Walking down the streets of London in a summer dress and red shoes one day, she says to herself, it’s a different experience at 54. This experience would have included looks, smiles, or public comments from men if she were in her twenties. It was as if in her fifties all that mattered was the fact that it meant nothing to her. That it meant nothing was in itself an alleviation to her. This was freedom in its simplest form.
This number comes with the fear of invisibility. In a survey among women done by the Klass fashion brand, 44% of the women agreed that they had ever felt “invisible” or unrecognized, and research indicated the feeling of invisible in her societal and professional roles at just 36. Hypnotherapist Dipti Tait describes the “Vanishing Grief” state, which is the bittersweet association of grief and relief. Grief with the loss of the never-ending recognition. On the flip side, there is relief from the never-ending cycle of validation.
It’s such a deep-seated cycle. “Our brains are wired for recognition and reward. That constant feedback loop of being seen as desirable triggers oxytocin, dopamine, even adrenaline all released through the lens of connection and approval.” But as long as this approving gaze is absent, so is the imperative of performance. “Liberated from this face-off of passivity to attractiveness, thinness, and brightness,” a new self can then be cultivated.
The cultural narrative has always valued the worth of women in terms of their youth and beauty, and the anti-aging industry, worth multi-billions, supports them. However, increasingly, women have distanced themselves from the cultural narrative. Pamela Anderson, now 58, attends Fashion Weeks with her bare skin and without makeup because she finds the pursuit of youth “futile” and wants to celebrate what’s real. Alicia Silverstone refuses to have Botox injections, Andie MacDowell flaunts her grey hair, and Emma Thompson has shown her aged body in a film. They don’t have any use for the scent of youth, and these women are redefining the beauty textbook.
There is an equivalent in the cultural dialogue for this kind of transition. As has been suggested by psychologists and writers, “‘the mask of aging’” may create a condition of dissonance between the experience of feeling and the experience the woman may have, which is very often youthful and vibrant, and the externally manifested experience. This can be reduced to a unified experience by dividing the self-esteem and the obviously aged experience of herself. Then there is a solidarity that is being created among women who “see” each other in this way in the passage of their lives.
There are some women who are consciously looking at other women with a smile and a greeting, a resistance to the forces of invisibility that come not only from men but also occasionally from younger women. As one 59-year-old woman explained, Younger women don’t want to see us because they don’t want to see themselves. It is a message being proclaimed in famous voices. Tracey Ellis Ross talks about “the privilege of aging” and the wisdom and confidence that accompany it.
Sarah Jessica Parker, actress, has specifically refused to accept the double-standard approach to older females in favor of mature males who are honored just as often as a similar characteristic in females is disparaged. Gwyneth Paltrow, actress Halle Berry declares, “‘Divorcing herself from comparison’ and embracing life, energy, and a love of oneself. Actress Gwyneth Paltrow describes “‘divorcing herself from comparison’ and embracing life, energy, and a love of oneself.
Actress Halle Berry declares, The beauty comes from life, giving-back, and having connected and none of it has to do with looking youthful. The woman who emerges out of the male gaze is, of course, the beneficiary of every advantage. As objet d’art, she is no longer able to move into the world as equal to any other person there, without the subtle loss that is necessarily a part of youth’s beauty. As Dipti Tait so wonderfully writes, “‘Losing so-called sexual power creates space for a deeper, more grounded power to emerge the kind that comes from experience and inner authority.’” And this will, in all likelihood, be the kind of visibility that many women of fifty-plus years will ever have.
