I have just read an article in the Atlantic entitled The Invisibility of Older Women. Mostly the article focuses on the way women are rendered invisible as they age. The actress over 40 no longer gets plum roles. The woman over 50 finds it difficult to get a job interview. Women over 60 are diminished in value because they are beyond child bearing year, and no longer the object of the male gaze.
Some women expressed a desire to walk down the street and just have their existence acknowledged. This is not the same as the attention-getting a young woman might crave, in which the woman is more the object. I am glad to be beyond the "object" stage of the female life.
I love this sentence by the author Akiko Busch: "A subject is someone who experiences her own agency, who is aware of how she can and does have an impact on others, the author of her own life."
This is a stage of my life that I particularly relish. I have agency. I know who I am. I have ability and competence. I have creative power, speaking power, tenacity, intelligence.
And the really interesting thing is---there are often times when I choose to be invisible. I do not really want to be seen. I want to turn inward. I don't want to want to be engaged with the world.
Certainly, I had many years of invisibility. It was caused both by my culture, and by my own lack of assertiveness. In my first marriage, I was completely invisible to the world, to my spouse, and most of all, to myself.
In my second marriage, there have certainly been times when I have been known mostly by the name of my husband. I would cringe when an envelope was addressed to: Mrs. Gerald. I detest that way of addressing a letter precisely because it makes me completely invisible, a footnote. My spouse, on the other hand, would never consider me invisible.
In time, I have become highly visible in my own right, primarily because I am capable, hard working, and creative. Yet, still, I treasure my invisibility!
Now I am seventy five years old. Only recently have I come to terms with my own body. What I mean by that is I have recently chiseled out a body in which I am more comfortable. It is easier to do physical activity, sit in a chair, walk two miles, play an hour of tennis, enjoy wearing nice clothes.
Visibility, like most things, is a journey. And sometimes even a choice!
