We’re Not Invisible Anymore.
By Erica and Karen
Invisible.
Probably not a word you thought would ever apply to you. Nor did we. But then we reached a certain age, and retired. And suddenly, that's what we were. Where just days before we had been very much players in the world, now we could not even be seen. And we are far from alone.
Many of us end up feeling this way. Indeed, last year the United Nations said, on its celebration of its International Day of Older Persons:
While older women continue to meaningfully contribute to their political, civil, economic, social and cultural lives; their contributions and experiences remain largely invisible and disregarded, limited by gendered disadvantages accumulated throughout the life course. The intersection between discrimination based on age and gender compounds new and existing inequalities, including negative stereotypes that combine ageism and sexism.
The 2022 theme of International Day of Older Persons (UNIDOP) serves as a hallmark and reminder of the significant role older women play
We like the formulation older persons. We embrace our age, and are proud of what we accomplished. We just don’t feel old, and we do not identify with the negative connotations of that word.
Several years ago we were amused when we saw a play by Penelope Skinner, in which Linda, a 55 year old marketing executive confronting the implications of getting older, described invisibility thusly:
“So I started off thinking about the research feedback which always comes in when we do age-related stuff from women in the over-fifties category about how when women get to fifty or somewhere around that age bracket they start to feel invisible. Over and over again in groups we hear the same thing. ‘I feel like life is happening all around me. I used to be the protagonist of my life and now suddenly I’m starting to feel irrelevant.’ This can be connected to women’s sexuality, so ‘Men walk past me in the street and don’t look twice anymore’ or ‘I go past a building and nobody whistles.’
“Even in the workplace. Women start to experience people talking over them. As though what they are saying is actually less important, because they have reached a certain age. They also find themselves under-represented in media--books, films, on television. And in advertising.
And yes, it is true once you are over fifty—and even earlier, as a certain network host has recently pointed out—you start to fade. While men become sought after gray-haired sages, women disappear, because they can no longer do the only thing some people think women are useful for–-bringing the next generation into the world. So they are seen as irrelevant—even if they are actually holding down complex jobs at the same time as they are raising children and keeping house, arguably doing more than a lot of men could possible manage. And as they disappear, so does the value of their contributions, as the U.S. State Department has pointed out:
A variety of negative stereotypes about older adults has rendered the contributions of older women invisible.
Of course there are those who blame women for dismissing other women, or who argue that women shouldn’t care about what men think, or that it is a relief not to have people ogle you or whistle at you. This perspective, for example:
Ultimately, of course, the question is: who do we want to be visible to? And here sits the elephant in the room – the difficulty of an honest debate about to what degree our sense of visibility is tied in to our feelings about the loss of youthful, sexual attractiveness.
We think these contentions miss the point.
We don’t think women are concerned that other women are not seeing them–even if that may be true of some younger women—or that they care whether men see them as sexy-–though they are. We think the issue is way deeper than that. When people, especially women, reach a certain age, false assumptions about their value and abilities block some from seeing them as they are. These misconceptions create barriers to opportunities, one the one hand, and to prevent others from making use of our wealth of knowledge and experience, on the other.
That is the invisibility we perceive, and that’s what the Linda character was talking about. Not about no longer being seen as sex objects—although older women are properly seen as sexy. But about being seen as continuing to be valuable players in the wider world.
Things are changing, for sure. Older women are gaining power in Hollywood. Our political power is being growing, too. And our financial power is increasing exponentially. The more power we have, the brighter our outlines become. There is work to be done, but we are coming into sight.
So put on your brightest outfit and go out there and let everyone see who you really are!
