For me, growing old as a woman in America is much less about injustices done to me than it is about a subtle weakening of my place within this society and a not-so-subtle disrespect that pops up more with each passing year. For example, if I disapprove of porn as systemically harmful to women, it is my age that prompts my classification as a prude and a pearl-clutcher. It can not be that I base my point of view on studies and research and the understanding that feminism is a movement-- one that supports the liberty of all women, not to remain confused with individual women who choose to reduce their images to the sexual uses and abuses of their bodies, calling that empowerment. My age sets me for a sort of contempt only somewhat experienced by younger women with the same views. The wisdom that comes with age has little value to anyone but those possessing it, because wisdom is another word for old, and old is what nobody wants to be.
I don't know what the answer is, but I can tell you what it isn't, at least for me. It isn't to attempt to look or act more youthful. It isn't to publish blog posts about how hot/thin/beautiful/ sexy middle-aged women are. They are, but wasting my written voice on promoting shallow initiatives at continued conformity to what is expected of women in a patriarchal society does not feel beneficial. It is an dangerous surrender. It attracts women my age to trade away opportunities to weigh in on important matters for a chance to be among the "seen" again. I won't play a game I detest, and that I did not put together and can not succeed in.
To become an aging woman in The United States of America is to become constantly barraged by imagery and media that distance your younger feminist sisters from you, simply because the idea of not appearing like those youthful images of femininity and becoming invisible terrifies them. I look like a regular 51-year-old, and it is just strange realizing that my aesthetics is something many young women dread.
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