Aging Gracefully, or This Crypt Ain't Gonna Keep Itself, Hunny!
Sirs Bezos and Zuckerberg have no doubt sold my entire search history to Big Facelift because I have been absolutely bombarded with plastic surgery content. Obviously I’m not immune to the siren song of the scalpel, but the aggressive messaging is very off-putting. My cosmetic spending thus far has been limited to overpriced snake oils, but I don’t judge1. I’m also no stranger to surgery, having had multiple procedures to tame a suicidal ovary that thrice flipped over and cut off its own blood supply2. But for me, after 41 years of being too lazy to “align my deviated septum” or remove Honda-sized moles, it’s just like - why start now?
I have a…prominent nose. A nose that enters the room before I do. A nose that casts a shadow on my chin like a sundial at 6. And, even though I would be a perfect model for an antisemitic cartoon, I never got a nosejob. I’m as vain and insecure as the next guy, but, at the very impressionable age of 17, I watched the 2002 Masterpiece Theater version of John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga and Irene Forsyte (played by Gina McKee) had a long, aquiline nose (what we in the business call “a real honker”) that was sexy as hell! A hot schnoz on television! Representation matters!3
Re:moles - a very hip girl in my 11th grade homeroom told me that my most prominent mole (the hirsute one on my temple) was “witchy and cool,” and so I kept it for 20 years, relenting to the knife only when a cautious dermatologist suggested removal.
It’s wild to me that, during my vainest years (ages 13 to…present), I simply did not give a fuck. This is not to brag (“I’m so virtuous, so happy in my own skin!”) but just to show that sometimes it’s possible to, well, forget about your looks - certain parts of your looks, at least.4 I hope that I feel (or don’t feel) similarly about my crepey neck and the ladder of wrinkles on my forehead.
In this frame of mind, I was delighted to find Woman in Sexist Society in a little lending library in my neighborhood5 .
In her essay Depression in Middle-Aged Women, Pauline B. Bart6 challenges both the stigma of female aging and the stereotype of the overbearing Jewish mother - get ‘em, girl! Her thesis is that women are offered one role (wife/mother) and that, having built their entire identity on this role, they become depressed when they reach the “post-parental” stage. Their identity as mother and wife disappears, they lose the gratification and creativity of motherhood, and, without any other structure on which to base their personality, they lose their sense of self. This psychological breakdown manifests in many ways, including maternal “domination.” A classic (and lazy) misogynist trope, the overbearing mother nags and guilt trips her children.
“They were doing what they were told to do, what was expected of them by their families, their friends, and the mass media; if they deviated from this role, they would have been ridiculed (ask any professional woman)[…]
It is[…]the ones who play the traditional roles, not the career women, who are likely to dominate their husbands and [grown] children. This domination, however, may take more female forms of subtle manipulation and invoking of guilt. If, however, the woman does not assume the traditional female role and does not expect her needs for achievement or her needs for “narcissistic gratification,” as psychiatrists term it, to husband and children, then she has no need to dominate them since her well-being does not depend on their accomplishments.”7
For many, being a full-time mom is extremely challenging and fulfilling. However, pushing an ambitious person with professional/intellectual aspirations into full-time motherhood is a recipe for disaster - the disaster being (among many other things FOR SURE) a mid-life depressive episode, the symptoms of which (“subtle manipulation and invoking of guilt”) beget the persistent stereotype of the overbearing mother. How convenient for mid-century misogynist losers! Failure is so easy to blame on a domineering yet powerless woman. And listen, I’m not suggesting that all of these maligned mothers were blameless, only that many were forced by society into a life they did not want, applied the ambitiousness they might have otherwise dedicated to a profession or passion to the job of motherhood, and suffered when that job came to an end. Their relationships with their adult children were complicated by this suffering. I think Vivian Gornick, a survivor of said “complicated” relationship (as described in her masterpiece Fierce Attachments), would agree that it is possible to blame both the individual and the patriarchy for shitty moms.
Honestly, I would totally dig middle age if it didn’t come with all this baggage - the pressure to look like I was born after 9/118, the pressure to suppress my inner gorgon9, the pressure to model confidence and female excellence for my two daughters, the pressure to pretend I don’t wake up in a cold sweat10 at 3:45 AM every morning and think about the ancient flesh-eating bacteria11 being released as the arctic glaciers melt. Certainly things are better for us now than they were when Woman in Sexist Society was published, but I just watched this video, so actually idk. At least Portnoy’s mother could fucking vote.
xx Mir
YOU DO YOU
10/10 would do a fourth time. Was high as hell.
I should note that the 3 Forsyte books and this particular TV adaption are great in general, the nose is just a bonus.
There has not been a single waking hour in the last 30 years that I have not thought about my weight. Sad!
Roslindale feminists ftw
Bart was an early feminist sociologist who studied, among many other things, the language and guidance of 1940s-60s gynecology textbooks: “Gynecology” she said, “is a specialty practiced (some say perpetrated) on women by men and for men.” Her paper was called “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Orifice.”
Bart, Pauline B., “Depression in Middle-Aged Women” from Woman in Sexist Society, ed. Gornick, Vivian, and Moran, Barbara; © 1971 by Basic Books, Inc.
Can someone PLEASE explain those robot light masks people are wearing?
Inside me there are two wolves, and both are complete assholes.
Perimenopause OR pure, undiluted terror OR both