The Rant of a Well-Seasoned Woman

 I find myself ranting about the disparity of how people see women versus men, especially as older (over 40) people.  This week put me back on the edge of that rant.

The Grammy awards were interesting.  Some years they bore me but I liked it this year.  The one thing that stood out for me was the reaction to Madonna.  Now, I'll be honest and say I noticed and I don't love the changes she made to her appearance.  But she didn't ask me my opinion so I didn't offer it.  Instead, I thought seriously about why she did it.  And then I saw all of the facebook posts the next day.

When I watched her on the show (and later on TikTok), my first thought was sadness.  I thought about how hard it must be to be her (or any woman in the public eye who ages) and feel that she needs to look younger than she is.  I don't have that pressure - but I feel it so freaking often.  What gets me started on my rant is the need of people to comment on her looks.  The majority of comments I saw were from women who had all sorts of nasty things to say.  To them I say: you are the reason she feels the need to do it.  What the hell?  How is that helpful to anyone?

My other thought on the topic was why does no one comment on the men who do the same thing?  There was not one comment in my feed about Smokey Robinson.  If you look at him over the years, that's a pretty dramatic change.  People don't comment nearly as often on John Travolta as his female counterparts.

I was already walking the tightrope of bitchiness about appearance before the Grammys.  After having my hair cut last week, I was still grumbling to myself about the conversation (with yet another hair stylist) who told me I should not return to my naturally dark hair color because "gray will be visible."  Um, so? No one says a word to my husband about his gray hair and he is 5 days older than me.  

There is hope.  I saw an article recently about how there's a quiet but steady movement on Instagram of of women who are not trying to look younger and are content with their current age and level of beauty.  In the Dec/Jan edition of Elle magazine, there's a conversation between Naomi Watts and Paulina Porizkova that I found interesting. Paulina was a super model back in her day (and is still gorgeous).  I like that she doesn't botox and is content with her looks.  I like her summary of women who are no longer in the super model age range:  "I like to call us well-seasoned women.  We start off as little blobs of dough; bland, not much in here, maybe a little bit of sugar.  We aquire seasonings from everything we've experienced and everything we've seen.  And we are spicy now." While I don't think I ever started out as bland, I'm good with being spicy now.