Sexism

Club L


birthday cake

Image by freakgirl via Flickr

A friend turns fifty today. It’s one of those “milestone” birthdays of which are scare once a person passes the infamous twenty-one. Passing from one decade to another though ceases to be momentous after a certain point because, in my opinion, many of us peak in terms of knowledge base and ability to add to existing skill sets.

My friend is not one of the stunted folk, which isn’t a surprise in a earth sign. In fact, I’ve only known one earth sign in my life who was a tool and my assessment is based on his rather twisted personality rather than a lack of innate intelligence.

Being female, however, this friend rather lamented the run up to her inaugral year in a new decade. The AARP didn’t help with it’s welcome wagon membership privileges either. Fifty is harder on women than men though my own darling husband is hurumphing and grim-faced about his own fiftieth later this year. He, at least, has the decidedly unfair advantage of the myth that men improve with age while women merely get old.

There is nothing “mere” about what happens to women as they get older nor is it appreciably different than what happens to men, but in a society that worships youth in the female form and exhorts women to look to 12 year old actresses as beauty standards, it’s understandable that many women dread and even fight aging with everything in their arsenal.

Being of a certain age myself, I am torn between grace and battle. My hair has been graying since my late twenties – it happens with redheads – but I’ve hidden it with highlights because I am blessed with that pure white replacement rather than the steely variety, but there isn’t enough of it to allow it dominance. Blonde simply lightens me in a way whitening red does not.

For the moment, I do nothing, but I think about doing something and that is maddening. Because why should I think about doing something anyway?

Not long ago I ran across an article bemoaning the fact that Elle Fanning is the new fashion “it” girl, the one designers love and hype as the “perfect female form”.

She’s twelve. And who wasn’t sparkly and full of feminine promise at that age?

Of course it’s her rack that attracts both filmmakers and haute couture pimps alike. She’s coltish with a ballerina body type, blond and fair. She’s the fantasy. The idea that for some reason maturity ruins females. Roundness and hair in the wrong places, and oozing once a month render us worthless. Not to mention that it is the beginning of the end. Age will take us and if it takes us – it can take men too.

Maybe that’s the real appeal. Men look at scandalously young females and see themselves in a way that defies the mirrors they ignore.

But why should my friend lament fifty? Why should anyone?

It’s not like many of us would willingly relive twelve. No one but the most stunted long to be teenagers again in any way. And, for one, resent the suggestion that I should emulate a 12 year old. It’s insulting and not just a little creepy.

In mythology, women travel from maiden to crone, but crone is powerful. The form she takes is of her choosing really, and that is the beauty of aging. Choice. And the wisdom, experience  and means to make ones that suit us. Let a 12 year old claim that.

At twelve, females are objects. Too young to know that, they smile and accept inappropriate and dangerous to them ideas and attention. At 50, not so much.

Happy Birthday then to my fabously fifty friend, who is wise and wily and wonderful.

Related Articles

Good Touch. Bad Touch. TSA Touch


With (mostly) white men earning exemptions from the new enhanced screening methods being employed by the TSA now, it seems that we’ll soon be back to the norm of women and children only.

Pilots and members of Congress joined President Obama and his wife and daughters in the “no touch my junk” zone according to the most recent TSA flanking maneuvers in the media as they desperately try to spin their way past the public’s ire.

Since 9/11 the friendly skies have been  a groping haven where women are concerned, with complaints about inappropriate touching during pat downs and questions about why big breasted and young women are more frequently selected at “random” than their male counterparts.

Until the enhancement, which came on the heels of bombs being discovered on cargo planes (which apparently hasn’t prompted Homeland Security to set up scanners and frisking at Fed Ex or UPS offices), men have skated with ease through most of the TSA nonsense, and it’s been speculated that the furor that’s erupting is a direct result of the fact that men in the U.S. have always had fairly complete physical autonomy. There are few, if any, rules or situations that require them to be man-handled.

Regardless, with Opt Out Day looming, the TSA is more than a bit anxious to silence as much vocal opposition as possible.

In the meantime, it might be a good idea to revisit the “good and bad touch” thing with your kids and to arm Dad with a recording device the next time you pass through airport security. He’ll be the only one not vigorously screened and in a better position to hold the camera anyway.

Related Articles

Body and Soul


An interesting twist on the point, don’t you think?

The Pro-Life people argue for the body as though the soul is somehow affected. It isn’t. Our souls are eternal. They can’t be destroyed. And ephemeral existence isn’t the point of our being anyway.

As my husband is fond of pointing out, the idea of the sanctity of human life is a myth. If it weren’t a myth, then, for example, we wouldn’t be capitalists. The free market would be rightly called out for catering to the destruction of the many for the good of the very, very few. Where is life held sacred in homelessness, hunger and the inability to access health care for those without better than average means?

If life were sacred, share and share alike would be the norm because every life would have a minimum standard of maintenance that we’d all agree on and would strive to make sure was fairly distributed.

Life teaches us to be fearful and to cling to the trappings that separate us – ultimately – from the thing that we are. A soul.

So, if I am a soul, does it matter if I am born or not? Conception of a physical warehouse doesn’t make me more than who I am and who I am is not my body.

Think about it.

Related Articles