aging

From Here to Eternity


There was a commentary piece in the Globe and Mail yesterday stemming from the recent death of Deborah Kerr. The author talked about scrutinizing a recent photo of the eighty-something actress trying to find traces of the beautiful woman she had been so long ago. She went on to wonder why it is that male actors are allowed to basically decay in the public eye via their film work while women are considered used up commodities when they reach their forties. As an example she used compared actors like Jack Nicholson being a leading man still despite the fact that he is physically an old man whereas Ms. Kerr “retired” from acting essentially when she turned forty. It gets back to, naturally, the double-standard when it comes to men and women and aging. A standard that exists, I think, for two reasons. One being that it is a man’s world. They have always made the rules and the rules have always favored them. The second reason is that we women go along with this by willingly buying into the notion that as we lose our youth to the years and the mileage, we become less beautiful. The latter, and the former really as well, is crap.

If I could, I would show you a picture of myself at eighteen and one now and you would have to admit I am much better looking now. I am the proverbial ugly duckling that age and wisdom have transformed into, if I must so say myself, a damn fine swan. I can’t pretend that I am happy with wrinkles or gray hairs or the fact that I must work longer to get into a healthy physical state, but I am much better looking than many of male peers. The article I read talked about how advances in cosmetic surgery have helped women stay at par with their same age brethren, and though I am grateful for the advances in medicine that help those people who have been ill or badly injured avoid some of the physical stigma, I am not so sure that cosmetic surgery has been a good thing overall for my gender or that without it we wouldn’t be “at par”. There are exceptions, of course, but I don’t think that the majority of men fare any better against the ravages of time time than women do. They get just as fat. flabby, gray and wizened as we do when we don’t take the time ti eat properly and take care of ourselves. Having just been at my 25th high school reunion I can say that by and large the mid-forties is not what it was a half-century ago when people that age seemed to look so much older than we do now. Hair coloring has something to do with this as does the advent of birth control which allowed women to control to some extent the ravages of childbearing on their bodies. Mainly though, we live less physically demanding lives.

Still, it hasn’t changed the perception that forty is old for a woman and prime for a man. Not fair but we women don’t do ourselves favors by buying into such nonsense.

Good as I Once was


I was cranky yesterday. It was a fat day. Even though I weighed the same amount of weight that I did the day before and today, I still felt enormous and was irritatingly aware of the way my clothes felt and the space I took up. Rob wasn’t helpful “Not much I can do about that,” he said, but he was at least superficially sympathetic. (Not sympathetic at all, he corrected me with a shrug when he first read this. The man will just not let me harbor any illusions.) Men don’t have fat days. They lament the loss of strength, hair, stamina and skill (and not necessarily in that order), but they never think they are fat. Of course, men aren’t held to the same standards that even old women like me are and with reason. I can’t count the number of times I have seen couples together where the women are so much more visibly aged than the men. But, yesterday I felt fat. And it made me cranky. And the reason it did was that, like the Toby Keith song, “I ain’t as good as I once was.”

 

I can’t get by on little or no sleep anymore. It takes longer to get back into passable physical shape. I like evenings on the couch (well, okay that doesn’t really count as I have always enjoyed a good snuggle and anything else it might lead to, but you get what I mean, I’m sure) more than nights out sometimes. I am finding myself listening to oldies from my junior high and high school days more and more, and I don’t even count those days as the best of my life because fat, (drunk for some) and stupid is no way to go through life. I am not pleased by the wrinkling I see, or the grays that my new hair stylist needlessly pointed out by way of explaining why he needed to over-lighten my bangs. Not to put too fine a point on it ……I’m old! When did this happen? And why didn’t I notice it before now? Maybe I could have done something about it?

 

And it’s not just me. Rob was a bit morose last evening too (not about me having a fat day. He thinks that whole idea is ridiculous), but because he spent quite nearly the whole day working on a reno project to find himself not done when dusk arrived, and worse, not inclined to drag out the spot lights and work into the night to finish it up. He would have once. Back in a not really that long ago day. When he was young….ger.

 

Old. Alright, alright….middle-aged, but this forty is the new thirty thing is just boomer nonsense. When I look at photos of famous women, who I know are older than I am, I don’t see well-preserved. I see women who are older than I am and lucky to have good make-up, better lighting and a photographer with a great photoshop program. 

 

I am not sure what it is. My child starting kindergarten when most people my age are celebrating empty nests or the fact that my 25th high school reunion is around the corner and I have been getting in touch with old friends. Old ones. People I have known now for twenty plus years. My friend Lisa and I go back to fifth grade. That’s more than thirty years ago. Relationships outside your original immediate family and relations that you can measure in decade increments is humbling. And it really adds to that whole “Damn, I’m old!” thing.

 

But, I feel better about my wizening today. After all, many people still misjudge my true age by a good five or more years in the direction of thirty-something. I am actually thinner than I was before my child was born. A note-worthy achievement because, and most women know this to be true, your stomach is never the same again. I am not ignorant of current music and cultural. No time warp here. I don’t need reading glasses. Really. My optometrist says so. And most important of all, my husband thinks I have a great bum. What more could a forty-ish woman want or need?