Gray Pride

Aug 032015
 

(reposted from July 2014)

Last week I took two Pilates lessons, biked 10 miles, worked in my garden, painted two walls, wrote 6000 words on my new novella, recorded a podcast, drove to the beach, drove to New  York and went out to dinner.

I’m still getting older. . . and now my back hurts.

Getting older, as the popular meme has it, is not for sissies. Of course, advertising agencies are bound and determined to counteract that message with a line of persuasive arguments that taking this or that medicine can restore you to full function and make you content, if not happy with your life.

Ever notice how very slowly the people in those ads are moving? Sure, it beats not moving at all, but that’s setting the bar a little low.

older sophisticated couple

Don’t we wish we could all age like this?

The hardest part about growing older is not physical or mental but social. We live in a youth-oriented society. We pretend otherwise, especially as advertisers are lately realizing it’s the older folks who have the disposable income. This may explain how it is they come up with phrases like “golden years” and hawk cruises for couples and Viagra for gray-haired men and their much younger-looking wives.

But most people in the senior citizen demographic can’t help notice how invisible they become as they age. For women, it’s just north of sixty, for men a little later but eventually, older citizens are just so many short people behind the wheels of large cars. Or as one millennial said of the Who, “They’re just old guys playing soundtracks from TV shows no one watches.”  Now THAT hurts.

“Age is a number,” my (mostly younger) friends like to say. But age is a way to measure how much time you’ve had and how much time you have left. In this country, the former is scarcely honored and the latter induces a panic that fuels both the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries. Even so, it’s difficult, when you’re looking around, not to notice not being noticed.

Aging in a first world country is a first world problem, if you’re lucky—that is; if you have insurance and someone you can guilt or hire into looking after you in your declining years. Before then, sagging skin, minor aches and a dearth of fashion choices aren’t even close to critical in a world where so many of the very young and very old are so very vulnerable.

Still, I spend a lot of time thinking and it’s pretty hard to avoid thinking about infirmity, loneliness, mortality, and yes, even relevance. One moves from wanting to contribute something (and be recognized for doing so) to hoping not to be too much of a drain. It’s not a fun journey.

This ruminating goes on largely out of sight. I promised myself I would age gracefully, or at least graciously. I mentor, I share, I don’t dwell on the good old days or reflexively disparage “all” young people; heck, I’ve even got friends representing several generations. I take my role as village elder seriously.

Of course, I also promised myself not to get cranky as I get older and I’m having difficulty keeping that promise. It helps that I recognize my bad mood as based less on pain and immobility (yet) than on fear and projection.

There are gilt-tinged nuggets and rays of sunlight in the dismal dreariness of time’s march. I’m generally less stressed, far less competitive (if I ever really was) and (big change) far less concerned with what people think of me. This allows me to render opinions that gain in clarity and conviction what they may have lost in influence or reach.

So while I don’t cry out “Bring it on!” (as if I had a choice in the matter), I am learning to take a quieter sort of satisfaction in the way I’m meeting my new, older self—with a mixture of attention, adjustment and acceptance. It’s not hubris, or if it is, it’s tempered by the humility that comes from understanding the fragile nature of one’s existence.

Still. . . those walls didn’t paint themselves.

Geraldine Doyle, model for WWII "We Can Do It!" poster at age 85.

Geraldine Doyle, model for WWII “We Can Do It!” poster at age 85.

Old Lady Walking

May 292015
 
old woman sees young self in mirror

courtesy: Tom Hussey

The other day I perused the Internet for short hair styles that might be attractive on older women. Why? I’m considering a change in style, and I’m willing to concede I might be considered an “older woman.”

Imagine my surprise upon encountering a picture of the lovely Maggie Gyllenhaal among the images. Maggie G. only 37, is an older woman? Since fricking when?

Gyllenhaal told CNN a Hollywood producer deemed her too old to play the lover of a fifty-five year old man. Although the story isn’t immediately verifiable, it dovetails with anecdotal reports from the left coast. Tinsel Town’s ageism is as old as the Hollywood Hills.

So are assessments as to female desirability. Amy Schumer hilariously captures the prevailing mindset in her “Last F**kable Day” video, starring Tina Fey, Patricia Arquette and Julia Louie-Dreyfus. Hard to believe we’re still dealing with overt female-centric ageism in 2015. Where’s the progress?

It goes beyond female desirability. Women over fifty might as well all wear black dresses to the floor, like the nanna few of us ever had. In everyone’s eyes, we’re one amorphous post-child-bearing blob.

Since I’m past sixty, I’m on the lookout for portrayals of “seniors” in pop culture. Trust me when I tell you the difference between men and women remains apparent. It’s not just Liam Neeson and company strutting their stuff. It’s that women are old, done for, vulnerable and over-the-hill. Or they play far younger because otherwise, well, they wouldn’t exist. Two examples among many:

  • On a recent episode of “The Good Wife”, the client was “a little old lady” of 62, played by an actress who appeared to be in her mid-seventies and defended by the lawyer in her mid-fifties played by Christine Baranski, 63.
  • On a rerun of “Law and Order: SVU”, the rape of a woman was seen as especially revolting because she was described as an elderly woman of 60.

Yes, we have a comedy in which two actors in their seventies portray seventy-something characters facing divorce for the first time. The honesty is bracing. The fact that they are played by Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda with gleaming teeth, perfect skin, beautiful necks and all the money their characters require to suffer luxuriously is simply a way to address the issues of female aging without throwing too many wrinkles into the plot, I guess.

Television often casts 49-year old women to play the mothers of 30 year old men. Under fifty, the women can still be rocket scientists, university professors, molecular biologists and CIA agents with advanced degrees who might, if required kick some butt here and there. Given the accomplishments and relative youth among the mothers, I can only surmise there were quite a few on-campus births back in the day as well as understanding employers.

I’ve heard senior women are the latest trend. As AdWeek gushed in early April, “older women are the new ‘it’ girls.” Apparently retailers are belatedly realizing baby boomers hold—and spend—most of the wealth. Wave our wallets at them and watch them come running. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Meanwhile, the truthful portraits of mature females vie for attention with the more popular tropes that older women (except for Meryl Streep or Dame Helen Mirren, of course) have two choices: lift, dye, process, rise, repeat, until you look like something that, as Julie Louis-Dreyfus observes “has been left out too long in the sun.” Or accept your lot in life as a generic sexless thing. You can fight against it; I certainly intend to. It’s an uphill climb. Strong, secure, sexy post-child-bearing women are either terrifying or incomprehensible to a significant portion of the population.

Back to the haircuts: I’m sorry Maggie Gyllenhaal is placed in the “mature woman” category when it comes to style. It could be worse. For instance, I went back to look and came across a style in the “women over sixty” category that interested me: short, curly and low-maintenance. Looks a bit like Carol, the gray-haired warrior from “The Walking Dead”. Wait; that IS Carol; at least it’s a picture of the actress who plays her, Melissa McBride. McBride just turned fifty. What’s she doing in the over sixty category? Is it the gray hair? Or is it that one old lady walking looks just like the next.

This story was originally published in The Broad Side