Women, it's time to age disgracefully

Worried about getting old and invisible at 39. Give me strength. I didn't start training for my second career as a nurse until 42 and rose to be a Hospital Director. The life after 40 is the best.

Yes, I reckon I was in my prime at that age. Certainly not losing confidence in my value.

Invisible? HA!

What a pile of twaddle.

What a load of wimps this younger generation of women are. Where did we go wrong when we were bringing them up?

Like Brendawymms my career really took off in my 40s.

What's your problem with this?
I think the point she is making is valid about older women not being heard and women in general lacking positive older role models. Yes, she admits there are a few, more than our generation ever had, but it's true there are far more older males in these roles. How many times have people posted on GN about being invisible. Well this is just her way of saying something similar.

I'm surprise so many people have gone down the grumpy old women role before pausing to consider she is only 39 and therefore speaking with the voice of a woman that age and without the benefit of hindsight.

It took me until I reached 40 to start having confidence in my power and ability as a woman. I wasn't going to let it dwindle and become invisible when I had only just started to feel like that. What planet is she on, that she thinks the world revolves around the visibility of wrinkle-free youngsters, and you therefore have to rail against aging. Yes, twaddle!

Well, I have made it to 70 without ever feeling I was invisible. Why do we need all these role models? I have been going my own way since childhood without feeling any need for them.

I studied economics, an almost totally male subject in the early 1960s, at a northern technical 90% male university and went on to make a career in predominantly male industries where I was usually the only woman above clerical level. I cannot once remember having or wanting a role model. In fact I really enjoyed challenging male/female stereotypes.

I am certainly not saying that at times I did not meet prejudice and discrimination, but I have yet to be invisible or need role models.

I must say that I often think women are their own worst enemies, they acquiesce by accepting invisibility instead of speaking up and ensuring they are seen and the lack of role models or any other minor difficulty is used as an excuse for doing nothing.

I find the older I get the more likely I am to speak up and make sure I am heard!

Bully for you Flick

I'm not going to play this 'lets put the younger generation down' game.

Those of you who enjoy that sort of thing carry on without me

What role models does she mention? A couple of actresses. That's all. Excuse me, Bronwen, that's pathetic. There are rather more than that in lots of different work. It isn't all about appearance!

But she doesn't know you Bags so her choice is limited!

"I’m loathe to guess how I’ll feel about reading this myself at 50."

Apart from the spelling (!) I think this is a well reasoned article from a woman of her age. Obviously, we all, looking back, have different experiences, and if, like one or two of us, we didn't really get started until we were her age, we can't walk in her shoes.

Don't be silly, aka. I thought you were buggering off this thread anyway.

Well spotted Bags

Now that I've read a positive comment from Ariadne which more or less echoes my thoughts I feel I can genuinely abandon this poor woman to her fate.

I think it depends what you mean by "get started". The couple of examples on this thread that have been given suggest to me that the women involved were busy doing other things, such as raising their kids, before they felt they could developt heir career. I've always included raising my kids as part of my life's worthwhile work and therefore, part of my 'career'. So, like many others, I "got started" in my twenties. One of the big problems of modern feminism, in my view, is that we don't insist that all our work is counted, whether paid or not.

What I don't get is why is it time to age disgracefully, or gracefully for that matter. Or to be labelled a grumpy old woman when choosing to have an opinion about ...anything. Women age. Women get old. That doesn't equate to invisibility in my book, unless I let it. Which I don't.

I feel the OP which gives the link and calls it 'blethering' rather sets the tone of responses and makes it difficult to give an unbiased reading to the article. And then somebody else calls it 'twaddle'.

I find myself thinking oh dear, it's going to be one of those threads in which everyone rushes in to robustly guffaw at the idiocy of the .... whatever it is.

I read the article twice, carefully. Much of the more extreme opinion is not the writer's. She quotes other people and then disagrees with them.

I think there is something truth in the article. It depends which industry you are in. It wasn't so long ago female Newsreaders were complaining that they were 'let go' when they reached a certain age and younger women taken on. Most models are young and beautiful. There are many more acting roles for men than women. And so on...

And how many men, leaving their wives, do so for an 'older woman' (apart from Prince Charles)?

There are plenty of threads on GN to do with beauty, anti-wrinkle serum and dieting. Some of us have also mentioned feeling invisible as we get older. So what's that all about then?

I hope I'm not blethering on talking twaddle

Were any of you worrying about whether you'd become invisible as you aged when you were 39? There was a good interview with Angela Lansbury at the weekend. She's in her 80s and about to appear on stage as Mme Arcati in Blithe Spirit. She was asked about opportunities for older actresses and said she thought for women who had been 'lovely' it did get hard but she had always been a character actress. In other words, although she was undeniably 'lovely' she didn't rely on that to build a career.

That classic poem..
Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
Jenny Joseph

I think that article, and the linked pieces in it, are full of nothingness. They (the various writers) are either genuinely frightened woman, or, more likely, simply journalists hopping on a band wagon.

It is fact that, round about the age of fortyfive women do start to realise that ageing is on its way. No one is going to be happy about that. BUT, women just carry on with their lives. They don't sit around in gloom and despondency about it. Yes, they buy the creams, pay attention to diet, go the gym. Nothing wrong with any of that. Perhaps some people branch out on new careers either for financial reasons or to try to avoid the sting of empty nest syndrome, or simply because they want to. Nothing wrong with that either. It's encouraged these days, is n't it.

It's life. Journalists just try to make something extraordinary of it TO MAKE MONEY.

Find something more worthwhile to read about.

Too much navel gazing.

Oh please Don't trot that bloody poem out again.

Who would really want to do that stuff just because we are older? Poem is codswallop.

Apologies YaYajen.