Women, it's time to age disgracefully

Crossed posts Yayajen, agree with you about pressures on younger women.
jingl loved your remark about older men

While I agree with you Bags that being a SATH mother is just as important work as working outside the home, and an important part of our own personal development, at the time it certainly didn't feel like it. I remember feeling quite deflated and lacking confidence at that time of my life (30-37) and like others, my professional life took off in my forties and my confidence grew with it.
I started my own practice when I was 45 in a deprived area of North Tyneside, and asked advice from as many people as I could. One man expressed reservations about how my potential patients would react to having a woman in their midst, implying that they would prefer a man. Then he asked how old I was, and said 'oh if you're that old you'll probably be alright, but they wouldn't trust a younger woman.' So older women were seen as more competent and mature, not past it.
I think women who are 39 now are in a different place from many of us at that age, with many of them having only just started their families, rather than having mostly completed them.
I also think that it is their generation, not ours, which is fixated on appearance and sexual attractiveness in a way which makes our era look like one of innocence.

That's irony for you

jingl and janerowena, I like your posts. Spot on about journalists some people who write for newspapers making an issue out of a non-issue.

How can I possibly age disgracefully when I was ever thus...

She is showing her fear of the unknown, of what she thinks is going to happen to her. Whereas all that happens in fact is that men stop ogling your boobs, and I found that quite liberating. It means that males no longer look rather than listen, and women stop feeling threatened. Finally you are free to be yourself and have the confidence to be so. Part of me regrets the passing of my unwrinkled skin, but I feel so much more relaxed now in so many ways.

In her industry, which is so shallow, she may well have cause to worry. Rather than writing articles and calling in to bustling offices and having pleasant little lunches, she will be 'on garden leave' at home all on her own in the burbs writing a novel about aging women.

What is the point about neurosing and moaning about something that you can do nothing about? I mean that as a general rule, not specific to aging, although it applies.

Obviously if you trade on your looks, male or female, if you loose them you can no longer trade on them, but that applies to any physical attribute, athletes, footballers hit the headlines when they are the top of their sport ad fitness and fade once they aren't, unless they are clever enough to have other skills as well, like Seb Coe or some sports commentators.

Not a good article. She does not explain why "disgracefully" suddenly comes into her thinking. It fizzles out prematurely. Does she mean women should "let themselves go" or dye their hair green. One cannot tell.

Yes. So long as the being non-conformist is genuine. Older women trying deliberately to look 'different' could come across as ridiculous. Although you see that more with older men. Women don't often feel the need.

No offence taken, think poem expresses the cultural norms many younger women feel forced to conform to re appearance and behaviour, many of us shrugged them off but the article describes the pressures to conform as felt by 30 yo+ at the moment, maybe if the ore "disgraceful" ie non-conformist amongst us were more visible that generation may feel less pressured.

stay-at-^home^. Not ohme

Bags stop apologising for having been a stay-at-omeh mum. Your life. Your choice. (I happen to think it a good one)

Apologies YaYajen.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

"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.

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