Lynn Nicholas ...writes
  • Blog
  • NOVEL: Dancing Between the Beats
  • FICTION-POETRY
  • BIO
Picture

HAVE WE REALLY "COME A LONG WAY, BABY?"

3/9/2021

13 Comments

 
Picture

Do you feel pressured to maintain a younger persona than your years, and how do we even define younger? Do you devote hours to slimming exercise and drool over food you really, really want to eat, but won’t allow yourself? I’m speaking mainly to the women here. From what I observe, men are okay with pulling their belts down to release their bellies from restriction, while women jam themselves into more and more perverted versions of “shapewear.” Am I sounding sexist here? Okay then, I can live with that.

I recently watched some old black and white movies from the late 1930s and 1940s. One in particular, called Four Wives (1939) jump-started my current train of thought. In this movie, four young women of marriageable age have joined the race to find suitable husbands. Their father is a widower, and his sister, Aunt Etta, is the mother figure in residence, and it is she who inspired this run-away ramble. 

Aunt Aunt Etta is an active, vital part of the household, and based on the age of the father and the girls, she must be in her fifties or sixties at the outside. Now clear your mind of any visual reference to anyone you know today in that age group. Aunt Etta’s 1939 physical persona is presented in a dowdy housedress, unsupported breasts hanging to her waist and feet laced into sturdy, sensible shoes. Her hair is pulled into an untidy grey bun, and I don’t think she wore the lightest touch of lipstick. There must have been something very comforting about these motherly, Aunt Etta types, always wearing an apron and fussing about the kitchen, ready to offer a cup of tea or a re-assuring hug. Their place in life was defined, and they seemed content with the status quo. Back then, if an older woman gained a bit around the middle or her hair greyed, no one thought twice about. Make-overs weren’t offered, expected, or requested. 

Based on thickened waistlines and the fashion dictates of the 1930s, there was no mistaking a woman in her fifties for a woman in her thirties. With the exception of Hollywood glamour queens, the average woman dressed “age appropriately.” I remember my own trim grandmother passing on a dress because it was “too young for her.” She came out of an era where the mothers and grandmothers believed they’d had their “time”, and were happy to step aside to let the younger generation shine. Sometimes, when I see women killing themselves to look as good as their much younger daughters, I’m not sure if we’ve really “come a long way, baby.” 

So who was better off—women in the mid-1900s who were allowed to let their middles expand and their hair turn grey, or women today who don’t look much different at fifty-five than they did at thirty-five? Which generation is trapped by society’s expectations? It’s wonderful that women today stay active way beyond fifty and refuse to be relegated to the bleachers, but I sometimes despair over what is expected of us. 

I have to wonder whether the female Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers are looking younger longer because of improved diet, greater sexual freedom, more gym time, and better beauty products, or is it because more and more woman are turning to surgical procedures, hormone injections, and Botox to prove that sixty is the new forty? Aren’t we still sixty on the inside no matter what we do to the packaging? If it takes tummy tucks, liposuction, and kidney-damaging KETO diets to fit into those size 4 jeans, maybe we need to take a collective breath and rethink. 

And along those lines, whose fault is it anyway that cosmetic procedures have become de rigor? Advertisers? Men? Hollywood. Not really. It’s an inside job. We all make noises about how no one has the right to criticize what someone else wears in public—Wal-Mart patrons excepted—but we do, don’t we? We nudge, we tip our heads towards the offender and raise our eyebrows. Little comments are exchanged, and we settle into our slim and fashionable superiority as we adjust our Spanx, or wave away that croissant that now we can’t justify enjoying it in public. Do we walk away happy, feeling deprived, or maybe just a little bit ashamed? Do we wait until we’re alone to sneak that yummy treat, only to obsessively exercise away the extra calories? I’m not pointing the finger here, just posing questions. I’m as guilty as the next person of all of the above, and I’m asking myself why. 

After all this rambling, what’s become apparent to me is that none of us will truly be as free of societal constraints as we think we are until we stop judging each other. We will truly have come a long way once we accept ourselves, and each other, for being our genuine, individual selves, without peer pressure to starve or slice-and-dice to fit in. Don’t say it isn’t there. It might be subtle, but judgmental peer pressure is alive and well and living among us. 
​
So lovely ladies, whether a size 4 or a size 12, we are the glue that holds society together, and we need to never forget that. Our aging, child-bearing bodies are to be celebrated, and our collective wisdom is our shield against the shallowness of youth, not gut-restricting shapewear or liposuction. And next time someone offers you a croissant, for God’s sake, accept and enjoy it…and sure, go for a run afterwards if you must.

Photos below: My grandmother at 65 and at 92. 
​

Picture
13 Comments
    Picture
    Picture

    Lynn Nicholas - AUTHOR oF Dancing Between The Beats

    My blog is a window into my world. My slice-of-life narratives are triggered by life's
    moments  that transform or reveal.
    Please check out my published short fiction. Most stories are character-driven, situational and, just like life, sometimes humorous. Click for Amazon author page 

    LOOK for Dancing Between the Beats on Amazon and Barnes&Noble.com 

    —Lynn Nicholas

    Categories

    All
    Gardening
    Interests+Activities
    Muddling Through Life
    Novel Updates
    Photography
    Sheltering In Place
    Writing

    Picture
    Picture

    Archives

    November 2022
    October 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018

    RSS Feed

Picture
Copyright 2018 Lynn Nicholas  • Privacy Policy

LINKS I LIKE

​WOW! Women on Fiction 

Rose City Sisters 

Bookcrossing

Goodreads

Everyday Fiction  

Blogility: Blogging the Agility Journey

Tucson Festival of Books 

Paula Johnson Writing + Comedy

Simon’s Cat

  • Blog
  • NOVEL: Dancing Between the Beats
  • FICTION-POETRY
  • BIO