The Invisibility Myth 14; Jane Fonda, Vanity & Me

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder

➨I’ve got this quote swirling in my head from a Jane Fonda interview a couple of years ago:

 “I continued to try to be perfect on whatever level the man I was with wanted, willing to forgo emotional intimacy and betray my own body and soul if honestly speaking with my true voice might mean losing him,” she wrote. “It wasn't even that I depended on any of them financially, as many women do who turn themselves into pretzels for their men. I always supported myself.” Last week when she appeared at the 2017 Emmy Awards

 much media coverage was given to her appearance. I’ve been reading the personal comments on social media; women praising her, eviscerating her, pitying her, judging her, men being downright nasty. In response, she said that; “Men are very visual, they want young women. So, for us, it’s all about trying to stay young.”

Her cosmetic surgery, she added, had extended her acting career by a decade….The mixed messages of her words left me confused and a little bit angry for some reason - was I too guilty of judging? 

 

 ➨How does any of this help the younger generation of women and men in our lives (or indeed those of us who cannot afford, or do not want to have surgery) stay visible, relevant and empowered as they age?  Surely it’s healthier mentally and physically to learn as early as possible not to aspire to the social media driven ideal of “perfection”, but that there are an infinite variety of body shapes, sizes, looks - all of them acceptable and not to be judged?

 Should us ordinary extraordinary women, feminists, humans bear some responsibility to halt the rot?  It feels to me like a no brainer; “Y-E-S of course we should" answer.  It’s a jungle out there and it’s not as easy as you might think to throw the fuck-off switch. Our individual freedoms and choices are greater than ever, and yet I see us encouraged to believe that self-love and contentment always lies in being beckoned around an elusive, distant corner, where the surgeons knife, beauticians needle, pharmacists pills and potions expensively and dependently lurk. Such very, very frustrating and confusing messages…We golden oldies

 know there really is a fulfilling life to be had post thirty without excess self-loathing needing to be part of the deal….. 

Happy in her own adorned skin

➨Now, i’m not in Jane Fonda’s life choices league financially or globally, but my Jeanie world thoughts turned to the call I got recently, with the opportunity to bare all for a national newspaper article about women’s relationship with body image. I knew what the potential ramifications of such an in-your-face reveal could be, so although I wanted to do it for myself and for my Invisibility Myth project, I still ran it past my family. I said that if they had a problem with me doing the photo shoot, I wouldn’t go ahead.  I felt that my personal life decisions do have wider reaching consequences to my loved ones, when put out into the public arena. Their response was pride, respect and a big; go for it, but please don’t put the photos on social media!…Yes of course there will be a degree of embarrassment about Ma getting her kit off, but the overarching message of the piece (I’m trusting they won’t go for cheap sensationalism) is a disparate group of women of all ages and sizes, battling their personal body issues,  showing that taking your clothes off is a great leveller and can be pretty empowering.  And that it’s an ok thing to do. It sure is an interesting way of meeting new people, no designer labels attached and little space for shrinking violets!!! Swapping life stories in the buff with a young mother and an eighty seven year old was empowering, enlightening and hilarious.  If you are interested in the full story, it will be appearing in The Advantages of Age online magazine soon, as will the photos in a national Sunday newspaper magazine, but i’m not telling which one till i’ve seen them myself 😉….

➨ I'm offering my 61 year old words of wisdom to 79 year old Jane; Oh vanity, vanity all is vanity…You always were a beautiful, intelligent woman and I wish you had realised that when you were young…You didn’t  need to go under the knife, starve and mould yourself to what your Father led you to believe was the thing to do to be noticed.  The right sort of man would be privileged to have you in their lives, the rest are simply not worthy to worship at your (i'm sure) immaculate feet...

The Invisibility Myth 13 - Not Dead Yet Awakenings

Finally coffee was served

➨The morning ritual remains the same wherever I am - turn on BBC Radio 4 (long wave only as i'm currently in France) and make coffee.  A thirty something woman is saying she wishes she could go back in time and give her bulimic/self harming/laxative addicted young self a hug and tell her how beautiful she is, and how there was no need for all that self-loathing. Yesterday I was flicking through old issues of The Sunday Times Style magazine - June 2017 is all about fun in the sun with a colourful photo of what looks like two thirteen year old girls in bright swimwear accompanying a piece about what we ADULTS should be wearing on the beach this summer.

WTF?

These flat chested, skinny waifs pout off the page at me and I feel my irritation growing.  I continue flicking…Avocado art is on the way down apparently, but ‘porerexia’, an obsession with the size of the pores on ones face is on the up - who’d have thought either of those was a thing?

 Next up; The Changing Shape of me - from size 8 twenty something to size 18 mother. Thankfully a more uplifting story, but still riddled with angst. Next headline; Fail at breastfeeding - a woman recalls the overwhelming pressure to be a perfect mother in those first few weeks because she couldn’t produce enough milk. Over the page an M&S advertisement inviting you to “hang up, your hang ups’ whilst wearing their slimming swimwear.  All your insecurities fed off and into by the media, will momentarily vanish as you jump off that rock in your fuchsia pink (rather lush) swimming costume….as if.

I decide to gloss over the killer teens headline article and the young people claiming that Harry Potter saved their lives…..I have a quick scan of India Knight telling me it’s ok to put my life before a career - thanks for that positive affirmation India.  All these mixed messages and my coffee hasn’t even cooled down enough to drink yet…Bugger it. I’m stripping off to bake my bones in the glorious sun - stretch marks, bingo wings, gaping pores n all. It’s more life-affirming than the media, despite the skin ageing/cancer risk. At least my vitamin d levels will be topped up….

My own British Bakeoff

➨In the interest of research, I bought the first issue of a new French magazine; 50 & Plus Le Mag.

I spent ages painfully translating the articles and I found the content more uplifting and refreshing than all the English magazines I’ve been trawling whilst out here in the French countryside…On the cover is a well groomed but ‘normal' looking sixty year old French woman. The main tagline is: Le bonheur commence apres 50 ans!  With not a plastic surgery story in sight, it concentrates on the personal individual attempt to attain well being and happiness in all areas of life. We should be taking a lesson from their format…. Which has given me (via my man and yet more coffee)  a brainstorming, fizzing idea - YAY - a positive from initially negative train of thought!!!  I shall report back….

➨Is it any wonder we have lives riddled with insecurity and confusion, when this stuff can reach us even if we ignore the magazines. It sneaks into our brain subliminally via our peripheral vision on headlines and advertisement hoardings.  It is hard and sometimes isolating to keep walking to the beat of your own drum, especially as a young person when pressure is applied to be doing it all and having it all. I am aware that the same constant vigilance is needed to keep my almost 61yr old equilibrium in check as it did at 17yr when I left a toxic home to start my life adventure. I think that this well of experience good and bad is a major advantage of age, when it comes to cracking on.

➨It is with great pleasure that I can say personally I’ve found new ground to explore, a new richness and fullness to my life via the wonders of such groups as  wearingwellbeing.com, theadvantagesofage.com, the forever fierce Angie Weihs at The Ageless Rebel and the joy filled Colour Walkers of Spitalfields market and beyond. Happy day! Dipping in and out of their ‘gangs’, (I can be a little capricious in my loyalty!) hearing and sharing stories of life and loves is like a big therapy session, without any need to attach labels.

 Meeting up at events and embarking on new friendships is enriching, entertaining, questioning, challenging and FUN.  Proving It is never to late to meet new people play and work wise and experience new adventures - some of them life-changing catalysts.  

 ➨This Invisbility Myth project of mine is taking me to a whole new confident place in my life, opening doors and prompting me to re-asses and close others. There is such a wealth of talent and wisdom amongst us, the baby boomer generation, so much of it accumulated by the access we had in the 60’s and 70’s to self-determination and the road to equality.  Asking any one of the people i’ve met recently that irritating question “what do you do?” is pointless - we are all polymaths these days, with so many multiple layers determining the bigger picture of who we are. This zeitgeist movement of strong minded older people is set to grow bigger and bigger as we live on from now to somewhere in infinity.  How utterly EXCITED am I…can you tell? !!!…..

Now, what was that piece I saw about substance abuse and STI’s among the older generation?????…Yes, I really did…. 

The Invisibility Myth part 10: The Handmaid’s Tale - reality in the shadow.

➨2017 - I thought my generation had scored the winning goal in terms of general equality, which bought about the fulfilling birth of my Invisibility Myth project. It’s mission is to show that we older women never had it so good and that the hard work of the women’s movement, is an unstoppable global force that will only move forward. I felt I could relax a little, knowing that my daughters daughters will be equal to all - at least in my sphere of society. 

However, a couple of things have rattled me and sounded alarm bells this year.

Freedom is a dream by SAM

➨I was visiting a somewhat subdued New York the day the new POTUS (who’s name I cannot bring myself to write) was inaugurated in Washington.  The infamous Women’s March that overshadowed his day was awesome to walk with and witness, but I confess to becoming a tad irritated by the “This pussy bites” placards etc as I felt it was showing an unnecessarily aggressive mannish attitude.    

Revolutionary Suit by Jae Jarrell

I had failed to grasp the full validity of their concerns, and did not get the “Gilead is not an instruction manual” references.  I had last read The Handmaids Tale back in 1984 when it was published and I had retained the feeling and atmosphere of the dystopian world Margaret Atwood created in the book, but not the detail.

 It didn’t take long for me to see the bigger picture of what was happening right across America: - the sexist rhetoric, the rooms full of men making decisions about women’s issues, the new bills being signed off by POTUS and his man gang. The general rise of everyday sexism being brushed off as a lot of fuss about nothing, or fake news by so many men and women. The attempt to suppress freedom of speech and the free press, which continues to this day was beyond my understanding, outside my life experience….I initially parochially back-burnered it, as I focused on the UK's own issues with the attacks on our home soil,the General Election and Brexit Negotiations.

➨...Then The Handmaid’s Tale aired on British TV - Oh. My. Word. “We sleep-walked into this” says the Offred handmaid portrayed with such chilling conviction by Elisabeth Moss , after a flashback scene to when the normality of her life started to be undermined and unravelled …Shivers ran down my spine as I saw how easily society can slip backwards and find our hard won equality and freedom curbed, and in the worse case scenarios removed.  A definitive wakeup call as I tuned back in to our friends in the USA. This was coupled with unsettling Government imposed restrictions on the general public after a spate of terrorist attacks on my beloved home City of London.  

Injustice Case by David Hammons. B1943 

My eyes opened wide once more, peripheral vision restored, switched back on. If invisibility is to remain a myth, then I/we have to keep on the ball, questioning, talking, challenging.  If I/we don’t, then there is a real possibility that Gilead could happen - is happening in societies around the globe...Fertile women corralled - aka Handmaids - aka breeders in a society that sees armageddon fast approaching via infertility. Only today I read a real study headline stating that sperm counts among western men have halved in the past forty years...(www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/25/sperm-counts-among-western-men-have-halved-in-last-40-years-study)...  

Jaffa beach September 2016

➨ Oppression, power, control...I think back to the beach I daily visited in Jaffa, Israel in 2016: in 36 degree heat, women were having to wade into the sea fully clothed in their black robes, unable to do anything other than stand within the billowing fabric.  When they struggled ashore, and tried to shower out the sand from their salt water sodden garments, they were looked at disapprovingly by their shorts only wearing menfolk as if they were being somehow provocative. My love child and I observed this, dressed as we normally are on a beach, with a sense of righteous anger on the women’s behalf.

My Jaffa Beach outpouring 2016!

 It was clear there was no personal choice or freedom as their male dominated society dictated this protocol to them. They were Handmaids and it was little wonder that they looked at us with sad resentment.  

➨My determination to live my own life in the fullest possible way, clearly has to include an ongoing responsibility to carry on fighting injustices wherever and whenever I see them, otherwise there can be no justification in my pursuit of and belief in The Invisibility Myth.

 ➨Step up and back into the fray time Jeanie, no napping! Love and peace 💟