enter without so much as knocking

Yesterday, I was searching for an image of two mature women to represent my sister and I in old age. It was almost impossible to source an image that did not ridicule and marginalise older women.

Almost every image that I found of two women, represented the women as bizarrely dressed, smoking cigars, playing on children’s playground equipment , skateboarding, riding motorcycles or looking grumpy.

When are we going to stop this marginalisation of older women? Why do we allow, in fact, not only allow, but perpetuate the stereotype of the crazy old woman? Why does ageing mean that we either have to be grumpy and frumpy, or bizarre and childish?

I don’t want to act like a child when I am old. I’ve passed through that stage of life, why would I want to go back to it? I am an intelligent, independent women with all my faculties. I have worked hard to have the life I live, I am not going to stand by and allow the media to stereotype me as a weird or senile older person. If I don’t have respect for myself, why should others?

Repeat after me : I will not marginalise myself, or other women by allowing older people to be represented in such a manner as to cause disrespect or ridicule. 

 

Baby talk

I went with new Mummy, Daughter1 and Petit Fille to the health nurse today. I may have been along for the ride and to carry the luggage but why in heavens name did the health nurse assume I was one foot onto the path to senility? This was before I opened my mouth, so why did she make the presumption? Nurse was about my age or a little older and she spoke with a condescending tone to both D1 and I as if we were simpletons! Heavens we have five tertiary degrees between the two of us!

I know there was an element of calming the new mother but the nurse was so intent on her spiel and handing out her leaflets that she allowed little opportunity for real conversation.

Habitually I hear the aged care staff speak to my mother and MIL in the same tone. Mum I can excuse because she has dementia and requires simple language and a slower pace, but MIL though she is 90 is very with it and a very intelligent woman. I dread the thought that someone will assume that I need to be spoken to in such a manner, but I didn’t think it would be the minute I became a grandmother!

My birthday is next Monday and if anyone gives me floral slippers or a knee rug… Well, they had just better stay out of stick reach!

Is it a deal breaker?

On my drive home from work I listened to Amanda Vanstone interview Philip Hensher, the author of the book, The Missing Link: The Lost Art of Handwriting. Hensher commented that in today’s world of text messages, tweets and emails that it could be entirely possible for someone to marry a person without ever seeing their handwriting until the moment they signed the marriage certificate.

He pondered, and this is probably more a query for the female readers but guys you can answer too, how would you feel if, having never seen your beloved sign his/her name previously, if once you were married you became aware that he signed his name with a little heart over his letter i, or finished his sentences with a smiley face?

The dilemma, if I can call it a dilemma, occupied me all the way home, and I still not sure of how I would react. Does gender equality extend to handwriting too?

One of life’s bigger questions, isn’t it?

“There’s more to life than chocolate, but not right now.” – Anonymous

We have had an offer on our house. Way below our asking price. Apparently it is the trend to offer 10% less than the listed price. I guess with the GFC some people are forced to sell for what they can. We expected to have to go through a haggling process as the interested party is of Indian ethnicity, and it is wrong to fall back on cultural stereotypes, but we did anticipate that they would offer very low.

I am tired of the whole process already, and have resorted to my not so secret chocolate supply. However, we are this far down the track now, so onward Flamingo Dancer soldiers!

Now I know why I never became a scientist…

Fruit flies offer DNA clue to why women live longer

Fruit flies can give clues to what happens in other species. Scientists believe they have discovered a clue to why women tend to live longer than men – by studying fruit flies ...

Now I know why I never became a scientist, beside the fact that I could never balance a chemical equation. Dumbo me, if I had been going to study why women live longer than men, I would have gone straight to researching the male and female human. Never would it have occurred to me study fruit flies to gain data about humans. Is my head a buzz with shame and regret!

But, there in perhaps lies the secret as to why women live longer than males… we would have more sense than to spend time researching fruit flies, when there is shopping to be done! [Spot the gender stereotypes…]

an annual event on a daily basis

I have an addiction. I guess as addictions go it is not altogether a bad one; at least I am not haunting the back streets searching for my next hit (not that I couldn’t, I just don’t). I just go online and order it up anytime I fancy, and the postman delivers it to my door.

My addiction? Memoirs written by women; in particular, memoirs with a self help slant. The types where some middle aged white woman travels the world to find herself; a little Elizabeth Gilbert, but usually older (okay, my age). They decide to spend a year finding happiness, calmness, or themselves (who are there all along, standing just behind their shoulder throughout the whole journey, what a surprise!).

I don’t really understand why I am addicted to this genre, as while I enjoy them, I feel a constant tug at my thoughts. Two things in particular haunt me. One, it is always upper middle class white women of usually independent means, or rich supportive husbands who abandon hearth and home to discover that life is wherever you are. If someone has ever read of a poor indigenous/African/black/Asian single mother who managed this feat I would love to read the story! I could find myself if I could stare at a cone shell on a faraway beach too if I had oodles of money – if my guilt gene was first removed too.

These women always write that they read this book by so and so, or whosemacallit, and lo, they just happened to be nearby, or  lo, they jumped on a plane and flew right to Paris and on the off chance phoned them and lo, they said come on around, and they discussed the meaning of life for three days straight before setting off on a Nepalese trek to a hermit cave, where lo (I do love my los) they could mediate for hours on end without their mind wandering even once as to how their birkin bag made it unscathed to the mountain top on the back of a llama.

I know if I tried such a trick the phone would be slammed down so fast my eardrums would hum. Darken their door – well, restraining orders come to mind first.  No little llamas to lead me to nirvana, I’d be trucking my Target backpack all the way on my little own back. All the way back home once the border guards released me, that is!

The other type of memoir I fall for is the tree change. The city slicker who buys 90 acres on a whim one autumn afternoon and decides to raise goats and truffles ten miles from town. Oh, life is a hoot as those damn goats eat her Stella McCarthy one off designs that she has hung artfully over a string line (cue photos of elegantly pinned floral items) not to speak of the night she has to have a cold shower, but all turns right when the tall dark handsome country stud with his independent ways arrives on the scene to tune her engine. Cue happy ever after a life of gourmet farmers markets selling to their city slicker friends who marvel that a goat can be so cute and give milk at the same time!

These are things I do not wish for. I don’t want 90acres to care about, I don’t want goats and most of all I don’t want city visitors, but I can’t help myself. My addiction must be fed.

Right now I am spending a year with a woman whose rich invisible husband has no qualms as his wife meditates herself around the globe, and somehow makes her mother’s Alzheimer’s about her. We are finding calm together, apparently. One side of my brain is yelling “Oh for God’s sake you self-indulgent,  whinging, whimp” while the other side of my brain is loving every word (particularly the rich invisible husband).  I can’t help myself.

After that I will be spending a year by the sea, swimming the wild waves and collecting sea glass as a metaphor for my existence until I find my inner self (once again, where it was all the time, but now released by a fat book deal arranged by friends I meet on a sand dune one winter’s noon).

Addicted? Main lining, baby.  Jealous? You bet your little La Sportiva Nepal EVO GTX® hiking shoes. I guess that some are there those but to do and write, and others are left to read and wonder how far she can get on $3.85 and a long weekend.

a hair’s breadth

There I was minding my own business at the hairdressing salon, trying to stretch my small reserve of nice until I could retreat back into the Flamingo Dancer chateau, when I innocently mentioned that I was attending a librarian’s conference next week … and everyone laughed.

Librarians can be fun people.

Really.

You just wait and see.

ageism is not a female word

I have taken umbrage. Dianne Keaton has a movie about to be released, and the Australian Women’s Weekly (January 2011) published an interview with her, a syndicated piece by Johanna  Schneller, that includes a photograph insert about women who have still “got it” – after the age of 50!

 Annette Bening was one of the examples they used as a glamorous woman who “just keep on getting better with age”. Annette Bening and I are the same age – 52. And though I haven’t asked Annette directly, surprisingly we don’t do lunch, I am sure that she would agree with me; 52 is not old. It is middle aged, yes. Old? I beg your pardon, but, hell no!

A magazine that brands itself as being for women, and to promote positive images to allow such stereotyping is beyond comprehension. A 52 year old woman in Australia has another 15 years in the workforce, as the expectation is that she will work until the age of 67 now. The average woman in Australia can expect to live some 84 years, so how the hell does 52 qualify anywhere near old?

At the age of 50 I went back to university, full time, to undertake a degree in education. I embarked upon a career in teaching at the age of 52. This year, as I turn 53 I am blending my old career, librarian, with my new career as teacher to become the leader of a resource/library centre. I have yet to reach the peak of my career. Daughter1’s mother in law is 67. In 2011, she will be teaching a whole semester at high school, then embarking on a world trip with a friend, a woman who is over 80!

For a respected publication to whittle the worth of a woman down to looking good after 50, as though it is a norm to be a desiccated, inactive woman is pathetic. What is sadder still is that the editorial team even considered that 50 was old and felt the need to insert photos of Bening, Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren, Angelica Huston, and their ages into an article about Diane Keaton’s life is insulting to not only their achievements and talents, but also to all women, young or old.

 I would have thought that the need for such fluff pieces had long passed. When will women cease being their own perpetrators of inequality?