I Still Have More to Say About Older Women

And I'll likely keep having more to say

Supermodel Daphne Selfe; photo from her Instagram.

When I wrote last week about looking my age, the message some people got was that we must embrace our gray hair. But my point is really that we all look our age, gray hair or not, and that it should be okay to look however we look.

I’d like to embrace the gray, because, although I miss my darker hair, I’m too cheap and lazy to dye my hair. Plus, I don’t like being told what to do; if I’m expected to dye my hair, my reaction is to make it a point not to.

That doesn’t mean I believe that no one should dye their hair. Some of my best friends do! They’re lovely people, and I don’t think worse of them for dyeing their hair. The more hair colors we have, the better!

Am I perfectly non-judgmental? No, of course not. If I’m being honest, I must admit that I judge people who overdo the makeup or plastic surgery — at any age. Would I like to refrain from judging people for that? Yes, I would.

More important, I’d like society in general to refrain from judging people, especially women, for how we look. In fact, that would lead to a major decline in plastic surgery.

The problem, of course, isn’t people dyeing their hair, spending too much on expensive skin-care products, or even having plastic surgery. The problem is people feeling like they must do any of these things. The problem is how we view people — particularly women, and particularly older women.

As we age, women in our culture tend to become less visible. But when we do see older women, there has been some shift in how we see them. Is it for the better? I never watched The Golden Girls, which ran from 1985 to 1992, but some viewers of And Just Like That have pointed out that the characters in both shows were all supposed to be in their mid-50s. Yet the Golden Girls looked much older.

Some of the actresses were indeed older than the ones in AJLT, but their clothes and hair added to our perception of their age. (I mean, what were they wearing?) These images I found in a YouTube video show what a difference hairstyles can make, though their faces also look a tad retouched:

Whatever you think of the looks in The Golden Girls and AJLT, they say something about where we are as a society and where we were. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, women in their 50s were expected to look and dress as if they were older. Now, they’re expected to look younger. I think the AJLT characters look better, mainly because they wear the same kinds of clothes they’ve always worn, rather than “middle-aged” or “old lady” clothes, and don’t have hairstyles that rely on using rollers. But I also think that the expectation for them to keep looking young is highly problematic.

Here’s what I looked like when I was around the same age as the characters in both TV shows — and when my hair, though it already had a few gray streaks, was much darker than it is now:

While I wasn’t as glamorous as the AJLT characters, I also wasn’t about to style my hair like a 1950s grandmother or wear mumus.

I’m not alone in this. Older models like Daphne Selfe (age 95, pictured above though perhaps at a younger age), Benedetta Barzini (age 80), and Marian Moneymaker (age 63), all of whom wear normal clothes and don’t have “granny” hair, are now in vogue. No, I hadn’t heard of any of them either, but I’m not up on models in general.

Literally in Vogue this month, on the cover of the latest Vogue Italia, is an unretouched (at her request) 71-year-old Isabella Rossellini (thanks to

Sari Botton

of

Oldster Magazine

for the reference). A piece about her within the magazine is titled “Quando una donna con le rughe non farà più discutere, allora saremo libere di invecchiare come vogliamo (con o senza rughe)” — “When a woman with wrinkles is no longer a topic of discussion, then we’ll be free to age as we wish (with or without wrinkles).”

The article goes on as if that had already happened, proclaiming that women are now free to be exactly how we want and no longer have the pressure to adhere to certain standards. That’s a rather rosy picture of the reality. Contrast this issue of Vogue Italia with September’s Vogue cover, featuring four highly Photoshopped 50-something supermodels. Need I say more?

Women like Isabella Rossellini provide good role models, and the response to her unretouched photos has been positive. But we’re far from achieving the freedom that the Vogue Italia writer celebrates. Isabella Rossellini is still beautiful (I don’t love her hairstyle, but that’s simply a matter of preference). But whether or not we find wrinkles or gray hair beautiful, the emphasis for women is still on beauty.

I’m not against any focus on beauty. I appreciate beauty in many forms. And let’s be realistic: as visual creatures, we care about beauty, and that’s not likely to change.

But Isabella Rossellini is much more than a beautiful woman. She’s also an accomplished actress and writer. Later in life, she’s become an organic farmer on a piece of land she bought to serve as a “laboratorio per nuove idee” (laboratory for new ideas), after getting a master’s degree in animal behavior. I’m glad to see that she’s not dressing like an “old lady” and embraces her age, but what’s most inspiring to me is that she continues to engage in the world and follow her passions.

In a previous post, I mentioned other women doing this: an 80-something who took up stand-up comedy, a writer who began writing mysteries in her late 60s. I’m seeing more and more examples like these. And the truth is, they’ve always been there.

What progress have we made? It’s good to appreciate what’s improved while acknowledging how far we still have to go. There’s still immense pressure on women to look a certain way and to measure up to impossible standards of thinness, beauty, and youth. On the other hand, these days we’re not expected by default to cut our hair short, curl it, and dye it blue. We’re not expected to wear frumpy clothes just because we’re older. So, that’s something.

Let’s hope we’re also no longer expected to change our personalities as we age. Why is there a perception that when women get older, we will become “sweet old ladies” who knit and bake cookies? I have nothing at all against knitting or baking cookies — but women don’t revert to some kind of innocent childhood when we get older, and we can engage in all kinds of activities. Let’s please focus more on that and less on our looks.