My Journey Through the Increasing Invisibility of Middle Age

Why I’m enjoying it — but also fighting it

I went to the grocery store yesterday looking like something the cat dragged in. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever gone out in public looking quite so scruffy. My (happily) graying hair was a little dirty and pulled into an extremely messy bun. I was wearing baggy jeans tucked sloppily into my faux Uggs, and had so many layers underneath my coat that I looked about four sizes bigger than I actually am.

I don’t know what else to say but that I looked ug-ly. You know the (sexist) jokes that even female characters make on sitcoms, the ones of the “she just gave up trying” variety? It was like that.

And you know what? It was fucking liberating.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m going to be 46 in a couple months, or because of two disastrous romantic relationships last year, but one way or another, I’m starting to feel the invisibility of being an aging woman. No, that’s not quite accurate, because I’ve felt it since I was 35 and noticed the ways doctors, colleagues, and men of my age already were disregarding my opinions and failing to notice my presence in a room.

But at some point in my 45th year, my invisibility has become glaringly obvious to me. I think it really hit me (quite literally) when I was picking up some groceries in a mostly deserted store at 8:30 PM one night several months ago, and as I walked through the empty produce section, a man in his fifties passed me so closely, in a wide aisle devoid of any other person or obstacle, that he literally slammed into me, knocking me off balance…and then kept walking.

It was like he hadn’t even seen me.

Of course, the invisibility I’m talking about is that special place where ageism and sexism intersect. In our culture, a woman’s value is determined by her fertility and fuckability. Both expire around 45, the former due to biology, the latter due to unchallenged misogyny.

Let me be clear that I’m not okay with this. I don’t accept invisibility as my fate.

But I’ll tell you a secret: I’m learning there are some perks to invisibility that I never expected.

It’s hard to explain how good it felt to walk around the grocery story looking like I couldn’t have cared less about my appearance. (Which I guess was true in that moment…) This wasn’t the kind of “going to the store ugly” when you just put on your sweat pants and a beanie and hope you melt into the background enough so that no one you know will notice you if they happen to cross your path. This wasn’t even a challenge to see how far I could go, how unattractive I was willing to be in public.

It was more like a refusal to define myself by those terms in the first place. Last week, I went to the store wearing leggings, ankle boots, and chandelier earrings. This week, I went in my fake Uggs with my greasy hair sticking out of its messy bun. What’s the difference? Does one of those instances really have more virtue, more value than the other?

What was notably missing from my most recent outing wasn’t effort, care, or self-respect. What was missing was my mind’s orientation toward men’s perception of me.

This is something that’s been so deeply ingrained in me, I don’t even know how to put it into words. I’ve always seen myself through the male gaze. And when I say “male,” I mean male — as in all of them. Not “men who are viable sexual partners.” No, I’ve always felt like I had to visually please all of them, from 18 to 85. I’m supposed to feel ashamed when teenage boys laugh at me as we pass on the sidewalk. I’m supposed to feel pleased when an elderly man sexually harasses me during my daily walk because that means I’m still sexually viable.

I could write about this for decades and still never express the amount of emotional and mental energy that being in the crosshairs of the male gaze steals from women. What I’ve said here doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.

But it’ll have to do, because what I want to talk about is how good it feels to be thinking about that so much less. How good it felt to walk into that store and not give a fuck about what the men around me thought. How good it felt to not have them looking at me, at all — because, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the world since the pandemic started, it’s that if a guy at the grocery store can’t see your body under your coat and can’t see your face behind your mask…then they just don’t bother looking at you, at all.

And if you dared to walk into a public space in the throes of dirty hair and middle age, you can bet your ass you’ll pass right through like a breeze and no one will have noticed your presence, at all.

Now, you might think I’m ready to slink away into the fog that seems to swallow all older women and happily fade into people’s memories, gone but not quite forgotten. But that’s definitely not the case.

I have to admit, I haven’t quite figured out my strategy for navigating “later middle age” (I’ve barely gotten through the early bit, so I think I still have some time to figure this out…). I can only say that I think it will necessitate some precise footwork and savvy balancing skills.

You see, there’s a part of me that loves being invisible to men. As Glennon Doyle said on her podcast recently, being invisible to men allows us to get so much more work done. And that’s true, but it’s more than that. Being invisible to men means I can preserve so much more of my energy that can be used for things that matter to me. How sweet a deal is that?

But somehow I must strike a balance here. Because I’m not okay with women being relegated to a status of invisibility just because we’re past a certain age. I think we deserve to be seen and heard and noticed in all the ways for all our lives — just like men are.

Sure, I want to go to the grocery store with my dirty hair and just be left alone with my own thoughts. And I want to be seen and heard and noticed.

You might say this is impossible, two goals at cross purposes. But don’t men have both these privileges? If it’s possible for them, then I say it’s possible for us, too.

Here’s the problem with visibility as a woman: it’s intricately and explicitly tied to our sexuality. Our value as sexual beings. Our ability to visually (and therefore otherwise) please men.

This is how I think men are able to enjoy the privilege of not having to be so focused on their appearance, being able to enjoy an afternoon at the store without orienting themselves around other people’s perceptions of them, and also still enjoying the privilege of being seen, heard, and noticed. We, as a culture, do not tie a man’s visibility to his sexual worth. He is visible simply because he is a man.

Pairing visibility with sexuality (or rather, our culture’s perceived value of a woman’s sexuality) is egregiously unjust. Of course, that’s the purpose of it. It’s supposed to be unjust.

But I’m not having it.

I won’t allow this culture to define my sexual worth. I can go to the grocery store looking any goddamn way I want, and that doesn’t say a thing about my worth as a sexual being.

I want to enjoy the feeling of liberation that comes with being invisible…while being visible. I want to take up space with my dirty, graying hair and my scuffed, knockoff Uggs just like I’d want to take up space if I’d spent some time zhuzhing myself up.

Do I really have to say that women deserve to be seen and heard even when they don’t meet our culture’s impossible beauty standards that attempt to determine our desirability? And really…what the fuck does desirability have to do with it, anyways? Why do we have to be desirable at all in order to be visible?

Women deserve to take up space in this world simply because we exist.

So yes, I’m taking a moment to enjoy my current level of invisibility. I’m continuing on this journey to see myself through my own lens, instead of through the lens of the male gaze.

But I’m not going to remain in this space. Somehow, I will find a way to marry my self-orientation with a life of visibility — a visibility that has nothing to do with my sexuality or other people’s perception of my sexual worth.

Going to the store in all my ugly glory is just the beginning, folks…

© Yael Wolfe 2022

Yael Wolfe is a writer, photographer, and creator of Howl. You can find more of her work at yaelwolfe.com.

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