I love withered roses, a metaphor for beauty in its decline, the head tilted, the petal of moving fragility. I prefer them to new roses, with stems that are too proud.
The Japanese, who understood the cycles of life and death, sometimes added a crooked stem or faded flower to their floral arrangements. An art, theikebana. I must have been an old Japanese woman in another life. I have always been attracted to parchment hands, the translucent silk of the epidermis from which the veins protrude, and faded roses.
In the West, one of the battles that feminists have not managed to carry very far concerns old skins, these women perceived as out of use. Perhaps out of wisdom or fatigue, they tire of fighting their increasing invisibility on all fronts. They are in the limbo of their existence, not yet old women ripe for oblivion, but more “up to date” in a consumerist logic.
I can no longer count the quantity of works received and read on the subject; I have a whole library shelf of them, by Jocelyne Robert (Vintage women) to Erica Jong (The Eos complex [Fear of Dying, 2015] And Fear of age [Fear of fifty, 1994]) going through the titles Old girl, An age called desire, The flamboyants, There is no age to enjoy or Admirable, by journalist Sophie Fontanel, recent tale about the last wrinkled woman on Earth.
Middle age terrifies us because we no longer know what to do with ourselves once deprived of our youth and our attractions.
Yet they played by the rules of the game, these women. And they got thrown out anyway, lifted or not, beautiful or not, faded or shit. THE Roses of Picardy are completely wrong: “And above all, it was you and me, these two words never get old. » One of the two is getting older, the other is not.
“Even today, it is men, and not precisely the most progressive among them, who control the definition of what an attractive woman is,” wrote the internationally renowned sociologist Eva Illouz to whom I have already recounted some of my pre-menopausal sentimental woes during a friendly conversation. “But we don’t leave a woman like you!” » exclaimed the author of Why does love hurt. Thank you Madam. But looking back, it was a wonderful gift of life.
Redefine codes
The fact is that many of us suffer from the widespread violence of planned obsolescence. And the word “violence” is taken with a mechanical shovel rather than a ladle. Once revered women find themselves bearing the brunt of the age of their ovaries, nothing new under the burning sun of andropause. But I would add that I experienced a sultry romantic relationship after the age of 55 (with a younger man); We don’t say that enough to women, except in novels…
““Rejection is God’s protection”, say the Anglo-Saxons (rejection is God’s protection). The atmosphere should be one of jubilation, not self-pity,” emphasizes Amanda Castillo in her excellent essay What if women had the right to age like men? (The Iconoclast, 2023). If you have a book to get for March 8, here it is.
The Swiss journalist provides a cultural overview of injustices linked to the age of women. Jane Birkin wrote in her diary in 1973: “In ten years, I’m finished, no one will love me anymore. I will be old and ugly. I won’t be 27 anymore, I’ll be 37, and that’s the end. » Add a skull and ghost emoji.
I enjoyed the two entire pages devoted to a list of known couples (around fifty throughout the ages) where a large age gap leans in favor of the woman. Janette Bertrand is not there. Amanda Castillo takes on many figures of the patriarchy who proclaim their aversion to the faded roses of 50 years: Moix, Houellebecq, Beigbeder, Gainsbourg, Matzneff, shall I continue?
Erotic attraction is only the weakest of our weapons; it dissipates with habituation.
And the muses wear out quickly, underlines the author: 60% of 13-24 year olds say, in a study of 1,600 women, that social networks make them paranoid about their aging. Let’s put it into perspective: in Balzac’s time, a woman was old at 30 years old. Except that, as sociologist David Le Breton wrote in the article “Can we love a 50-year-old woman? » (Brain & Psycho2019), there was not yet a commercial response to these insecurities at the time of the author of The thirty year old woman. And we will note the subtle difference between remaining desirable (sexyfuckable, etc.) to remain “lovable”.
“Still” beautiful
“Every revolt needs symbols,” underlines Castillo. And you have to be a little badass to refuse interventions of any kind aimed at extending the expiration date. But in cinema as on TV, the standard is set and the dice loaded. The symbols are smoothed. The author notes a long series of IMAX anomalies over an entire chapter. In the movie Dune, part one, Timothée Chalamet is 25 years old, and the one who plays his mother, Rebecca Ferguson, 38 years old. 13 years apart.
After 35, actresses have a long tunnel ahead of them until they become very young grandmothers on screen.
In another recent essay which bears the unprepossessing title Old skin, French journalist Fiona Schmidt talks about the invisibility of women aged 50 and over in the media (three times less than men) and their reduced speaking time, among actresses too: “At the same age, women enter in a tunnel of invisibility from which they only emerge when they are well into their sixties, to play grandmothers who are more or less fanciful, devoted or unworthy. »
The author notes that old age is a world of women, more numerous in RPAs, helped and cared for by… more women.
According to Fiona Schmidt, we won’t gain anything by pushing the deadline with mantras like “50 is the new 40”: “The antidote to ageism is not staying young until you die or pretending that old people are young like the others. »
In short, women vintage are tanned like leather. But the truth is that we can also feel liberated from no longer being coveted, valued as a commodity, and from being the faded rose in the bouquet. Its thorns never grow old. It can still be useful.