The Age of Invisibility

A funny things happens to women in Western society as they approach 50:  they become invisible.  Now when I walk into a room filled with people, no matter how confidently I carry myself, no matter how fine I look (for my age—always the kicker), I might just as well have painted myself with invisible paint.  The few eyes that do turn my direction to see who has entered the room end up looking right past me as if I am not there, scanning the doorway to see who might be coming in, yet all the while not seeing me standing right there.

I suppose it is all biological, a woman of my age is beyond child bearing, hence generating no interest in the heterosexual males in the room.  The only female attention you attract is for the purpose of assessing if you pose any threat.  For the young women, you can be immediately dismissed as no competition whatsoever.  For the other “invisible” women in the room, the game of one-upsmanship begins: who’s wearing more stylish clothes, whose eyes look better, who weighs less, who makes more money.  It is a brutal competition that everyone of the invisible women knows means absolutely nothing the minute a young woman (whatever her looks) enters the room and our invisibility is thrust down our throats once again.  

I think “invisible women” have different strategies  to deal with the cruel card life has dealt us.  For those with money and no fear of scalpels, there is the new panacea of plastic surgery.  You try and cheat by pretending to turn back the hands of time to a moment when you were younger and more desirable.  But surgically enhanced youth looks like what it is.  Sure, you might look better around the eyes or the jawline for a few years (before you need another procedure in the vain attempt to keep time at bay), but you’ll also never have the body and the face you had at an earlier age.  Plastic surgery looks like--plastic surgery.  Then there is the “aging gracefully” camp.  You accept the weight gain (all the while fighting it at the gym with exhausting exercise routines and rigid diets), and accept the wrinkles (but apply every new wrinkle reducing cream that comes down the pike).  You spend time with your female friends (because you couldn’t get a date if you were the last woman on earth if you are single, or your husband isn’t interested in you in “that way” any longer), and make sure your wardrobe is stunning.  The third way is that of women who have thrown in their hand and conceded the game entirely.  They wear track suits everywhere, don’t care how much weight they gain, and could care less about an attractive haircut.  They’ve let themselves go entirely, no longer taking any pride in their appearance or their physical condition.  They’ve taken themselves out of the game entirely and have retreated into a world focused exclusively on children, grandchildren and the company of other women, all the while ignoring half of the human race, the male half.

Frankly, for women who aren’t thrilled with the three “paths” offered to invisible women of a “certain age”, there aren’t many alternatives.  There are the “cougars”, the forty-something women of wealth and power who are interested in collecting younger (20-30 something) boy toys for sexual fun and games.  In the old days, these young men were called gigolos and they were after the old bag’s money.  Different name, somehow still the same game to these bifocal-wearing eyes.  I guess there is the spiritual route:  lots of long retreats at the convent or the ashram, organizing church suppers, spending a lot of time praying (especially for the children and elderly relatives in the family).  So much of it seems like ploys to deflect attention from the fact that our bodies are aging and we aren’t what society values anymore.  If we look honestly at our life, it is very clear that it is more than half over, and time has a way of passing every more swiftly with each additional birthday.  The end is drawing near, but at the same time inside I feel as young as if I were still a teenager.  But the inner youthful spirit filled with enthusiasm for life, learning and the joy of meeting people is now housed in a deceptive package that advertises the decay of age and diminished physical capacities.  My mind is still sharp, a bit of wisdom has been accumulated in the process of living, and the desire to interact with all ages and members of both sexes is more finely developed than at a younger age.  The irony is that, just when I feel I have entered a moment that balances age and experience with youthful wonder at the world and its mysteries, I have been discarded as irrelevant and unnecessary.  The expiration date society stamped on me at birth has been reached and I’ve been pulled off the shelf and sent off to the landfill as superfluous merchandise.  As the babyboomers reached middle age it wasn’t supposed to be like this.  What happened to the promises feminism so boldly proclaimed in the 60s and 70s that our worth would henceforth be measured in terms that weren’t primarily sexual?  Why are the same women who were burning their bras in the 70s now getting boob jobs and face lifts in their 50s?