The following excerpt is from my soon-to-be-completed book manuscript, Refusing to Be Invisible: How Women 50+ Can Challenge Gendered Ageism:
According to a 2017 Pew Research Report, Americans value women most for their appearance, (compared with men who are valued more for character followed by success). Because our culture places a premium on women’s appearance, losing our youthful looks undercuts our perceived value. When we are not seen as having the same value as we did when we were younger, it is easy to start feeling discounted or even invisible. In fact, feeling as though we are invisible is a common complaint that other women have shared with me. And it is also one that is frequently mentioned in the literature on women’s experiences and aging. As author, novelist, and commentator Jane Caro suggested in her article for the Sydney Morning Herald, most older women know what it is like to become invisible.
Having worked for years with women over fifty, Dr. Cecilia Dintino, a clinical psychologist wrote that “invisibility” was “the number one complaint” among 50+ women. Dintino described this experience as starting with the outside world when “we stop feeling the gaze of others.” Others tend to pay less attention to what we say or the “things that we say go unheard or are dismissed as irrelevant.”
Writing for The Ethel, a career female TV anchor shared that she experienced a sense of shame when she turned seventy. When she was on the air, she had to be visible. When she wasn’t at work, she felt as though she could blend into “the woodwork” and felt invisible like her other women friends.
‘In Your Face’ Ageism
Author and lecturer, Jean Kilbourne has examined ways in which advertisers distort women’s images for profit in her award-winning Killing Us Softly series. These films revealed how advertisers have digitally created images of perfect women who don’t even exist. Some of these images were of women whose skin had been air-brushed to perfection. Other images of ‘women’ were nothing more than a compilation of facial parts that were digitally combined to create the perfect woman. No wonder so many of us have felt like we can never measure up–especially as we get older.
In 2020, the U.S. anti-aging cosmetics industry was worth over 14 billion dollars. Marketers and advertisers have capitalized on our fear of aging. The cosmetic industry happily offers us expensive “anti-aging” and “age-defying” potions and lotions that are supposed to turn back the clock and make us look young again.
I’ll confess—when I was in my fifties and early sixties, I tried every anti-aging product I could find. But no matter what expensive, brand-name product I tried, nothing turned back the clock.
When some of us realize that we are still going to age—no matter how much money we spend on various products, peels, and other non-invasive procedures—plastic surgery may sound like an attractive option. It should be no surprise that women are the ones who are most likely to undergo facelifts. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons reported that in 2018, about 90% of the 121,531 facelifts performed in the United States were on women.
When I was in my early sixties, I seriously considered having a facelift. I was tired of how people treated me as an older woman. I was still actively engaged in life. I regularly took 4-6-mile jogs and was stronger than many people a decade younger than I was. I wanted people to see the real me – the vibrant, enthusiastic person that I still was. But I felt like people were starting to treat me like I was either invisible or feeble and frail, and I hated it!
Even though I was a department chair at the college where I taught, some of my younger colleagues started talking over me during meetings. Others started leaving me out of some of the casual conversations that I used to enjoy. And some of my younger students started making subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) digs about my age.
When I met with a plastic surgeon, he stood behind me as I faced a mirror. With his gloved hands, he gently pulled and lifted my neck and face slightly up and back. “See how much more youthful you can look?”
I’ll admit, I liked the younger view of myself because what I saw reflected how I felt inside. I met with the office manager and learned that it would cost me at least $11K to turn back the clock a few years. Even though I would have to put myself in debt, I was feeling a sense of urgency to turn back the clock. So, I gave surgery some serious consideration. However, as I thought about it more, I realized that I was considering having my face rearranged for all the wrong reasons.
Women Don’t Need Facelifts to Be Seen, Heard, And Respected
Women don’t need facelifts to hide their age—we need the right knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes to combat ageism. Of course, if a woman chooses to have plastic surgery because it pleases her, that is different than having a major procedure in an attempt to become more acceptable to others. I decided I was not going to let other people’s views about my age control me. I didn’t need plastic surgery to be me. However, I still do color my hair because it pleases me. I also wear my hair short because that’s what pleases me. And, I wear a lot of blue because that’s my favorite color.
The truth is, we are all aging. Yes, we’ll face new challenges, but we also have new and unique opportunities to explore and enjoy. We don’t have to let advertisers or others define us and tell us who we are and how we must look to be acceptable. We can choose to define ourselves. To do so, we must make sure our heads are not in the sand. We need to know how we are culturally being defined through media, advertising, and discourse. We need to understand how cultural ageism is internalized and influences how we see ourselves. At the same time, we need to recognize and embrace the power we have to reject ageist communication.