17 December 08
Drifting Toward Invisibility
Julie Zickefoose, a bird artist and writer whose blog I’ve been following closely for a while, just had a piece published on the NPR website on becoming invisible after 50.
I will turn 50 this next year. It is only over the past few months that I’ve been aware, as Julie puts so very coherently, that a) I’m no longer being noticed in casual in-the-street-type contexts, b) that I therefore must have been aware of having been noticed before, though this didn’t really ever register, c) this is not altogether an unpleasant experience once you get over the shock of a) and b).
It’s starting to become more clear to me why some women take such pains to appear younger than they are. I have dismissed this as vanity for a long time, but I don’t think it’s just that. I think they want to still be someone, a person, a noticed person—someone who walks into a cafe and more than one head is raised in their direction, which culturally has given them meaning. Julie raises the obvious example of the Red Hat brigade as a damn-the-torpedoes approach to the unnoticeability problem, one that neither she nor I is likely to adopt. But I am starting to understand it a little more.
One of the commenters on Julie’s NPR piece suggests that blogging is a powerful way for women to keep their voice and have it be noticed. I think we shouldn’t underestimate this.
I am just finding it so very odd to even remark upon it. And wonder whether wearing my hair long and defiantly gray is my own means of bucking the trend…. Others have written about this and I’d love to hear from my male and female readers of all ages about their experience of this phenomenon.
These blind contour self-portrait sketches were done this evening at Mishka’s in the reflection in the window onto the night of Second Street, in the company of Blue Bicicletta who had some wonderful “Ride a Bike” pins for me (let me know if you’d like one).
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I’ve been struck by how some people — & specifically, you — don’t acquiesce in becoming invisible. So many people start wearing markers that say yes, I’m just some lady now, you can safely ignore my existence. You haven’t done that.
Maybe becoming invisible happens more to those who don’t want too much attention in the first place, I don’t know. It’s a personality thing sometimes, for I know some silver haired women who are very sexy, attractive and attention-attracting. I held back aging for awhile by colouring my hair but have let it go gray, mostly for health reasons, though I don’t like the colour much. I don’t crave attention but I do hope to eventually have brilliant white hair which I so admire on several women friends who went grey quite young. My luck though that it will stay mousey.
I love the drawings. You will never be invisible!
Dale, thank you. What’s so odd is that I was just unaware of the process.
Marja-Leena: I think you’re right that some women didn’t want so much attention in the first place. (I am gendering this; I’m guessing something similar happens for men but at different times and for entirely different reasons.) I think it’s very different in certain cultures, but the ones I’ve lived in — US and European — there is great value placed on visibility. I guess I’m enjoying the notion that I might hover in the shimmer. (Not something I’d have predicted, EVER. An adolescent fantasy was that I’d be a rock star, which thankfully never was more than a fantasy.)
Jean, thank you. They’re fun to do and actually a really good way of reinforcing the “what’s real what isn’t” part of self that has nothing to do with whether or not one is visible on the street.
I may have expressed myself badly — I was tired when I wrote this last night — but my point wasn’t really to rail against it, but just to marvel in a phenomenon I’d never really thought about. Or noticed. But I know, now, that I have in the past viewed some older women in this way, as invisible.
You and I have talked about this process before, and I have been thinking about it these days as well. I noticed that this morning when I saw some makeover on TV, where they took these women our age and older and gave them hair cuts and dye jobs, and tons of makeup, they all looked suddenly wonderful, but in a way that they looked like older versions of models from a magazine. some part of me toyed with the idea of cutting my hair and maybe even dying it a version of red, but then, I think, I would have to live up to some image of a younger version of not even myself… This way, if I am noticed, fine and dandy. If not, it’s just as fine and dandy. What matters is that I don’t have to worry about that image that I am trying to project so far out there that I have no sense where it originates.
Maybe I am not expressing this that well either, but I can say that these last couple of years, since I entered deeper into that land of invisibility, I have been happier in new ways!
This post came at a perfect time. I have been thinking about this issue for a long time and it comes to mind especially here at the beach. There is a woman in our gringa group who is now 72 and DEMANDS to be noticed, and consequently, is. There is another woman who is 82, makes no demands, and is noticed by everyone. The rest of us are noticed because we are not Mexican; we are “aliens” and thus objects of curiosity. When I come home it’s a relief not to be stared at, pointed at, wondered about.
There is a yin-yang about this issue, though. Sometimes being noticed (when I was 10 years younger) felt like an intrusion. On the other hand, sometimes it felt like a compliment. Now, all I hope for is to get noticed long enough to get business done so I can keep the wheels turning!
I have never thought about this either, but I, like you, love the gray head of hair and it feels to me like a halo….if no one else is going to notice me, damn…I will just notice myself in windows and mirrors all over the place! And I do and have for as long as I can remember. That is a secret that NO ONE knows about me!!!
But at the age of 67 I was honestly flattered that the redneck in the beat up old pickup truck next to me at the gas station seemed to be hitting on me…or was I just looking at smoke and mirrors again??
Love the contours…they are quite difficult for me to do, which is odd given the foregoing admission of my interest in mirrors, but I must say that I am given to cheating when doing contours as I like to peek at it ever so often.
Merry Christmas my friend!
G
Gay men actually get to have this experience of sudden invisibility multiple times in life, starting at about 30. So many gay men are interested only in people our age or younger that they tend to form circles that exclude anyone older. And so, as we age, we grow aware of larger and larger circles excluding us, as though we are being pushed ever outward in a mandala where we were once at the centre.
Fortunately, there’s a counter-trend of interest in inter-generational bonds and even inter-generational partnerships that seem, to my view, to be becoming more common.
I hope that you begin to notice that younger people are often really interested in what you can tell them about the journey of aging. It’s almost like a being travel writer: Pack this, but don’t bother pack that. Here are a few useful phrases and ideas. And above all, be prepared to let go if this or that certainty if you want an authentic contact with where you are.
Have a great holiday, and a stellar second half-century.
J
Maria, Susan — thank you.
Gainor: fun. To be surprised at the gas station. I love doing contours but yes it’s hard not to cheat!
Jarrett — several of my gay friends have spoken about this and it does seem very marked. I’m glad you are noticing a change in intergenerational friendships and relationships.
What I do know is that my own response to my older friends’ accounts of aging was to be interested but not really getting it. I have several close women friends who are 10 years older than me or more, so I’ve had plenty of opportunity to learn. I guess I’m just surprised by how much I’m surprised by it all.
Interesting — I’ve experienced those changes in attention, but it seems tied to whether I’m wearing my wedding ring or not (my weekend slacker times I tend not to wear jewelry, although I’m very happy with The Mur).
I am sensitive to the age-perception-thing regarding the kind of work I do, and so color my hair. The Mur likes it — but if I were doing something with a less fraught shelf-life than marketing, I might not.
Although I’m 50, I may get attention simply because I’m friendly and a bit of a flirt — I sure don’t think it’s on account of my looks!
Anyway — I hope you and your dear ones are having a fun, happy, joyful time over the holidays.
For some reason or other I have always felt invisible, since I was a young boy. I just had my 30th high school reunion three weeks ago and the first thing all the guys said when they saw me was, “Hey, you’re… you’re Teja’s (my brother) brother, right? What’s his name? I can’t remember!”
I once saw a woman in her seventies on the train in Boston with long, snowy white hair held back in a pony tail and a demeanor that no one could ever mistake for invisible. I still think she was one of the sexiest women I’ve ever seen.