Mid-thirties have been reached for a few days. That’s it, I’m on the downslope now, some people say teasingly.
The joke makes me smile, but it has a grain of truth. I am no longer a “young woman”, a nymphet, a category of pornography… Really not sorry to get rid of this aura imposed on youth, that said. I feel ready to embrace other cultural roles prescribed to my gender, thank you.
It probably won’t be mother’s, so it’s up to me. I’m thinking of working on that of “cool aunt” and possibly taking a turn towards the witch-grano. Oh, and I’m planning a teenage crisis in my 60s. Small crimes without victims, parties, nights… I also give myself the right to throw all that in the trash. We’ll see. The thing is, I’m dreaming about what’s to come.
It is now possible.
I grew up in a world that hid women with crow’s feet. He (we) always does it, but I see them taking center stage more with ardor and joy. To tell you the truth, these days, I’m dreaming about my suite while watching women dance.
Have you seen, like me, a viral video that shows eleven seniors imitating the choreography of Rihanna and her dancers at the Super Bowl halftime? These residents of a Kentucky hostel play, have fun and even get sensual. Their pleasure has conquered Internet users, perhaps because there is something both innocent and subversive about it. Are we still allowed to waddle when using a walker? well then1 !
There are also the steps of the actress Cate Blanchett which delight me. In the new Sparks music video, for the song The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte, we see her dancing madly, without restraint or obvious desire for seduction. She just lets herself go. However, that was not the plan. In an interview with the magazine Wthe members of the group confessed that they would have been satisfied if the actress was just there, motionless2. She’s the one who decided to dance! We are witness here to a chosen pleasure, to an assumed unleashing. What happiness.
Closer to home, Margie Gillis, 69, recently presented her solo Old. On this subject, this pillar of modern dance in the country said to the journalist Luc Boulanger: “You have to see old age as something beautiful, natural, then welcome it with open arms, instead of rejecting it with artificial means.3. »
It strikes a chord with me, the “artificial means”…
I don’t know if this is what Margie Gillis was referring to, but I live in an environment where Botox, fillers and other slight physical alterations are commonplace. And I know that’s not just the case in the television industry! These options are popular today in more than one environment and for more than one generation… We see a new standard emerging.
Before you throw rocks at me, let me make it clear right away: I firmly believe that everyone does what they want with their body. It doesn’t concern us.
However, I have the impression that this fundamental principle should not prevent us from questioning ourselves on what underlies the popularity of these aesthetic treatments.
Why or why are so many of us wishing we looked younger? And if we collectively hide our age, what effects do we have on others? Among those who display it for economic or moral reasons, what does it matter…
I think about it a lot, about all that. If one day I did something to counter my wrinkles, would I be solely responsible for this choice? And would I be the only one he would have an impact on?
It’s a minefield. It is, above all, an issue that is not strictly individual. I wouldn’t want to put the weight of ageism on any woman.
On the contrary, I think that some of us opt for artificial youth to escape what society imposes on us and it is a completely valid choice… Among a panoply of valid choices!
It’s just that, somewhere in my 35-year-old heart, there’s a desire to see if it’s possible to grow old without reducing the time that will pass on my face, my neck, my breasts, my hands. The temptation will be there and I may well succumb to it… Or else I will one day have the intimate desire to present myself differently. But these days, I go to sleep imagining myself dancing with my wrinkles, my resistances, my wounds and my joys.
With my freedom, above all. No matter what choices I make until then.
There are these sentences by Marie-Pierre Duval, taken from her novel In the land of quiet despair, that often come to mind: “I dream of undressing. To remove one by one my domestications. And I celebrate the diversity of models that are rising, right now, to guide me in this.