I read a blog post the other day discussing how women become somewhat invisible as we get older. I recognized a lot of truth in the post. Try dining out alone as a woman over 40 and it's incredible just how invisible you might feel; it's an absolute travesty that we are assumed to have so little to offer alone. I feel strongly about this subject. However, this particular post, although inspired by that subject has a different focus; it focuses on what I think is an unintended and (a little) embarrassing reaction to the circumstance - we was women seem to become unwilling to accept our age and, frankly, act like fools while doing it.
Don't get me wrong I struggle with my vanity. I won't pretend I don't. Most mornings I wake up and spend more than a few minutes examining the new wrinkles under my ever-puffier eyes or harder to ignore smoker lines even though I'm not a smoker (at least not since my twenties anyway). There's not a face cream or eye cream that I'm not willing to try, glycolic acid is my best friend, and no one's seen my natural hair color in at least 10 years. Yet, I feel young and am sometimes obstinate about it - "damn youth, wasted on the unappreciative young" type feelings. I do still like to dress [tastefully] sexy when appropriate even though it may take a complex set of "levers and pulleys" (aka undergarments), to do it. But what I started noticing in the last few years is that there are a whole lot of us out there that are having a heck of time tackling this life phase without also resorting to acting a fool.
What do I mean? You know, the moms that are dressing identically to their teenage daughters (crop tops and all), flirting with twenty-year olds, walking around wearing t-shirts that say MILF (ugh!) or wearing club dresses to the local restaurant and generally "woohooing" it around town. These ladies are their daughters' "best friends" because they don't want to outwardly acknowledge they are old enough to have adult children. They seem to revert to the worst of the high school cliques, shunning any woman they think might be a threat to their attention. My poor husband often felt like prey in a peninsula of predators if he accidentally entered a local haunt of the town "divorcees." (Side note, I used the word 'peninsula' on purpose here because it is a body of water surrounded by land on three sides - so basically a trap).
By the way, I'm not immune to these antics on occasion and have to check myself. I've been known to get a little wild when it may have been in better taste to refrain (there was a shot taking, wobble-dance incident on a Vegas dance floor not that long ago). I've defiantly said, "Why do I have to give up a bit of craziness just because I'm over forty." The fact is, I don't have to, but I also don't have to act a fool while doing it. I can have fun with grace. There is nothing attractive about a forty plus year old woman at a night club taking shots with twenty-somethings on a regular basis (rare occasions or spontaneous family fun doesn't count). I do not believe we need to give up nights on the town with our girlfriends just because we are entering a more, shall we say "mature" phase of our life. But I do believe we should stop trying to be twenty when doing it.
A mature woman with confidence and taste, and behaving as such, is incredibly appealing. Wearing too tight of dresses, filling our lips, and cougaring it all over the place is a poor example of our worth and, let's face it, just plain embarrassing.
I'm not saying we aren't going to feel the unfair effects of our age and the insecurities that go along with it. Yet, accepting it with grace and class will help prove that our best days are NOT behind us. It means we are using our maturity, our experiences...our elegance, to live above the fray. Think of it as an obligation to our younger (sometimes disrespectful) women; the more we age gracefully, the more satisfaction we will feel with ourselves and they will see that it is possible. Take pride in where we are in life, we've earned it - stop foolishly, and let's face it, futilely fighting it.