No, 50 is the new 50

Litbrit over at ShakesSis has a terrific post about the seemingly inevitable confluence of the Twin Towers of Female Self-Loathing -- aging and fat.

Yesterday afternoon, I was talking about blogging and blog traffic with ModFab over diner omelets prior to taking in the big chunk o'cheese that is Kismet at City Center (featuring the dynamic and voicelicious Mr. ModFab), and ModFab opined that I might want to think about positioning myself as "a female blogger", since there aren't many of us.

That doesn't really wash for me, because I often take positions that depart from the Standard Feminist Blogger Orthodoxy (such as the notion that as long as women are the ones with the risk of pregnancy, we are going to have the responsibility for birth control, like it or not).

But if there IS a group underserved in Blogtopia, it's us Women of a Certain Age who wake up every morning and find a stranger looking back at us in the mirror.

Weight is an issue for ALL women, but when the hot flashes start, it becomes even more of one -- if you let it. The irony of life as an American woman is that by the time you start feeling comfortable in your own skin, that very skin starts falling apart.

I've never been all that vain. Being branded as "the smart and funny one" from an early age makes you realize your limitations. However, I've always tried to do what I could with what I have, but there comes a point where it's time to stop comparing yourself to the airbrushed photos of American movie stars and start embracing the tactic of French women -- just be who you are. Can anyone deny that Leslie Caron is still gorgeous? Or for that matter, Jeanne Moreau -- for all that these women are now playing grandmothers?

For me, the idea of botoxing the laugh lines in my face becasue when I'm not smiling, they make my mouth droop is ridiculous. I EARNED these lines, damnit. They are the roadmap of my life, and they are as much a part of me as, well, my fat is. If I can work out enough to keep my bones strong and my limbs flexible, I refuse to delude myself that if I just deprive myself enough, I can look like Goldie Hawn (who appears on the cover of this month's AARP magazine -- airbrushed into expressionlessness).

Millions of American women are spending even more millions of dollars on creams and lotions and plastic surgery and nips and tucks in an attempt to delude themselves that they aren't on the same long march to the graveyard that we all are. But when I look at the comments to litbrit's post, it makes me wonder why, when there are so many of us who AREN'T think and who AREN'T young and who AREN'T doing the exercise in futility that is trying to kid yourself that you're still 25; we can't somehow change the way this culture thinks.

Maybe we've just worked so hard to not care that we don't even want to step into that minefield again.

I've always tried to stay away from being too self-revelatory on this page, mostly because I don't want B@B to turn into one of those navel-gazing journals. But since I AM 50, and my perspective on the world is one of someone with a half-century of Not Fitting In behind her, it's inevitably going to color everything else I write.

The fabulous Tata has, as one might expect, a manifesto.