Awkward Stage
As a woman of a certain age, about to have a birthday that will catapult me to another certain age, I’ve been thinking a lot about getting older and to be honest, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at my face and neck in the mirror.
Forty years of awkwardness
What I see in the mirror is a twenty-something, sassy gal, who is cute with maybe a few silver grays. But then I see a picture of myself and I see a completely different person: an old lady with wiry gray hair, turkey neck, and wrinkled face. It’s like the witch from Snow White, but a little taller with slightly better fashion sense.
When I see these pictures, I go online and search for “best wrinkle creams,” “botox in my area,” and “how to get rid of the gobbler.” Sometimes I buy a miracle product that turns out to fall short of the parting of the red sea and then I go back to looking at sassy me in the mirror and forgetting my chronological age for a day or two.
During those two days, I decide that I am going to own my aging self and revel in my gray hairs and droopy jowls. It’s these days that I google something like “positive aging” or “embracing gray hair” or “who cares about the gobbler” only to be confronted with pictures of women in their 80s, all done up in wacky outfits and makeup, white hair on full display, usually in crazy makeup. Or Helen Mirren. She will always be gorgeous, though.
But I’m not close to my 80s. I’m about to enter my 50s. Between now and then, what am I supposed to do? It seems like society has given me two choices that go a little something like this:
Fight like hell to look at least 45 until you can slowly Jane Fonda your way into the Coastal Grandma aesthetic. This will include expensive hair coloring, facials, botox, fillers, facelifts, private trainers, starvation, and probably a lot of collagen supplements and shame.
Give up and become a middle-aged woman with partially gray hair, wrinkles, a stomach pooch that won’t go away no matter how much you diet or exercise, a sloppy ersatz Chico’s wardrobe, comfortable shoes, and probably a lot of people wondering if you’re “OK.” And shame.
I haven’t found a lot of positive role models for people in this 45-70 year old age range in either real life or popular culture: women who revel in their second more awkward stage and don’t care what the world thinks about them. Who still consider themselves sassy, vibrant, and maybe even sexy ladies, even though they are going through menopause and feeling like shit about themselves a lot.
There are a few. Naomi Watts comes to mind. She seems to be aging without a lot of nipping or tucking. To my personal shame, I saw her in a show recently and caught myself thinking, “God, she’s let herself go.” And she colors her hair and I don’t. I am fighting a war against myself.
I don’t want to live my life to look 45, but I don’t want to give up. I don’t want to feel dowdy in this most awkward stage of my life that no one prepared me for. I want to wear and do whatever the fuck I want, just like those older ladies who I now realize people accept because they are “kooky” and “not dead yet.” I don’t want to care what I look like in the pictures or what anyone else thinks.
I want my own section of the store like “juniors,” but for perimenopausal and newly menopausal women. A word like “tweens” for those of us who aren’t old enough to be cute and wacky yet, but don’t want to keep trying to wear clothes that aren’t comfortable. Maybe we could call ourselves something cute like “Pausies” or some cute acronym like “SABS” (Still Alive But Struggling).
And then, should we be lucky enough to live to age 80, we can have a second sweet sixteen party of sorts, where we throw all of our aging creams and shapewear in a fire, along with our fears and cares, and become the cute old people we have longed to be for 30 years.
Or maybe we say fuck it and do that right now, because life is short, and I don’t want to live a good fourth of it – again, if I’m lucky– waiting for something that might never be. I will wear whatever I want, put my hair in pigtails, and love the way I look. I just need to get through this jar of wrinkle cream first.
