RI was recently going through old photos. My parents are cleaning out their loft and I’ve finally been forced to face the boxes of A-level sketchbooks and towers of 90s magazines and let it all go. The photos are interesting though. It’s a cliché, I know, to look back on images of youth and how lovely you were, and how blind to that loveliness you were at the time. But it still shocks me to look at a photo from my teenage years, covered in black eyeliner at a family night out, or leaning awkwardly on the stairs in a 50s dress and 80s shoes, and that motherly pull for my old self to feel, and the memory of how foolish and monstrous I believed myself to be.
This fall I turn 44, an age (new research suggests) of “dramatic change.” The study detected thousands of molecules in people aged 25 to 75 and detected two major waves of age-related changes, first at 44 and then again at 60. When I read this, I got up from my seat and stood for a while in front of the mirror. I looked at my jawline and thought about aging.
Youth sometimes feels like a party I went to but was too anxious to actually enjoy. There is proof that I was there, both in photographs and the long, yellow fact of time, but my only memory of it exists as a kind of reflection, or the fleeting smell of perfume. As I inspected the wrinkles beside my eyes, I had the weary thought that I must revel in this relative youth today, because next year I will no doubt look back at this person with some sad wonder.
But just as it’s hard to appreciate youth when you’re living it, it’s even harder, isn’t it, to embrace old age? You can try, and the trying is worth it, but the stories we’ve been told about aging – it’s not good! And I’m not just talking about looks, of the frantic race to burn, inject and stretch one’s face into an illusion of youth, but this is an illustration of the problem.
Why would anyone want to look 50 if we don’t know what 50 is for? Why would anyone allow themselves to look 70 when being 70 is invisible at best, repulsive at worst? We have very little idea of what the alternative to youth might look like for a woman. Youth is not only linked to femininity; the two, we quickly learn, are pushed together, squashed until you can’t really tell where one ends and the other begins.
There is little imagination lent to stories about a woman growing older. After the first stories we are told about the shape of a life, falling in love, leaving home, marriage, children, what next, beyond perhaps shame, loss, grief and a little mild humiliation? Once you begin to question this absence of stories, it makes you wonder why – why are we women told to expect so little from the second part of our lives? Could it be (and I try not to overuse this word for fear of losing its meaning, but), could it be: the patriarchy?
If more women were vocal and in power, would the transition from young to old be given more texture and excitement? If we were told stories that taught us how life beyond middle age included new joys—a new kind of sexuality, and wisdom and beauty, would that be seen as something to even look forward to?
As I get older, and also closer to 44, that moment of dramatic change (I half expect a bell to ring, a curtain to fall), I find myself scrambling for stories like this. But what also happens is that younger women ask my advice, and I find I can tell them that. And not only do the stories hopefully smooth these women’s passage into middle age, but by telling them, I see things differently.
For example, a pregnant friend is reeling from a planned C-section, and asked me about the reality of labor pains. How bad is it, she wanted to know. And I thought, and I said, yes, it’s real pain, crazy weird deep pain, but – it’s also… fascinating? Partly in that you see what your body can do and partly in that you see what it can endure, and it changes you. On the way home I thought, perhaps this is also the way with the painful experiences associated with old age; perhaps they also contain similar hidden miracles that give you strength and insight.
Last week it was reported that the world’s oldest living person, Maria Branyas Moreradied at the age of 117 years and 168 days. She seems to have lived a wonderful life, right up to the end. One of the things she attributed her longevity to was “staying away from toxic people,” which is obviously great advice, but, “I think longevity is also about being happy,” she added.
I’m not very interested in living to 117, but if I get close, I hope I learn how to romanticize youth, how to enjoy the happiness of health, and how to enjoy all the freedom and adventures that old age can bring. to hug properly.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on X @EvaWiseman
