National Gorgeous Grandma Day Date in the current year: July 23, 2024

National Gorgeous Grandma Day was created in 1984 by author and columnist Alice Solomon. After graduating from Wellesley College at age 50, Solomon realized that society saw and treated her and other women her age and older as senior citizens who were neither useful nor relevant, referring to them as “grandmas” regardless of whether they actually had any grandchildren or not.

Solomon decided to change the connotation of the term “grandma” by putting the word “gorgeous” before it and create National Gorgeous Grandma Day to encourage women over 50 to proudly embrace their age, recognize their abilities and accomplishments, combat harmful stereotypes surrounding older women, and show that they still have many years ahead of them to do amazing things.

How can you celebrate National Gorgeous Grandma Day? If you’re a woman who is in the right age bracket to be considered a gorgeous grandma, spend the day putting yourself first and doing things you really want to do. Treat yourself to a spa weekend, sign up for a new class or take up a new hobby, read a book you’ve been putting off due to being too busy with other stuff, catch up on TV shows, go on a hike, start writing a novel… To put it short, do whatever you feel like doing without caring what others would think.

If you’re too young to be a gorgeous grandma (or not a woman at all), National Gorgeous Grandma Day is a great occasion to celebrate all the incredible older women in your life, be it your grandmothers, your mother and/or mother-in-law, your boss, your teachers and mentors – anyone you can think about, really. Send them greeting cards or flowers, buy them coffee, take them shopping, do whatever you can to make them feel appreciated. And don’t forget to give them a shout-out on social media with the hashtags #NationalGorgeousGrandmaDay and #GorgeousGrandmaDay.

Another great way to celebrate National Gorgeous Grandma Day is to learn and share interesting facts about women who achieved great things later in life. For example, American athlete Flo Meiler took up track and field at age 60 and started to pole vault in 65. One of the world’s most decorated senior athletes, she has won several hundred medals.

Julia Child, a renowned American cooking teacher, author and television personality, released her first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (co-written with Simone Back and Loisette Bertholle), at age 49. Due to the popularity of her book, Child was given her own television cooking show, The French Chef, at age 50. It was the start of a prolific career that lasted well into the 1990s.

American comedian and musician Dorothy Custer had a long career in entertainment, but by her own admission she didn’t achieve fame until her 2011 appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno at the age of 100. She celebrated her 101st birthday by zip-lining in the Snake River Canyon and her 102nd birthday by BASE jumping of the I. B. Perrine Bridge into the same canyon.