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Aged By Age-and Culture, Too

Posted on: Sunday, 28 November 2004, 03:00 CST

I did it again-I bought another face cream at my obviously health- giving neighborhood spa. My logic: The weather in Chicago, where I live, is so harsh that my dry (read aging) skin needs extra moisturizing. I am 63 years old; as an advocate for older women, I refuse to color my hair even if I sometimes wish that it were a little less gray and that I wasn't so principled about not coloring it. Along with the graying hair, I see the deepening furrows on my neck, and the fine lines around my eyes and lips. I know I shouldn't care, but I do. As for clothing, it took me a while to realize that there was nothing wrong with my clothes-and that it's me that is different. I no longer look the same no matter what I wear.

Over the years, my lifestyle hasn't changed much. I still work hard, visit with my daughters and friends, read a lot, walk, do yoga, engage politically-all the stuff that we are supposed to do to stay young. But I am not young. When I walk with my daughters, the contrast between their youthful panache and me is striking-and I don't consider myself a slouch. Although I weigh now what I did 30 years ago, I cannot imagine going to those clothes-optional spas that I went to when I lived in Northern California. The most visible difference between then and now is my body-the face that I put before the world. As a product of American culture that attaches all kinds of negative meanings to age and women's bodies, I don't find this face easy to accept. While I don't try to deny the changes that come with age by insisting that the real me is inside, my relationship with my body is still ambiguous, uneasy. It all seems so sudden, this aging self. Will I become a faceless old women among the young on the 151 Sheridan bus?

DISAPPEARING

My friends are mostly open and eager to talk-when we are alone- about their aging appearances. About a year ago, I spent time with two of my closest friends in the San Francisco Bay Area. Both are politically astute, attractive and professionally successful women - yet, how quickly we started to discuss getting old and what we looked like. Separately they told me about permanent eyeliners- something I'd never heard of before-to give us added color since age seemed to fade our hair and skin. The admonition to be sure to have lipstick on or surely we will disappear underlines a fear of disappearing. It reinforces the feelings of invisibility that older women so often describe when, for example, the department store cashier helps first the man with the briefcase standing next to her because, after all, what does she have to do that is as important as what's in his briefcase-which might actually be a banana and a container of milk.

When I am with my friends, I feel no particular age even when we are talking about aging. I'm just me. I am what I was 25 years ago, although I'm a bit stiffer when I get up from the dinner table after two hours of conversation. Still, when a young woman offered me a seat on the bus some months ago during a fierce Chicago cold spell, I instantly fell like an aging woman, although I knew that she probably wasn't judging me at all, just being polite.

I ask myself, in an intensifying and confusing round of questions, how can I, .who wishes to help transform society's image of older women, not internalize masculine images of beauty? How can I be more comfortable with, indeed, proud of what I see in the mirror? How can I not succumb to the pressures of the beauty industry, which tantalizes me with those costly moisturizing creams and other beauty-making paraphernalia that low-income women cannot afford and that I do not need? Even though I know that they will not take away those small lines that run vertically from my lips, I think I secretly hope one potion-from that nice neighborhood store of body products-will make a difference. So my bathroom counter is littered with lotions and oils, blushes and lipsticks-which I often don't use. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to "let myself go" and take up more space-a luxury usually reserved for men. But I am still trapped in the dominant culture's constructions of femininity and what my body is supposed to look like, which it will never look like again, if it ever did.

About 15 years ago, my older daughter told me, "Mom, you haven't changed." More recently, she said "You haven't changed as much as other people your age." I think she really believes this, but I also think her statements say more: What I am says something about what she might one day be. It also affirms what is probably a common wish for a mother who is special in a way that the dominant culture respects. When we talked about this, she acknowledged that she feared my getting old. I said, "Why, because you are afraid that I am going to die?" She said "yes," and I told her, "I will."

FlNlTUDE

I think it is the increasing immediacy of finitude that makes old age a unique time in human life. To insist on what is so often voiced-that we are only as old as we feel-is to deny that critical reality. No matter what 1 do, 1 am closer to death than I was io or 20 years ago. This knowledge places demands on me, and it ought to influence the way I experience my body. Writing this essay is part of my struggle to accept the changes in my body, maybe even with pride, and. to remind me to live my aging consciously. Life doesn't offer many second chances.

1 want to look in the mirror and be okay-no, more than okay-with those lines and gray hairs. But I know that I can't do it alone. I cannot yet separate myself from the judgments of my own culture. So change needs to be cultural, too. The ever-present effort to deny the realities of old age makes aging hard to value. How can we value that which we constantly resist and deny? For starters, though, we aging women can refuse to take as a compliment, "You don't look your age." And we can still use our face creams.

LETTERS

We welcome your responses both to Aging Today articles and to guest commentaries, which present the opinions of their authors and not necessarily those of the American Society on Aging. Letters should be no more than 350 words long. Submit them by mail to Aging Today, "Letters," 833 Market St., Suite 511, San Francisco, CA 94103- 1824; by fax to (415) 974-0300; or by e-mail to paul@ asaging.org.

I ask myself, How can I be more comfortable with, indeed, proud of what I see in the mirror?

Martha Holstein is codirector of the Center for Long-Term Care Reform, a program of the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, and an independent researcher and consultant based in Chicago.

Copyright American Society on Aging Sep/Oct 2004

Source: Aging Today

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