No country for old women
In about 40 days I will be 40 years old. According to strangers on the internet, I will have had quite the awakening by then. I will be comfortable in my skin. I will wear what I want. I will be deeply fulfilled at home and at work, having traded my youthful idealism for mature decisiveness. I’ll be beyond reproach because I will have run out of fucks to give. (And if I do have any fucks left, they should be given to hot 30-year olds with a fetish for “older” women).
All of this sounds fantastic. And it’s also depressing as hell. Not because I’m way off schedule with these dumb milestones (as if I ever cared about them anyway). It’s because instead of making me feel better, they just remind me that no matter how much I’m led to believe otherwise, there will always be a darker side to the conversation around female aging. One that gets cloaked in a cheery “go get ‘em girls!” type optimism, while at the same time turning the screws just a little tighter on our self-worth. Sometimes without us even realizing it.
Take, for example, the repetitive formula that most articles about aging follow:
Ominous headline: “The 5 BRUTAL Truths About Turning 40”
Punchy subheading: “You’re no spring chicken anymore; it’s time to stop acting like one.”
Somber intro: Litany of the many scary things on the horizon — wild mood swings, saggy breasts, gray hair (everywhere), dangly neck skin, and on and on
Inline links: “50 Ways to Tame Your Belly Fat” (as if you haven’t been humiliated enough)
Pointless pep talk: Your best days are ahead and you should be really, really excited
Optional postscript: Polite reminder that exhaustive time management and self-discipline are the only way this will ever work (because as all women know, our emotional labor is never done.)
I don’t know why I’m so bothered by all this. Clickbait is like oxygen to the internet, and I’ve gotten better at tuning it out. But a lot of women aren’t tuning out. In fact, they’re tuning way the hell into this dialogue. To prove it, just ask yourself … if getting older is so great, why do women ages 40-54 have the highest rate of plastic surgery? Why do they lead in depression? Why is suicide rising in alarming numbers for women over 40?
I know these are serious issues that don’t stem from a few poorly written articles (for a deeper look into that I highly recommend Ada Calhoun’s phenomenal book, Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis). But I do think this kind of content is symbolic of the broader way that our culture treats women as utterly disposable after a certain age. And the media is the biggest instigator in how it pays lip service to aging gracefully while in the same breath comparing us to the Cryptkeeper.
Much like the wrinkles waiting for me, I also know there’s no magic fix for all this. Our culture is (and has always been) obsessed with the female body as either an object of fantasy or scrutiny. But it’s important to note that a majority of these thinly-veiled empowerment pieces are women.
Which means we’re doing it to ourselves.
Instead of hawking night creams, how about more mainstream articles that help us identify and stop the patterns that lead to self-destruction. More articles about breaking down the editorial tricks that have deeply skewed our perceptions of aging. Better yet, how about more articles where the only advice is to stop reading articles.
Luckily, there are already a ton of feminist writers and activists who are fighting back (Roxane Gay, Jia Tolentino, Jameela Jamil, etc). But this movement has yet to reach the mainstream. And until it does, the game will only keep going because to some degree, we keep playing.
So in light of all this, what are my own views on getting older? Meh, I’m conflicted. I certainly don’t feel like the adult I’m told I should be by now. But I’m kicking ass in a lot of other areas of life so the fact that I don’t know how to use a power drill by now doesn’t matter much to me. It also helps to be blessed with a brain that cuts through the ageist bullshit.
Perhaps a better version of that question is to ask how my own self talk would be different if I never knew my real birthday. If I had no idea of age as a construct but still lived in the world as it is today, would I still be reaching for the same milestones on this artificial schedule? Would I still be on the same trajectory with my mental health? Would I still feel self-conscious about my body? The answer is probably yes, but I guarantee you I’d have a lot less emotional baggage to show for it.
The biggest realization I’ve had (and what gives me more optimism than any article ever could), is that despite what the internet says, getting older feels less like a rude awakening and more like the quote by Hemingway about going bankrupt: it happens slowly at first, then all at once. I hope that the same goes for changing the conversation around female aging, from a dreaded process to be “navigated” to calling it what it actually is – living.