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).

An odd experience to read Saini on what-on-earth-might-woman-mean in the Prospect magazine, full TWAW when I quite liked her book Inferior, which critiques neurosexism and other misogynistic quasi-scientific takes on sex differences.

Once she goes full TWAW, that book, on beliefs about sex differences, becomes irrelevant, given that 'woman' now for her seems to mean anyone who feels feminine, loves pink, makeup etc. and has nothing much to do with biological sex. Perhaps she might rewrite Inferior as being about vulva people or womb-carriers?

But now I'm confused about this opinion piece, too. If being a 'woman' is about inner feelings alone, how could we ever distinguish 'women' from 'men' or 'nonbinary' or 'genderfluid' or genderqueer' etc. people? And why would aging affect the group which loves pink and being choked in sex and high heels etc. more than the group which loves blue and beer and farting and being the boss etc?

....

On the actual topic, aging-as-female is a variable experience depending on culture, including the rules about respecting (or not) older people which children are taught. But I very much doubt that aging-as-female is better in any culture than aging-as-male.

Saini's argument that sex differences in appearance tend to disappear with age is mostly rubbish, in my view, though it is true that very very very old men and women often do look alike (being honed down to the human essence inside them by age, experience, wisdom and the wear and tear of living?)

These comments have just confirmed to me why I don't click on Grauniad links any longer.

And FYI to the author, I saw my 86 year old friend today. She is most definitely female and obviously so, just as my other 86 year old friend is clearly still a bloke.

Can I recommend Hags, by Victoria Smith, which deals with the three Fs that matter most to patriarchy (fertility, femininity, fuckability)

Rachel Cooke reviewed it (n The Observer, note, not the Graun although they share a website)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/27/hags-by-victoria-smith-review-welcome-to-the-age-of-rage

"...In its sights are those people who, even as they loudly proclaim their righteous politics, are apt to label older women as Karens and Terfs; who either roundly ignore or demonise the views of such women, however well-founded or based in experience; who write with open loathing of their bodies, their haircuts and their clothes; who struggle to acknowledge that they have benefited even the smallest bit from the legacy of those who went before them; who would, in effect, like women over the age of 45 either to shut up or to disappear altogether. It is, to be clear, a very good book, one that brilliantly and unrelentingly exposes all the weasel ways in which ageist misogyny enables regressive beliefs to be recast as progressive. In my eyes, it’s a future classic, up there with Joan Smith’s Misogynies and Susan Faludi’s Backlash..."

I've just read the article and that's the sentence that really stood out for me.

She's talking bollocks

Assuming something is self-evidently true can lead to ingrained misunderstandings and completely overlook important things.

This may be true - I wouldn't know.

But was this means is that someone who is totally self absorbed and thinks how she thinks is how everyone thinks if therefore how the world works.

Surely finding herself envious of those older women who don't seem to be having a problem she should be "researching" them, not thinking her self absorbed whiny self is the norm.

How do people like this get taken seriously let alone published.

Surely she should just have been laughed off and not indulged. Its just plain ridiculous. ie she only got the go ahead because her own low self esteem about how feminity is actually just about young women, coincides with the sexist notions of men.

How to get ahead in the world and suceed. Be a handmaiden to patriarchal attitudes.

I remember my daughter enthusing about Caitlin's Moran "How to be a Woman" as though "rebellion" against supposed stereotypes for women (like dying your hair pink or wearing Doc Martins, wow) was some sort of groundbreaking uber feminist stuff. It annoyed me intensely.

Oh God absolutely this @theDudesmummy - that book was such a disappointment.
As for the Grauniad article - it was not the only shocking waste of newsprint in yesterday's paper (dh will keep buying it 🙄)

There were two whole pages devoted to someone's hippy ish wedding day (they had flowers! and a tent! How original!) and it was unseasonably windy.
I assume they are completely out of cash and decided to excavate the recycle bin to find something to print.

(Edited to put back the par breaks that my phone ate the first time)

On the subject of sex differences diminishing with age, Grayson Perry, in his memoir, suggests that is easier for a male to " pass as a woman" when he is very young, and again when he is old. Sexual virility and 'masculinity' peaks in the thirties and forties and even into the fifties for men.

For women the allure tends to disappear around 40 - which coincides with the run in to menopause. The skin, the lips and the hair lose their fullness and lustre - and I guess at some level the subtle scent of fertility wanes.

Why the focus on whether old women sometimes look like old men and vice versa

That can be true but what that has to do what the writer seems to be trying to prove I dont know

Its nothing to do with hair and make up anyway

This. Within a year of my periods stopping my skin, hair and joints have noticeably aged. Not gently falling apart but full on cataclysmic ageing. It’s nuts.

Last year people always commented on not looking my age how young I looked etc. I’ve never worn make up or put effort in. This year I get no comments at all on my appearance. It’s not freeing, it’s horrible. The idea that I must now have HRT, a skin care regime, regular cuts and blowdrys to look how I did pre menopause is depressing. ( I don’t)

Same here, Ive never worn make up previously, had a lovely fat face, smooth fresh looking skin. I looked much younger than my years

Within about 2 years of peri menopause my face has fallen off itself really

Now I do try to wear a bit of make up to try to improve whats left, unsuccessfully

My eyesight has gone through the floor, I cant see bugger all

I found giving up bread helped my joints and swelling to some degree.

I have to admit I was smug. I was never close to beautiful, but for about 15 years between 40 and 55 I was really quite attractive (more confident than when younger, less "try hard" makeup etc). I looked younger than I was, was very active, was taken for a younger woman. Picked up a 33 year old man at a party when I was 41 and married him later that year. So, very much in the zone the writer of this preposterous article is in. Ageing? Pah! Got it nailed Had a baby at 46. No problem! Being it on, ageing is all in the mind!

(The difference being I didn't write a smug article in a national newspaper telling women about what a doddle ageing is).

As I said upthread. Come back when you are 60, and write the follow-up piece.

Sounds like you had quite a late menopause? I had a sudden, drastic one at the age of 36. I had no idea what was going on and just put it all down to severe stress ( that is maybe why i had such a sudden menopause)

I started having 'weird episodes' which turned out to be partial focal sezures, culminating in a full on tonic clonic seizure. My joints started to ache after walking and exercise; I put weight on around my stomach. -which I never did before). My hair started to shed ( fortunately i still have a thick head of hair); i had intense hot flushes ( still didn't know that was what they were).So, it is not necessarily the age itself, so much as menopause itself does make a big difference. I resisted suggestions of HRT.

Like others I was always told I looked younger than my years and was considered attractive, and this went on until my early-mid forties. But now, aged 58, i accept that I look like an older woman. During a heated exchange with another woman ( who had a full on trout pout) in a car on a busy school road - she called me " an old boot". I was taken aback - I have to admit.

It's tough ageing; there seem to be few bonuses - except for a growing equanimity and a more philosophical outlook. I used to fancy older men, now I like them young. 😎

Menopause was a long slow process for me, crept up gradually from 50 onwards. This compounded, for a long time, the illusion that ageing wasn't a big deal and that I would always be as I always was...lively, healthy, and looking younger than my age...oh, I was so wrong!

My parents are currently with me for the holidays. They are both 80. Neither looks like the opposite sex in the slightest, I can report.

I suppose such external 'presentation' matters to a genderist.

The article is a total load of rubbish (archaeological fact wise). I don't know where she derived her ideas ... certainly not from archaeologists who've worked at Çatal Höyük. ... Not that even that's ever stopped the wild flights of fancy the site has been used to support in the past.

(Signed: an archaeologist)

comment on the article itself, she will read!!

I suppose the major point of the opinion piece worth discussing if it indeed is true now (or ever has been true) that getting older always gives women more political/sociological/psychological clout in their communities.

It probably has partially been the case, such as the great power of mothers-in-law over their sons wives and grandchildren in many patriarchal and patrilocal communities where women have no standing until they give birth to sons and even then not much until that mother-in-law stage where they can order the daughters-in-law in the house. That has preceded with the stage where they were bossed about and seen as inferior, of course, given that they moved into their husbands homes to begin with.

And perhaps older queens had more power? And it could be the case that the same types of forces work for women in management and in politics as work for men in patriarchies where a handful of older men rule much?

But I doubt that this is true of the average women working average jobs etc, though I would be happy to be wrong here. Very happy!

Still, the invisibility of older women is because sexual desirability is partly why younger women are 'seen' (and much of that is not a good thing), so once a woman is no longer deemed beddable, whether she will be listened to if she is invisible in these ways is a good question to ask.

What's she talking about? Older women letting themselves go, sliding into invisibility, becoming no different to men? She wants to take a trip to my neck of the woods, Havering. I can assure you the many women aged 80s and 90s around here tend to be not only physically sprightly but also very glamorous. The writer is 43? Pah, I am nearly 50 and can assure you, I feel fabulous. Lipstick or not. Perhaps she needs to enlarge her circle of friends..I think all that mingling with Owen Jones et al may be making her a tad negative..

Fabulous, now we have an archaeologist on here!

Do you have a theory@Lynnikins ?
Is that a bag of shopping she has betwixt her legs on a day out with the dogs, or is she a fecund mother goddess, birthing a child?
I have to say she looks curiously like a frozen in time Kim Woodburn from her left profile.
And is she a contemporary of the Venus of Willendorf, or much earlier/later?