It’s never good news. No one ever says, “Women your age should drink more gin.” No one tells you, “Women your age make such good friends.”
“Women your age should be paid more,” is not a thing you will hear.
This time it was a massage therapist saying, “Women your age need to work on strengthening the core.” I don’t want to. I hate the core. But my hips hurt, my knees and my ankles ache, and women my age need to work on the core.
Women my age are, however, not a uniform cohort. You can not effectively speak to us as a group, we are as varied as snowflakes. I spent a weekend with a friend, a woman my age, whose core could kick your ass.
The prescription is everywhere, everyone an expert in women my age. The forced fake cheer is cloying and doesn’t disguise the fact that we are supposed to, somehow, decelerate our aging.
How to dress your age!
Hairstyles for women your age!
Effective potions for women your age!
You look good for your age. You should act your age.
How about women my age are in a bad fucking mood because we’re sick of all the age-centric bullshit. Women my age are getting old, we’re tired, and we like direct talk. Your knees hurt? Work on the core, no matter your age. The wine hurts? Drink less, or none. I know I’m cranky, but the next person who starts a sentence with, “Women your age …,” is gambling.
Women my age are mad. We’ve been lectured by the patriarchy and the beauty industrial complex for a long time now and we see through it. Women my age have well-tempered bullshit detectors. We have no time or patience for patronizing, media-built wellness speak. We’re strong and gorgeous, lost and confused, tired and wired and over it. We raised the kids, cleaned up the mess, and took the company public. We fell down and got back up countless times - offer us a drink and listen to our stories. Women my age could teach you a thing or two, if you’d listen. Unless you’re my mother, or my nonagenarian great-aunt, do not speak to me about my age.
The well-intentioned massage therapist is right, of course. I need to strengthen. And I should probably work on the prickly sensitivity, as well. Men, younger women, headlines, and medical professionals will say, “women your age” until I die. But, even if you’re right - even if I do need to work on the core - don’t start the sentence with, “Women your age …” Just tell me that my core is weak and it’s time to get off my ass and fix it. It’s got nothing to do with my age, and everything to do with my attitude.
Cheers!
Lisa
Things to share:
It’s still January. I can’t remember the sun. I’m going to leave some Substack gold here for you, as that’s where I’ve been. Hiding from the brittle gray.
The pause of January, a great post about the season and solitude, by
. "Whole, healed people are not exploitable—they are something to be feared because they will break society’s rules."
The Madwoman in the Other Apartment is a reliably lovely post by
. "I need to take a long walk and try to get my head on straight."- is a fabulous food writer, but here she's written a stunning, searing account of her child's struggle with mental illness. Bipolar and the secret lives of teenage daughters is a tough, excellent read. “Usually quiet and demure, Lucy is fire-breathing. No different from a wild animal. All impulse and ferocity.”
- is singing my tune with her ode to Ernaux and personal writing, Ethnographers of the Self, Unite. “I prefer stories that find their greater resonance solely in the specificity of the writer’s emotional experience.”
- with a gentle mid-January reminder in, A year in continuous time. “Or you could - if you can bear it - make no resolutions at all. You could just live. That’s more than enough to fill a year.”
- on How to Write In the Dead Ass Midwinter. “You can lean into the bleakness like an anchorite, write monastically, let an austere sort of inspiration infuse your work like light through incarnadine glass. Or you can allow the hard hidden sun to give your writing a brutal, honest beat, the long hallway of January a rehearsal for the endless hallway of death.” We could be friends, I’m sure.
this is extremely poignant. your point about " we could teach a few things if you'd listen" reminds me that there's a very deliberate "broken crone syndrome" that loves to alienate young women from older women through stereotypes and barriers. Makes it easy for the patriarchy to continue with new generations of women when they can't hear the warning from the previous ones. thank you for sharing this.
Arrrgghhhhhh! Roar of the Women Our Age! This makes me want to rip my bra off and throw it on the ground and scream! But then, my boobs will hit the floor and it's just not something anyone needs to see.
Love your rant!! I rant, too. we should talk.