Do women get better as they age?

Academy Award winning actress Charlize Theron thinks so. In article for the latest issue of Women’s Wear Daily, the soon-to-be 40-year-old spoke about the beauty of getting older and wiser, “It’s ironic that we’ve built the beauty world around 20-year-olds, when they have no f****** concept about wisdom, what life is about, having a few relationships below [their] belt and feeling hardships, to grow into [their] skin and feel confident within [themselves] and to feel the value of who [they] are, not because of a man or because of something like that.” She added, “And that’s why I think people say women come into their prime in their 40s.”

The beautiful blonde has taken all kinds of roles as an actress, some of which made her nearly unrecognizable. She gained weight and skipped the glamor department for her role as a serial killing prostitute in Monster and played a miner in North Country. Monster earned the actress an Academy Award in 2003 while North Country garnered Theron a nomination in 2005.

.@CharlizeAfrica speaks her mind about today's beauty standards & obsession w/ youth: http://t.co/XlprQt5V0a pic.twitter.com/kYKxzJxfAk

— Yahoo Celebrity (@YahooCelebrity) August 28, 2014

The actress talked about the challenge of physically transforming for a role, “Sometimes it’s time-consuming, you can’t just do it overnight. You can shave your head, but I’ve had to gain a lot of weight for movies, I’ve had to drop weight really fast for movies. I’ve had to learn accents or embody physical behaviors or twitches and things like that. And sometimes you take to some things easily and sometimes [not]. That’s the challenge of the job. That’s why I like my job so much, because at the end of the day they’re fruits of labor that you don’t pick very easily.”

Theron doesn’t accept how men and women are treated differently as they age, “And then for some reason our society treats older women like a dead flower,” she said. “It’s like we wilt for some reason. And men are like fine wines — the older they get, the better they get. It’s such a misconception, and it’s such a lost opportunity because that’s when I think women are really in the true moment of their sensuality.”

Theron is currently dating actor Sean Penn. She is also the single-mom to a two-year-old son named Jackson. You can see her on the big screen next year in the latest installment of the apocalyptic drama Mad Max called Mad Max: Fury Road. The film stars Tom Hardy and is slated for a May 15, 2015 release.

And now, the @MadMaxMovie Comic Con First Look. Enjoy! http://t.co/ib5QLOiQWK

— Charlize Theron (@CharlizeAfrica) July 27, 2014