stress, etc.) but pregnancy is very common and not something that impacts male aging. So keep that in mind, too.
Men and women both age. We just happen to find male aging more attractive.
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