Why Is It So Scary to Let Women Share Their Complicated Feelings About Ageing?

Must we be invisible AND silent?

If I asked you to guess the subject matter of the articles I write that get the most views and engagement, would you be able to name the correct topic?

Sex? Nope. Childlessness? Definitely not. The life of a single woman? Wrong again.

It never ceases to amaze me that my most-viewed, most popular articles are about being a woman in middle age. Yes, that’s it. Nothing particularly sparkly, sexy, or even inspiring about it. Just ageing in womanhood.

Two of my most viral articles covered this subject: one about women in their forties being sex goddesses and the other about the beautiful alchemy of anger and middle aged women.

Even knowing that, I didn’t expect my story about how I’m grappling with impending hagdom while experiencing some body image issues to get as many views as it did. Though this time, it didn’t seem like that happened because people primarily resonated with what I shared — from what I can tell, the subject matter was highly triggering, based on the comments, emails, and other clapbacks, criticisms, or advice I’ve received.

Your language is horrifying, people said. You’re too young to be a hag. You shouldn’t talk this way. You need an attitude adjustment. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. And on and on.

It’s pretty scary to talk about ageing women, isn’t it? It’s pretty scary to let an ageing woman openly talk about her struggles with facing her internalized ageism. It’s pretty scary to hear a woman of any age talk about the violence the patriarchy has committed upon her body in all its insidious messages about how she’ll never have any value unless she meets impossible beauty standards.

We tell her she needs a serious shift in her attitude. We tell her her feelings are invalid because she’s too young to be having them. We tell her to change her language and use gentler, softer, kinder words. We tell her to stop pitying herself, get up off the floor, dust herself off, and toughen the fuck up.

But what if, instead, we could have the hard conversations around ageing and womanhood, accepting and acknowledging that this is, indeed, a difficult journey to age as a woman in a culture that hates little else as much as it hates older women?

Hag & Crone Are Powerful Words

I love the words hag and crone. I have said this many times, including in the article that inspired people to call me out for using such vicious language.

Let’s unpack that, shall we?

I’ve been an old woman since I was a little girl. I’ve always known that. I have an old soul. My friends in high school even called me Grandma.

I’ve always looked forward to actually becoming an old woman. To having an outside that matched my insides. And as a self-proclaimed witch, I know the power in the words hag and crone. I embrace that. Once again, I’ve literally written in praise of the fiery power of the old witch in the woods.

When I use that language while trying to sort through and explain my tender and confusing feelings about ageing, these words don’t suddenly lose their power and beauty to me. On the contrary, I use them because they help me highlight the juxtaposition between the discomfort I feel about my appearance and the power I feel that exists in the concepts of the hag or the crone.

I don’t correlate the terms “ugly,” “worthless,” “unlovable,” or even (believe it or not) “old” with these terms. If I did, I wouldn’t have called that piece I’m Turning into an Ugly Old Hag. I would’ve just called it I’m Turning into a Hag.

If people find the words hag or crone to be vicious, then I’m going to suggest that’s their issue, not mine.

We All Have to Face Our Internalized Ageism

Go ahead and shame me for being willing to sit down and grapple with my internalized ageism, but I’ve got news for you: we all have it. We have all been programmed the same way.

And ageism affects women in far more systemic and damaging ways than it affects men. Women over 40 are overlooked and underpaid in the workforce in ways that affect us on multiple levels, it affects our access to quality healthcare especially as that pertains to our journey toward and into menopause, and it sure as hell affects our ability to access romantic and sexual partnerships. (Case in point: a 2018 study of users on a popular dating app found that straight men of all ages felt 18-year-old women were the most desirable sexual partners, and with a steep decline in their sexual viability beyond that age. Eighteen, folks.)

This isn’t news to anyone, I imagine. We’ve all been taught this. And the lessons I’ve learned about the invisibility of women over 40 since I entered this decade have been incredibly painful. I suspect most women have experienced this, as well, and those brave enough would acknowledge that this isn’t about us having a bad attitude, indulging in self-pity, or not being tough enough.

This is about the fact that women are increasingly discriminated against as we age…and we are, tragically, taught to buy into that.

Every day, we have to look at actresses in their late 50s who could pass for a 30-year-old. Every day, we see countless ads advertising to us the latest age-defying serum we should be using or the newest “nutritional supplement” that will help us manage our “troublesome” menopause weight gain.

Because we have to be beautiful, remember? We have to be young! We have to be fertile and supple and pleasing! We’re supposed to turn men on!

These messages are deep in us. It’s impossible not to be affected by this endless propaganda. It takes an enormous amount of inner work and fortitude not to struggle with body image issues, self-esteem issues, and doubt, fear, and pain around our appearance.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I don’t feel this way, nor will I let anyone blame me for feeling this way. Not when I grew up in a culture that handed me a magazine for “strong young girls” at the age of 11, one that featured a photo of a teenage girl in a bathing suit whose “problem areas” were circled, showing us exercises we could do to make those areas skinnier, smoother, and more attractive.

I am 46, struggling with a lifetime of body image issues, body dysmorphia, eating disorders (the mental health disorders that cause the most fatalities, by the way — even more than depression), and a romantic history that has left a lot of scars. And over the past six years, my experience as a visibly ageing woman has brought up all kinds of new issues, feelings, and struggles, in addition to all the ways ageing intersects with my previous challenges.

I’m here for it. I’m diving straight in. I’m going to face it and I’m going to write about it. It’s a conversation we need to have.

It doesn’t matter that I haven’t reached menopause yet. I’ve been experiencing ageism in the world since I was 38 and have been grappling with my own complicated relationship with ageism since 40.

In other words, this is happening. Which means I’m not too young for it.

A Woman Wandering Is Not a Woman Lost

Whenever I’m at Home Depot in the tools or lumber sections, buying items for the shelf or retaining wall I want to build, I get looks from the other customers in those aisles — all men — like they’re wondering if they should offer their assistance. The male store associates often approach me and ask what I’m looking for, even as I’m loading what I was looking for into my cart.

It’s a strange thing. No, guys, I’m not lost. No thanks, I don’t need help at this time.

Likewise, when I write about the deep struggles I sometimes grapple with — depression, ageing, dating… — it often elicits comments from people who give me unsolicited advice on how to fix the alleged problem. This advice runs the gamut from “You just need some positive thinking” to “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

Folks, I am the old witch who lives in the woods. I know these dark places well. I know how to find my way on these brambly pathways. I hate to throw age into the mix, but I guess that would be incredibly appropriate here: I’m a middle aged woman, not a little girl.

I got this. We all do.

Women wandering are not lost. We’re making a brave choice to face these dark woods. We know that we will find our way, even when everyone around us is telling us that we’re hopelessly lost and hopelessly wrong.

As a hag-in-training, this is one thing I know to be true.

I’m still trying to figure out what makes the hag, the crone so scary. Why can’t we talk about facing her and the ageism directed at her that we find within without being told to get it together and get back in line?

Is it that the hag is somehow a mirror? That we look at her, and no matter our gender or age, we see…everything? Even the things we don’t want to see? (The witch’s glass eye in Big Fish that would show you how you were going to die, for instance?)

Is that it? That she is Death and Truth and there are no two concepts more terrifying to us than that?

Or is it her audacious autonomy? Her freedom to refuse to conform to the standards and rules of the world? (That’s the other thing we’re most afraid of — an untamed, unshackled woman.)

Maybe it’s both.

In any case, as far as I’m concerned, this is the most important journey of my life. This exploration of why I am struggling with my body image and how it intersects with my journey of ageing is how I’m entering the second half (or less) of my life.

This is it, folks.

It’s such a shame that this deep soul searching in a woman’s life is often branded as self-pity, a bid for validation, or negative thinking. Such a shame.

Because this isn’t about me. This is about the right of every woman to embrace her inner hag in any way she chooses. This is about the right of every woman to evolve into Cronedom on her own timeline and her own terms.

We are just too goddamn old to be told to sit down, be quiet, think positive, and smile. That time in our lives is, thankfully, over.

© Yael Wolfe 2022

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