For me, the aging processing as a woman in The U.S.A. is less about injustices done to me than it is about a subtle weakening of my place within this civilization and a not-so-subtle disrespect that appears more with each passing year. As an example, if I disapprove of pornography as systemically harmful to women, it is my age that prompts my classification as a prude and a pearl-clutcher. It can not be that I base my thoughts on studies and stats and the understanding that feminism is a movement-- one that supports the liberty of all women, not to remain confused with individual women who decide to reduce their identities to the sexual uses and misuses of their bodies, calling that empowerment. My age sets me for a sort of ridicule only partly experienced by younger women with the same point of views. The wisdom that comes with age has little worth to anyone but those having it, due to the fact that knowledge is another word for old, and old is what nobody wants to be.
I do not know what the answer is, but I can tell you what it isn't, at least for me. It isn't to attempt to seem or act more radiant. It isn't to write articles about how hot/thin/beautiful/ sexy middle-aged women are. They are, but squandering my written voice on going to bat for shallow efforts at continued conformity to what is expected of women in a patriarchal society does not feel beneficial. It is an insidious accedence. It entices women my age to exchange away opportunities to weigh in on concerns for a chance to become among the "seen" again. I won't participating in a game I dislike, which I did not create and can not succeed.
To become an aging woman in America is to become continuously bombarded by images and press that outstrip your younger feminist sisters from you, simply because the concept of no longer resembling those youthful photos of femininity and becoming invisible horrifies them. I resemble a normal 51-year-old, and it is just unusual recognizing that my appearance is something many young women dread.
