I’ve been feeling old of late. There are people born in 1995 who are living much louder lives than I am. It’s a little strange.
There’s a very narrow band of time in women are relevant in mainstream Western culture. You’re considered incapable until you hit, say, eighteen. Then you’re in the age bracket for the ideal body until your early twenties – never mind that you likely don’t have that body, not that anyone really can, and never mind the creepy fixation on youth sexuality. You’re past the age at which it’s appropriate to wear short skirts at thirty, but you’re still not relevant as a thinking human being until you’re a serious adult at, say, 35, or maybe not until you’re a parent who has passed that age, or when you are sufficiently settled in a particular kind of career… and by then you’re invisible, irrelevant, past it. People are allowed to be the standard or the ideal in particular ways at particular ages, but there are only rare moments of confluence in which you’re allowed to be an authority or visible or just not contemptible in more than one or two.
So I feel like the current is sweeping me by already in a lot of ways – I didn’t perform my very young adulthood in particularly normative respects, and I haven’t sought after many of the kinds of appearance or pasttime or experience that Teh Yoof of Today are supposed to want*, and I’ve sought after others that were my own, or are supposed to belong to people much older than I am. I’ve never been one for ticking life boxes on schedule, and I find conformity really quite creepy, particularly conformity that is forced on a particular group to fix them with stereotype-based contempt. I’m grabbing on to the things I care about. The personal key is to go for what matters to you, not someone else’s goals for your life. And also to not count people out by age, but count them in by their achievements and amazing potential as human beings.
People have all kinds of things to contribute, based on their personhood. And life experience doesn’t come on schedule.
*I get so bored hanging about at parties I’ve been known to bring books. Not to be read in the company of the host or friends, of course!
*I get so bored hanging about at parties I’ve been known to bring books. Not to be read in the company of the host or friends, of course!
Love it. It has been years since I went to a party, but the books are with me still.
It’s late here and I’m tired, so what I’m about to say might not make much sense.
All the things that you say here are true, in the sense that they are part of the culture we are sold and that surrounds us. We are – and women especially are – always either too young to be taken seriously, to too old to be considered interesting.
But (and I think you know this) none of that needs to have much bearing on how we live our lives. Just as most teenage girls aren’t “lithe” and most 22-year-olds aren’t having much casual sex, there’s no real reason a person can’t be relevant, and interesting, and lead an exciting life well after one becomes “old”. (Which either happens at 30, 40, marriage, or children, depending on who you’re talking to.)
Like you say, life doesn’t happen to a schedule – and it’s destructive that we’re told that it does.
PS Love the book story.
Books! Often more interesting than humans.
*nod* We are quite in sympathy on this point, Rachel. Popular ideas of what people are like really don’t match up with what people are like.
I know – it seems banal to even say it. But I got the feeling (perhaps wrongly) that underneath that critique, there was a part of you that felt like you had to shoot for that sweet-yet-narrow spot of “relevance”.
It’s not banal at all. It was kind of you to nudge me there, because you’re right: I’m not quite there with internalising the idea that I don’t have to shoot for that spot, even as I’m arguing that people ought not to have to shoot for it. I wrote this post so that I’d start to believe its message quite as much as I hope readers will! :)
The difference between what one knows intellectually to be true and what one feels can be very stark. When I was a 23 year-old virgin who couldn’t seem to persuade anyone male to perform any heteronormative acts upon me, I knew that my not having had anything inserted in me by a male of the species had no bearing whatsoever on my worth as a human being. I absolutely knew it. I just felt absolutely worthless anyway.
I’ve just turned 38, and I am pleased to say that I now believe, as well as know, that attractiveness to the opposite sex has no bearing on a person’s worth. It has taken a long time to turn knowledge into belief though.
Aww Hedgepig. <3
I’m about to turn 25 next month and I’m really feeling it hard. I feel so in-between. I’m not out of school, so I’m not employed. I’m still living in a dorm. I’m not out partying it up–I’ve got a boyfriend and life is quiet. I just don’t know what to do with myself right now.
Keep being your lovely self?
Oh yes this! My personal most striking example of this was becoming a mother at 24 and still having people treat me like a child. It was incredibly frustrating. Now at 30 the playing field is levelled somewhat, but I still have this sense of panic about the things I haven’t done yet (even though logically I know I have accomplished a lot, just maybe not in the “right” order).
I think this is also about self-actualisation in a way. I guess we think that at certain point we will ‘achieve’, ‘become’, ‘reach the pinacle’, and, ideally in our culture, we want to do this before 30, because then we will be ‘exceptional’, a ‘genius’. But, the reality of living is that you never ‘become’ (at least not in life), because there is always a road ahead, another challenge, another piece of writing due, and the last thing you did is already a memory. It is the transience of life, and I think the reality of that hits people in all walks of life – so that famous popstar is worrying about their next song, just like we worry about our next piece of writing. I think it is exasperated in many fields where you are surrounded by other brilliant people and you are all competing and criticising each other’s works, so it is difficult to take pleasure in your achievements (and where, let’s be honest, we are sold on the idea that success is about exceptionality). But, it also an effect created by age in a culture where people have very similar life courses, so you leave school at standard age, start work, get married, have kids, retire etc (not all societies are so standardised btw).
On a more positive note, while we think we should achieve before 30 (so we can be the next Jimi Hendrix or insert fallen hero of choice here), many of the most successful people, but perhaps especially women, come into their own in the 40s and 50s or older. In many careers, but notably academia, politics, law, you don’t get to the top of your field until you have been in the game for a few decades. And, that’s a good thing. Who wants to peak when they are young? Cause there is only one way to go after that!
My way of dealing with conformists is to accuse them of aiding and abetting identity theft. Then I fake-analyze their behavior as being typical of a criminal group. It’s fun, and onlookers get to share the education. I’m older than dirt but you have the advantage of looking like a graduate student so you could pull this off superbly.
The miniskirt prohibition is silly. When you hit 50, you’ll be complimented for keeping fit.
Wait, you tell people they’re identity thieves and have criminal-like behaviours because they conform to ideas of what people are like at particular ages?
“Books! Often more interesting than humans.”
That’s a great quote – you should get it printed on t-shirts and sell them.
It’s interesting to read such a different set of experiences concerning attitudes toward age, especially the comment that a woman is “still not relevant as a thinking human being until you’re a serious adult at, say, 35…” I’m aware of the issues facing older women but I did not know that younger women felt like they couldn’t be taken seriously when they were in their 20s.
My experiences of what ages counted as being “adult,” or being taken seriously, are quite different. I felt like I was taken seriously when I was 21 or 22 (I’m over 50 now). By then I had my BS degree, and was working at a full time job, so I guess I did conform to fairly common schedule. However, my motivation was not to be like everyone else. It was to be financially independent ASAP so that I would never have to go back home. I was lucky to get through college with a combo of work, loans and scholarships (no funds from parents).
At any rate, I was in my 20s during the 1980s. Maybe people’s attitude toward young women have changed over the past 30 years? Maybe attitudes toward age are different in the USA? (and even in a single country attitudes can be very different depending on where you live) Maybe age is seen differently in the high tech world? (I was a software engineer at a big company) Or maybe these age issues affect young women of color differently than young white women?
I don’t have any answers, just questions. I worry about a growing backlash against feminism/womanism and wonder if this age thing is a part of it.
I do agree with your final quote about life experience not coming on schedule!
I’ll stop now or this will be longer than a book — hope I didn’t ramble on too long.