62-year-old woman is breaking stereotypes and inspiring people by embracing her age

We all have consumed enough content on social media, tabloids and magazines to know that many of us conform to standards of beauty created by the media. They are unrealistic and we tend to be harsh on ourselves as we compare ourselves to pictures that have gone through regressive edits to look appealing. Therefore, it feels refreshing to see someone break away from those beauty standards and be themselves unapologetically.

Heidi Clements—who goes by @welcometoheidi on Instagram—decided to break aging stereotypes. She became an executive producer and writer on the ABC sitcom "Baby Daddy," gaining many followers on Instagram. Clements strongly believes that getting old is a privilege and people should cherish it and be confident about it. She makes videos about it as well.

"Right now, I am thrilled to say that young women actually want to hear from older women. I don't know that that was always the case," she told Advocate Now. "I think that society has done a great job of convincing us we need to hate each other. I feel like Gen Z has realized that women, we all need to stick together."

She shared her own struggles with being influenced by chiseled images in popular media. "Pictures and photographs of women that were white and blonde and super skinny. It is 100 percent the media's fault. I am part of that media," Clements said. "And I, as a woman, was part of that problem in working in television for years and upholding someone else's standards for beauty and what's pretty."

"Would it have been so bad if Carrie ended up alone?" Clements added. "I just feel like they took away this heroine that we had who was cool and fashionable and older. She was so completely out of touch with what was going on in the world, and she was only functioning because of a man in her marriage. I thought it was also so wildly out of touch with people who grew up in New York as a white woman. Like, do you not have any black friends? How did you not have any black friends all this time or any people of color in your life?"

"It's just amazing to me to see so many more people of color on television and in advertisements," Clements said, "The biggest thing that's changed is we're starting to tell more stories and we're starting to hear more people's stories. I think women are all getting lumped together into women and I think that the stories that need to be told are young and old." She made an important point as she said that women are not one umbrella category and their stories and lives must be acknowledged and appreciated in all forms.

One of them is that of younger and older women and how they have different experiences and lives. Their nuances have to be captured separately and differently and not under one category of being a woman. It is truly refreshing to hear Clements's views at a time when images in the popular media dominate how we look at ourselves.