Tracee Ellis Ross Says Her Stretching Routine Helps Her Feel ‘Hot as Ever’ at 50

In one of her delightful “first dip” videos, Tracee Ellis Ross shared an Instagram post  of herself twirling around a pool this weekend. “You know what time it is: It’s time for the first dip,” she said, lowering herself into the water.” While it was a glorious, sun-soaked moment, she also didn’t shy away from how she experiences minor aches and pains. After swanning around for a few seconds, Ross looked at the camera and said, “I just want you to know I just bent my knee. Just bent it—and it hurt. I was like, Ouch.”

The knee pain, Ross explained, is a familiar feeling. “[Ouch] is exactly what happens when I wake up in the morning now,” she said. “I wake up, at 50, hot as ever, and it’s as if someone beat me up while I was sleeping.”

To counter this, Ross said, she gets some movement in first thing in the morning. “That’s how I wake up—Ouch, ooh, ooh, ooh—and then I have to stretch. Who knew that was actually going to be real? It’s real, guys.”

Ross isn’t pressed about what we need to do to stay feeling good, though, if the “hot as ever” mention didn’t give that away: In a 2022 interview with Glamour, Ross explained her thoughts on our culture’s anti-aging obsession, saying, “I think it is an honor to age, and so many people shy away from it and don’t want to tell their age. I love getting older. I look at women who are steps ahead of me and see so much beauty and wisdom in them.” 

And in a 2021 interview with Harper’s Bazaar, she said she was determined to stay confident as she gets older: “I’m the sexiest I’ve ever been, and when I say that, I mean I feel the most myself,” she explained.

Ross isn’t alone in embracing—and enjoying—her body, whatever it’s doing in a given moment. As Viola Davis commented on Ross’s post, “Yup! Me, too!! But you wear it well sis (50)!”

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