For me, growing old as a woman in The United States is much less about discriminations done to me than it has to do with a subtle weakening of my place within this culture and a not-so-subtle disrespect that pops up more with each passing year. For example, if I disapprove of porn as systemically damaging to women, it is my age that provokes my classification as a prude and a pearl-clutcher. It can not be that I base my point of view on studies and statistics and the understanding that feminism is a movement-- one that supports the liberty of all women, not to remain confused with individual women who choose to reduce their images to the sexual uses and misuses of their bodies, calling that empowerment. My age sets me up for a sort of ridicule only somewhat experienced by younger women with the exact same beliefs. The wisdom that comes with age has little worth to anyone but those owning it, because foresight is another word for old, and old is what nobody prefers to be.
I have no idea what the solution is, but I can tell you what it isn't, at the very least for me. It isn't to aim to look or act more radiant. It isn't to write blog posts about how hot/thin/beautiful/ sexy middle-aged women are. They are, but squandering my written voice on championing shallow initiatives at continued conformity to what is looked forward to of women in a patriarchal culture does not feel productive. It is an insidious surrender. It encourages women my age to trade away opportunities to weigh in on important matters for a chance to become among the "seen" again. I won't play a game I hate, and that I did not put together and can not succeed in.
To become an aging woman in The U.S.A. is to be frequently pestered by imagery and press that outstrip your younger feminist sisters from you, given that the idea of no longer appearing like those youthful photos of femininity and becoming invisible terrifies them. I look like a regular 51-year-old, and it is just unusual discovering that my appearance is something many young women fear.
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