Accidental feminists, p.16
Accidental Feminists, page 16
Ageing tests us with losses in other areas, as well (it was Bette Davis who said ageing wasn’t for sissies). As I discussed in the previous chapter, women more rapidly lose their sexual appeal. Susan Sontag expresses perfectly why that loss, common to both genders, affects women so much more than men. She points out that Western culture allows men to have two standards of beauty, that of the boy and then the man, while women only have one standard, that of the girl. As she says, the beauty of the boy and the girl is very similar, featuring smooth skin, a slender body and more vivid colouring. But as the boy becomes a man, we accept the inevitable weathering that occurs in both face and body and even continue to find such signs of maturity attractive in their own way. We give no such leeway to the girl when she becomes a woman. To grow older for a female is to become less desirable. No wonder women try to hold back the clock every way they can, or, indeed, that the vast age gaps between male and female movie actors cast as romantic leads in films are so unexceptional—as long as it is the woman who is years younger than the man, of course, and not the other way around.
Nevertheless, all of us lose the strength, agility and robustness of youth. The stress of fighting gravity takes its toll, and for some, old age does not last very long. I have sometimes felt that every one of my decades has been marked by events that celebrate—or mourn—rites of passage. In my childhood it was yearly birthday parties and the relentless upward climb through grades at school. In my adolescence, outrageous parties characterised by noisy music, illicit alcohol and drug use, and experimenting with sex (yep, the 1970s were fun) marked my transition from childhood. Then came the decade of twenty-firsts, university graduations and, later, weddings, followed by baby showers and christenings. After that, sadly, divorces and, more happily, school reunions. This was followed by my own children’s rites of passage—birthday parties, school and uni graduations, weddings and baby showers all over again. Now, as I enter my sixties, I am noticing an increase in funerals, and I guess that is only going to get worse (there are a few silver and golden wedding celebrations in there too, just to lighten the mix). Grief and loss are the next great lessons I am going to have to face. In only a few decades, very few of my generation will be left.
Perhaps one of the reasons we fear ageing so much is that it forces us to face the reality of our own mortality. I am always conscious of just how many older people support voluntary assisted dying, and how regularly the audiences at events debating this issue are filled with silver heads. (I am also well aware of the irony of how rarely any older people are included on the panels at such events.) It makes sense that control over how and when we die should feel so vital to the old: to the rest of us, death remains (we hope) theoretical. To those in their seventies and above, it is the next great adventure. Ageing makes you viscerally concerned about the manner of your dying, not just the inevitability of it. As we age and watch others we care about face their own final moments, we begin to see just how awful they can be. Who can blame the old for wanting to minimise their own suffering? But I think the fears the old have about dying are not just the desire to reduce pain, indignity and discomfort. I think their fears are very much about losing control. The old are relentlessly patronised by the young, and that loss of authority is experienced as a loss of power. The old are not stupid: they can see they have lost status and importance, and they know that puts them at risk. Many of the elderly dread dying because they fear that the way they die may be taken out of their hands and they will be helpless in the face of interventions, decisions and procedures that others decide for them, be they relatives or the medical profession. They dread, quite rationally and reasonably, that things will be done to them, rather than for them. And when I say ‘them’, I mean ‘me’ and ‘us’.
As we age, we must face the loss of our youth with all the physical benefits that confers, and the loss of parents, friends, colleagues, peers and—possibly—our partner. We must also face the loss of respect, status and, often, our profession, our job and, far too frequently, our income. We also face the loss of control, and something that social researcher Hugh Mackay rates as the single most important need that must be met before we can live a satisfying life: the desire to be taken seriously. As my father said to me wistfully one day after he had turned eighty, ‘I have lost my relevance. The future is no longer any business of mine.’ Perhaps this is another clue about why so many elderly men find life increasingly insupportable.
In my own life, aged sixty as I write this, I have been fortunate. Most of the funerals I have attended so far have been for the parents of close friends or for elderly relatives, most of whom have lived long, rich and interesting lives. Of the two losses I found hardest to bear, one was the death of a vibrant 38-year-old woman who I worked with for a few years. She died, as far too many young people in Australia do, of melanoma. She left behind two very young children, and that was gut-wrenching. The other was a close friend who died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage two days after he had cooked us a fabulous meal at his home. The shock of that was profound. He also left behind a young child. All of us know what it is to lose people we care about. Some of us are much luckier in that respect than others. However, as you get older the loss of friends becomes an unavoidable price you must pay for your own longevity. There is a lovely—possibly apocryphal—story about an elderly Marlene Dietrich chatting with her old (in every sense of the word) friend Noël Coward. She was bemoaning how many of her friends were dying. Coward replied, ‘Frankly, my dear, these days, I am relieved if my friends make it through lunch.’
Despite the inevitable losses, however, to live a long time is in itself a win. When we do eventually die, whatever kind of life we may have lived, we will not have missed out in the way those who were snatched earlier did. It was the writer Christopher Hitchens who said as he was dying of cancer at sixty-two that he felt like he was being forced to leave a fabulous party much earlier than he wanted to. He knew lots of lovely things would now happen without him.
Hitchens was an atheist, like me, and so his regrets were about the joys of the earthly life he was being forced to leave prematurely. For those with religious faith there may be compensations around the idea of dying: the chance of once again meeting loved ones who have died before you, perhaps, and the hope of living eternally in paradise with your god. I am aware that such beliefs offer very great comfort to many as they face their own demise, but they fill me with dread. The idea of eternal life has always made me feel very, very tired (imagine it just going on and on and on and on …) and also trapped—after all, death offers us a means of escape, even if mostly we have no inclination to choose it. To lose the option of death means no way to escape at all. The downside for the religious, however, is different. For them there is also the fear of judgement and of being found wanting—even, perhaps, a fear of hell. Hence the need for end-of-life religious rituals offering forgiveness and cleansing, such as the last rites. The atheist has no such hopes or fears. They suppose that they will merely cease to exist. Such a fate is often incomprehensible to believers. I have been asked many times by the religious what I think happens after death. I tell them that I believe what will happen after my death is exactly what happened before my birth: I will return to the oblivion from which I emerged. As I don’t remember that as being in any way unpleasant, death holds the same fear for me as it did for Hitchens—namely, the fear of missing out (FOMO). Otherwise, I am relaxed about it. The manner and timing of my dying, of course, is another thing. Like everyone else I hope it happens peacefully, in my sleep, in my own bed, a few decades from now. I am also sadly aware that this is very unlikely. Only 10 per cent of Australians die in their own home. Seventy per cent of us will die in hospital, and far too many of us will suffer the indignity and pain of unnecessary interventions at the end of our life. CPR is legally required if there is no advance care directive on file, and horror stories have emerged of broken ribs and painful bruising on frail, elderly patients subjected to the procedure. Over half of them will die anyway. No wonder the elderly become so much more exercised about controlling their fate as they approach the end of their life.
Old age, however, precisely because we have all experienced losses, is also a time of triumph. I have often noted how many people become rather proud of their advanced years after they turn eighty. Rather than pretending to be younger than they are, they start to drop their venerable age into every conversation: ‘I am eighty-four, you know, my dear,’ and so on. I remember thinking when I turned sixty last June that while I could still die too young, I could no longer die young, and there was a sense of achievement in that. Of course, the proviso about the pleasures of living to a grand old age is that we retain the economic independence and physical and mental health needed to be able to continue to participate in and enjoy the party. To live year after year in the half-light of Alzheimer’s or dementia, to live in a painful body that is crumbling around you, to live in continual fear of poverty or homelessness, or to live dependent on those who resent you, wish you were dead or may even physically, emotionally or financially abuse you, is another story altogether.
The loss of relevance, status and a sense of a stake in the future are all hard lessons, but it is probably the loss of job, profession and income that have the most profound day-to-day effects on us all as we age, particularly, of course, for women. Once, when the retirement age was sixty-five and most of the people who were given the gold watch were men, people lived for only a few years into their retirement. Indeed, our superannuation and pension systems were designed when life expectancy for men (the only gender anyone thought about then in terms of retirement) was sixty-eight. The money put aside by governments for the aged only had to last them a few years. Now, people may survive many decades after their paid working life is over. And the loss of relevance can be hard to take, particularly for men. For women, particularly women living alone, it can be the loss of income and community that bites the hardest, particularly if mobility becomes an issue.
However, not every story about ageing is a sad one. Many people do manage to live satisfying, productive and, yes, even sexually active lives through the decades. Christine and her husband survived what she described as some ‘wobbly’ times in their marriage and are now enjoying an active retirement: ‘We started off paddling canoe marathons together in double kayaks, and now ride a tandem bike.’ They are also taking on a challenging project: ‘We are owner-building a major renovation/extension of our current house, and ironically, while it does my head in because it feels like it will never be done, and it eats up weekend recreational time, it’s the work we do together on it that also binds us.’ My own parents, aged eighty-seven and eighty-six, are a wonderful example of ageing well. Both (touch wood) remain fit and active. They would no more paddle a kayak, ride a tandem bike or owner-build than fly to the moon, but they see every play and film and are leading lights in their local branch of U3A (University of the Third Age).
While much is lost as we age, if we are fortunate we can gain both a bit of wisdom and the time and confidence to put it to good use. Here are some examples of the wisdom (some of it very hard-won) offered by the women I interviewed for this book.
‘Don’t leave it as long as I did (after having children) to get back into the workforce. Find a way to keep your hand in.’
‘Get in control of superannuation now, particularly with casual jobs. Roll it over into one account. Try and understand it better than I do.’
‘DON’T JUDGE OTHER WOMEN FOR THEIR LIFE CHOICES. [Caps as written] Whatever you decide to do, you’re not superior. It might be better for you, but it’s not “better”. You have no idea what someone else’s marriage and life situation are like. If you ever feel you need to discuss your decision, don’t frame it so that the women who made the opposite choice feel like shit about themselves.’
‘You are a human being with every right to social collateral, independence and self-determination. How you think, what you value and what you enjoy are much more important than whether you are “fuckable”.’
‘Do not accept abuse or bullying in any form to stay in a relationship or job. If one doctor, police officer or HR rep won’t believe you, find another that does.’
‘Make sure you are financially secure and that you ensure you put super away.’
‘Go live your life, we moved the Victorian thinking [I am quoting verbatim here—I think my correspondent means we have moved on from outdated attitudes to women], use your common sense and brain, and never regret anything you do. It’s all experience, hindsight is a great thing.’
‘Treat women as equal, we can do anything a man can do except lift heavy objects. We are all citizens of this country and without women they lose their greatest asset.’
10
PAST OUR USE-BY DATE
The 55-year-old woman was a regular panellist on a popular TV show and had been for over five years, since the show launched. When it went into its next season, despite her personal popularity (particularly, it must be said, among women of a certain age), she was told she was no longer wanted. They needed to ‘freshen’ the line-up, the producers said. She knew perfectly well what ‘freshen’ was code for.
Then there was the very experienced and skilled presenter, writer and journalist who’d had to take time out from her busy career to care for her ageing parents. When she returned to the fray and attempted to pick up where she had left off she was told—without embarrassment, to her face—that the conference she used to work with regularly wanted a younger ‘feel’, and then that the editor’s job (that she could do on her ear) needed someone no older than forty ‘at the outside’. This second casual dismissal of her talents and experience came from a bloke well into his fifties, by the way.
Then there was the highly successful and admired management team (all blokes—yes, it happens to them too as they age) who had steered the company from debt-ridden to highly profitable over more than two decades. Just when they should have been enjoying the fruits of their labours, they were all made redundant to make room for ‘generational change’.
Oh, and there’s the woman who auditioned for a TV show only to be told that another woman had also auditioned and that they ‘cancelled each other out’. Both women were over fifty, you see, and you could only have one of those per panel. Never mind that there was almost twenty years between them in age: one older woman is just like another, apparently.
Then there were the nine workers all made redundant as the consequence of a restructure. All nine were women over fifty. Coincidence? I doubt it.
When it comes to the workforce, employers have been shamed out of openly discriminating because of race or gender. There is also legislation outlawing these practices. Employers may still make such discriminatory decisions, of course, but they now know they have to pretend they’re not. Only when it comes to age is it still perfectly acceptable to be overt about the fact you don’t want someone—no matter how highly qualified—simply because you see them as too old.
And this attitude is not exclusive to employers. I remember reading a pompous little article from a young man telling baby boomers to ‘get out of the way’ (his way, I think he meant). There have been a number of books published on a similar theme. The general thesis seems to be that we’ve (boomers) had our time and it is the next generation’s turn. The article that got my goat appeared about ten years ago, when I was only fifty. I was so infuriated by it that I took the trouble to contact the author. I pointed out that female baby boomers had largely put their careers on hold to devote their time and energy to bringing up entitled little shits like him (I didn’t quite use those words, but that was what I was thinking), and if he expected us to put our lives on hold again for his generation, he had another think coming. To his credit, he did reply with a mea culpa. He had not thought about the different life trajectories of female baby boomers (or women of any generation, in fact) and agreed that it was a bit rich to expect us to put our hopes and dreams aside yet again for the benefit of the young. It is extraordinary to me how often I have to point out to otherwise quite thoughtful and intelligent men that they have not taken into account how their idea, policy or program might affect women. We’re only slightly more than 50 per cent of the population, after all.
Sometimes women of a certain age are discriminated against as a job lot. A few years ago I was chatting to a board member of a very successful regional arts festival. I congratulated him on its success, and he responded by saying that, yes, it had all been going very well, but their next task was ‘to change the audience’. ‘Change the audience?’ I repeated his words just to make sure I had heard them correctly. ‘Why? What’s wrong with the audience?’ This man (aged about forty-five, from the look of him) pulled a smelled-something-nasty face. ‘Well, they’re all older women …’ Let’s forget about the rudeness of saying that to me, an older woman. Let’s not mention the lack of business nous that would allow you to openly despise your customers. His unselfconscious response remains the most egregious representation of ageism and sexism I have ever witnessed. No wonder older women struggle so hard to take up any space in our community. Even their money and appreciation are seen as undesirable.
