Ageing disgracefully

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I will preface this by making quite clear that the source of the following is not me, it is Naomi Wolf. “You could see the signs of female ageing as diseased, especially if you had a vested interest in making women too see themselves your way. Or you could see that if a woman is healthy she lives to grow old; as she thrives, she reacts and speaks and shows emotion, and grows into her face. Lines trace her thought and radiate from the corners of her eyes after decades of laughter, closing together like fans as she smiles. You could call the lines a network of ‘serious lesions,’ or you could see that in a precise calligraphy, thought has etched marks of concentration between her brows, and drawn across her forehead the horizontal creases of surprise, delight, compassion, and good talk. A lifetime of kissing, of speaking and weeping, shows expressively around a mouth scored like a leaf in motion. The skin loosens on her face and throat, giving her features a setting of sensual dignity; her features grow stronger as she does. She has looked around in her life, and it shows. When grey and white reflect in her hair, you could call it a dirty secret, or you could call it silver, or moonlight. Her body fills into itself, taking on gravity like a bather breasting water, growing generous with the rest of her. The darkening under her eyes, the weight of her lids, their minute cross-hatching, reveal that what she has been part of has left in her its complexity and richness. She is darker, stronger, looser, tougher, sexier. The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold.” Naomi Wolf “The Beauty Myth” p231 London: Vintage Press, 1991* In view of the fact that there is a whole industry involved in selling anti-ageing treatments, and that so many women particularly keep this industry rich, how would you react to that quotation? I see that anti-ageing thing as the really "disgraceful" aspect of ageing, whole generations of old wethers pretending to be spring lamb. Nobody, surely, is fooled? It is so much different for men. We can allow our age to show as much as we please and yet still get full respect and the potential to be a TV breakfast show host till we retire: not so women. Old rams don't have to pretend to be young studs (although I suspect many of them have'nt stopped fooling themselves yet). The popular music industry is the same, men can keep performing until they are genuinely old wrinklies (Stones, Beatles, Beach Boys, Eagles etc.), but no matter how good a woman is, her career ends the moment the botox stops working (Jazz is an exception, and even Country Music gives women a better run). How are you facing your advancing years? Lash