ageism

The heavy burden of the ingénue … and the old hag

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I used to work somewhere where the chief editor, who was and is a great writer, wrote or edited a lot of articles, often on short notice. This usually led him, last minute, to groping for a word to describe a preternaturally talented, unusually gifted musician. He always landed on “ingénue” even though he was almost always writing about a male musician. I brought up the misuse every time (as copy editor/proofreader), and he’d answer, “Oh, really?” And then substitute “ingénue” for “wunderkind”. Every time. I think of this every time I see the word “ingénue”.

This also springs to mind every time I read an article about women over 40, for some reason. Particularly when I read about actresses over 40 who opine (if not complain) about aging and the bitter, brutal competition they face in Hollywood. Or women who have fallen victim to the sad, repetitive story of being cheated on/thrown aside for the much-younger nanny. (Amy Schumer poked fun at this trope in a recent Inside Amy Schumer sketch – in the end, the “nanny” doesn’t need to be a hot, young, naive woman. Men are pigs, as the sketch posits, and will stick it in any available hole.)

A recent article about (almost-unknown) actress Lauren Weedman (I remember her well from two shows that missed their mark despite starting with promising premises – Hung and Looking. I eventually came to hate-watch Looking because its promise was so squandered in my mind). Her husband cheated with a young nanny, and she divorced him. Weedman put a comical spin on her suffering:

“There’s something so damn interesting and damn depressing about men being attracted to much younger and naive women. Leaving behind their old, aging, bossy wives—like that old biddy Gwen Stefani. Just today I read that the definition of “ingénue” was a girl that was young and naive. My entire life I’d thought that it meant “young and pretty.” It never dawned on me that naive was a selling point.”

And that’s just it, isn’t it? “Ingénue” does not really mean what people think it does.

It’s not as though some of these over-40 women feeling the short end of the stick today were not once the pretty ingénues themselves.

Thus when I read an article in Salon recently that discussed Amanda Peet‘s frank article on aging in Hollywood, I could not help but think … isn’t that just what happens? The younger, fresher faces float in and seem effortlessly to usurp yesterday’s crop of ingénues?

You’d think so, but check out what Peet wrote:

“Recently, I was told I was ineligible for a movie because I wasn’t “current” enough. I’m constantly pushed out by younger talent, like Alicia Vikander. You might think, Wait, she’s 27 and a gorgeous movie star, and you’re 44 and a low-tier, TV-mom-type; you’re not in the same ballpark. But she is squeezing me out. She’s in the hot center and I’m on the remote perimeter. The train has left the station and I’m one of those moronic stragglers running alongside with her purse caught in the door. Everyone’s looking at me like, Let go, you bullheaded old hag! There’s no room for you.””

Even swallowing the idea that, yeah, she’s in mom-role territory and should not have to be competing against women 20+ years younger than her for those roles, this is ridiculous. In the real world where I live, we want to think (and are led to believe) that there’s this inclusive space for everyone (and as the article points out, there are the Helen Mirrens and the Charlotte Ramplings of the world – eternally graceful and untouchable, which give the illusion that women of a certain age are more than welcome on the silver and tv screens. But are they?). Still, I’d argue that the Peets of the world had their day – and perhaps pushed over-40 women off the platform before their time.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow when you’re on the other side of 40 (even if the whole Hollywood circus is becoming more incredulous in its casting. Yes, a 27-year-old should definitely play the mother of a pre-teen just because a woman in her 20s is photogenic – who cares about reality?).

Age perception and sex for the aged and ages

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Yesterday was an unusually rich day for reading about age – in particular how women are perceived as they age. Both by society and by oneself.

In one article discussing turning 30, the writer describes the arbitrariness of how women’s ages are perceived. “Age is a weapon society uses against women. Each year that you gain comfort in your own flesh, your flesh is seen as worthless.” A woman’s age, she writes, is never right, but a man’s age is always right.

And, she argues, it is not only about perception. It is also about keeping women down. If women really believe that youth is where it’s at – that everything fades away after 30 – they may not achieve all they can in life. If their worth is entirely wrapped up in the nubile sexual attractiveness tied to the “innocence of their youth” and the attached male attentions that come with it, what will they aspire to – will they ever ascend to the level of achievement that they might threaten the middle-aged male status quo in the professional world? “Better to tell women that youth is their best quality—that when their ass starts sagging and their face starts cracking, everything they love will fade away.”

But there is plenty of evidence that life doesn’t end (god forbid! “Older” people can still have a life!) at 30. The other article I happened across was a Slate article about women’s sexual lives and how women over 70 seem to be having their own sexual revolution. A lot of the women interviewed in the book the article discusses seem to have been very sexual creatures all along – or, in many cases, many embraced their sexuality only after hitting 60.

One woman stated: “…combination of feeling wild abandon and total comfort has been just amazing. After 70, there comes a sweetness about making love. We go slowly, there is no rush anymore. When you’re younger, it’s all about the orgasm, then it’s over. I love this suspended feeling, the absolute intimacy we have been able to achieve.” It is a bit much, perhaps, but if nothing else, the idea of looking at one’s intimate life (and all its facets) as striving for wild abandon, total comfort and this inexplicable suspended feeling is worthwhile.

I don’t want to sit around thinking about the septuagenarian set going at it, but we are all going to get there. Not to add that the Germans have already given us a film that removes any doubt about what elderly sex and relationships would be like (Cloud 9). It even covers this topic – where the main character, a married woman, has an okay relationship and active sex life with her husband, but then she meets an even older man and connects with him in a way that involves this aforementioned “wild abandon and total comfort” that is so rare in relationships at any age.

If the article imparts anything, it’s that you don’t wait for your 80s to try to find this kind of satisfaction and depth of feeling/connection.

Age is just a number, and I am fond of reminding people that it is never too late to do anything. As the writer of the Vice article on turning 30 stated, “The only real thing 30 took from me was the sense of limitless time.” There is thus an urgency to what we do, no matter what we do – at any age.

“I Remember Sex”