Guardian article on older women

[theDudesmummy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/29/gender-woman-ageing-free-female-power?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Am I alone in feeling (probably irrationally) annoyed that this article was written by a 43 year old woman, whose own lived experience does not yet include ageing? I of course recognise the benefits of entering the giving zero fucks stage, but also have a myriad other experiences as a 60 year old woman which do NOT make me feel empowered or "set free". It it our society or is it the considerable pain in my back and my arthritic thumb that is creating my jaundiced view? (Light-hearted, or maybe not, really).

written by a 43 year old woman, whose own lived experience does not yet include ageing?

so she was born as a 43 year old 🙄

You know what I mean.

Did she study gender or sex?

She uses both terms more or less interchangeably. Typical Guardian.

Haven't read the article and wont, partly not to give the Guardian clicks.

But I suspect the Guardian pulblished it because it is both ageist and sexist.

ie genuinley older women (boomers and worse) cant be relied on to think correctly and of course as the paper of intellectual elites the idea that personal experiences could be valid is just not acceptable, the concept must by the result of a "study".

i know you’re being utterly daft saying that this woman hasn’t begun the aging process.

my 60 year old neighbour has more in common with me as a 41 year old very fit woman than you in terms of how she has “aged”

At 43, she's 'ma'am' she should enjoy it while she can, in no time she'll be 'dear'😠
The article doesn't refer to the raging ageism of the idea that transphobia will die out when all the old bitter GC dinosaurs become extinct..

I skimmed the first couple of paras and couldn’t be bothered reading the whole thing.

My reaction to the article was to observe that the writer claims to be liberated by ageing, whilst choosing a headshot photo in which she could pass for 28 to 33.

And the irony of you swiftly being chastised for doing the wrong kind of ageing wasn’t lost on me either, OP, if that makes you feel any better.

And the irony of you swiftly being chastised for doing the wrong kind of ageing wasn’t lost on me either, OP, if that makes you feel any better.

or how about different aging

being chastised for doing the wrong kind of ageing

Funnily enough, though not really, this came up a lot on the thread I started about how being an older woman who was just ignored / not seen was in fact an opportunity to carry out acts of subversion.

Many posts about "not letting yourself go"

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4964062-society-disappears-ageing-women-so-i-harnessed-that-cloak-of-invisibility-to-do-all-sorts-of-inappropriate-things

Can't be arsed to read the article, but take it from me, aging does not set you free you from aching knees. Or other joints.

The winter says she 'can feel my youth slipping away, and with it also the features that make me recognisably female. For the first time, I wonder how easy it would be to distinguish older men from older women if people didn’t put in all this work.' - by work she refers to dying her hair and using lipstick.

Blimey. I am 61, my youth has slipped away, I don't dye my hair anymore and I very rarely wear make up. I am pretty sure that without ' all this work' I am still distinguishable as a woman. Is that what a woman is? Make up and hair maintenance?

She also says she would be happy to be fat old and androgynous if she had the sort of power women had in ancient societies.
Laughable.

The winter says she 'can feel my youth slipping away, and with it also the features that make me recognisably female. For the first time, I wonder how easy it would be to distinguish older men from older women if people didn’t put in all this work.' - by work she refers to dying her hair and using lipstick.

So the writer is comfortable with letting everyone who has read her article know that she holds older women in such contempt that she can’t be bothered to actually look at them? Or that she has looked at them and thinks that older women who go grey and don’t wear make up are so unattractive they are basically men.

She's 43?

Half my clothes are older than that.

The Guardian publishes a misogynistic sexist ageist article? In other news, bears defecate in arboreal areas.

WTF are you talking about?

"As I slowly slide into midlife I can feel it for myself, that gradual accruing of respect and status that seems to come almost automatically."

It's a shame she doesn't mention which planet she lives on - I'd like to move there.

Lol yeah right - come back once you’ve been through the menopause & your estrogen has plummeted to nowt Angela

What a strange article, does she live in an alternative Universe?

I glance in envy at the many brilliant older women I know, the ones who couldn’t care less about what people think, who head up university departments, edit newspapers, chair boards. I can’t wait to join them.

What about the infinite sea of women who aren't 'brilliant' and don't head up departments etc? Not all of us are going to be joining them in our later life.

For the first time, I wonder how easy it would be to distinguish older men from older women if people didn’t put in all this work.

No words...!! I am nearly 70 and have had 'no work' and still look absolutely female. Most elderly ladies I see also look disinctly female.

I at least feel freer to speak, more confident that I won’t be dismissed, more able to demand what I want.

What reality is she living in? Wait till she's older and gets some chronic illness. Let's see how well she is listened to then. Spoiler: it's so easy to be dismissed and not listened to.

I’ve probably got knickers older than her🤣

and @Theinnocenteyeballsinthesky is right, when the writer has not one iota of oestrogen left (like me) then she might be able to tell us about ageing.

43! That's like getting a woman who's just had a positive pregnancy test to write an article on how wonderful parenting is.

She claims her research shows that older women were well treated in ancient societies, but she cites the Catalhoyuk settlement, which was Neolithic. The Neolithic period had the lowest life expectancy of any period of human existence (probably because the shift to agriculture and settled populations allowed diseases to flourish).

Life expectancy at birth was around 25. This is skewed by high infant mortality but, even so, few people made it to 40. There were hardly any old women, respected or otherwise, so the GOK what evidence she has for her theory.

It's possible that the tiny number of men and women who did survive into what we would now call old age were respected, because they were so rare, but you can't draw conclusions about how society treated most women on the basis of a handful of exceptions. It would be like looking at how our society treats people who make it to 110, and concluding that that must be how all older people are treated.

I must say that statue bears an uncanny resemblance to my holiday photos by the pool in Tenerife.

😁