Posts on 'Different World' star fail to see beauty in aging | Opinion
Posts on 'Different World' star fail to see beauty in aging | Opinion
James E. Causey, Milwaukee Journal SentinelSun, October 4, 2026 at 10:04 AM UTC
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Growing up, I had a few television crushes.
Thelma from "Good Times" was one. Years later, it was Whitley Gilbert from "A Different World." That show was different for me. It premiered on Sept. 24, 1987, the same year I walked across the stage at John Marshall High School.
I was entering adulthood at the same time the students at fictional Hillman College were trying to figure out theirs. It was a spinoff of "The Cosby Show," which had given me something I wasn't used to seeing on television: A Black family that wasn't struggling with poverty or surrounded by gang violence, one whose success wasn't the punchline.
Before that, some of the Black families I remember watching on TV were the Evanses on "Good Times," trying to survive in a Chicago housing project, or "The Jeffersons." George and Louise Jefferson had achieved financial success, but much of the show’s humor revolved around George constantly trading insults with his neighbors or bickering with his wife and housekeeper.
Later, Cosby showed something different. Then "A Different World" took it somewhere else. It showed young Black people at a predominantly Black college studying, dating, arguing, falling in love, making mistakes, and trying to figure out who they wanted to become.
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At 18, I could relate. I especially related to the character Dwayne Wayne, but first I had my eyes on Whitley Gilbert, whose character was an uppity brat and sometimes such a snob that you wanted somebody to bring her back down to earth.
But you couldn't deny that Jasmine Guy, the actress who played her, was beautiful. Her skin. The way she walked. Her fashion and that Southern accent. Yeah, Whitley was definitely one of my crushes.
And when Dwayne crashed her wedding to Byron Douglas and begged her to marry him. And when Whitley chose Dwayne, I loved her even more. Dwayne wasn't some smooth, perfect television heartthrob. He was awkward. He wore those flip-up glasses. He was smart, nerdy, and sometimes unsure of himself.
He was an average guy. A guy like me. And somehow he got Whitley Gilbert. That was nearly 40 years ago.
Now Hillman is back. Netflix's new "A Different World" sequel premiered Sept. 24 and follows Deborah Wayne, Dwayne and Whitley's youngest daughter, as she begins her freshman year at Hillman College. Guy and Kadeem Hardison are among several original cast members who returned to reprise their roles.
Which brings me to a photograph I saw circulating on social media. It is a four-panel frame of Guy at four stages of her life: as a little girl in the 1970s, the 1990s, 2000s and 2026. I stared at the collage for a moment wondering what we were supposed to see.
It turns out what many people saw in that photo is a poor reflection of how society views beauty and aging.
Social media comments about Jasmine Guy plainly cruel
After the show's premiere, people on social media started picking apart her appearance. One person wrote that Guy "did not age well AT ALL." Another said she "aged like a Golden Girl."
Other comments were even crueler, which leads me to ask, "What in the hell is wrong with us?"
Guy is 64 years old. What exactly is 64 supposed to look like? Were we really supposed to compare the 64-year-old Jasmine Guy to the woman I had a crush on more than 30 years ago and decide whether she passed some kind of aging test?
Of course she doesn't look the same. Neither do I. Neither do you. We're not supposed to.
When did looking your age become an insult?
Somewhere along the way, we turned aging into a competition against our younger selves. That's a competition none of us can win. The goal of being 64 shouldn't be to look 24. The goal should be to make it to 64.
Guy responded to the criticism herself: "The internet can be brutal to women as we grow older," she wrote.
She's right. We say growing old is a blessing until somebody actually looks older. Then we notice the wrinkles. The gray hair. The weight gain or weight loss. We pull up a photograph from 30 years ago and ask, "What happened?"
I'll tell you what happened: Life. Thirty years happened. Children happened so did careers; marriages; divorces; illnesses; deaths of loved ones; joy and heartbreak. Life leaves marks.
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Women especially face double-standards when it comes to aging
Women seem to get the worst of it. If a woman ages naturally, somebody says she has let herself go. If she gets Botox, fillers or cosmetic surgery, somebody says she's desperately trying to hold on to her youth:
If she goes gray, we note that
If she dyes her hair, we raise an eyebrow
If she gains weight, we criticize
If she loses too much weight, we talk about that, too.
What exactly are women supposed to do?
Sunny Hostin raised an even better question on The View while discussing the cosmetic criticism aimed at Guy and Madonna. "What is the alternative?"
Exactly. There is only one alternative to getting older. And none of us should be rooting for that.
Maybe it's time to retire the cliche 'Black don't crack'
Another part of this conversation is something Black folks ought to think about. We've been saying "Black don't crack" for as long as I can remember. We usually mean it as a compliment.
Look at her. She's 60 and looks 40. Look at him. He hasn't aged a day.
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But maybe what sounds like a compliment has become another impossible standard because sometimes Black does crack. It gets wrinkles and gray hair or less hair. Sometimes all of the above. Bodies change as we get older. You know why?
Because Black people are human. And thank God we get the opportunity to grow old.
"Black don't crack" stops being a compliment when it becomes another impossible standard Black women are expected to meet. You can get older. Just don't look older. Which is ridiculous.
My TV crush Whitley got older, so did I. We're lucky.
Nearly four decades have passed since I first started watching, "A Different World." The cast got older. And those of us sitting on the couch watching the show got older, too. I'm 57. I certainly don't look like the James Causey who was watching Whitley Gilbert all those years ago.
I have less hair. More gray. A few more pounds. And some mornings my hip apparently knows it's going to rain before the meteorologists do. That's not failing to age well. That's aging.
And I wouldn't trade the years I've been fortunate enough to accumulate just to look like the younger man in an old photograph.
Because that man hadn't yet lived what I've lived. He hadn't experienced the joy or the pain, hadn't made the mistakes or learned the lessons and loved or buried some of the people I've had to say goodbye to. That's what I see differently now when I look at that collage of Jasmine Guy.
I don't see four photographs documenting her downfall. I see a beautiful woman who has lived life. A little girl who grew into a young woman, became a successful actress, and, yes, eventually became a 64-year-old woman. That in itself is beautiful.
She made it. Some people who watched "A Different World" with us didn't. They never got the wrinkles or gray hair. They never got to look in the mirror and wonder where all those years went. We did.
Jasmine Guy didn't fail to age well. She aged. So did I. So did you.
And if we're fortunate, we'll keep doing it. I'm glad she's still here and I am, too, and having the chance to watch her and the whole crew from Hillman College.
Getting older isn't the tragedy, it's failing to see the beauty in it.
ReachJames E. Causey at jcausey@jrn.com; follow him on X @jecausey.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Posts on 'Different World' star fail to see beauty in aging | Opinion
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